When one's sister comes to visit and brings about 300 g of undyed sock wool with her, what can one do but pull the gloves on and make some colours?

The first lot I made a mega long skein up and down the corridor, but I really should have been mindful of keeping the tension even so it didn't snarl up in the vinegar soak. But I didn't, and it did. But anyhow, it dyed up great using the food colouring in the vaccola jars in the microwave method, inspired by Happy Spider. But still, how delicious does this look?and it turned out great, we managed to have it dyed, cooled, dried, untangled and wound up before my sister went home.

I also wanted to give my $3 fete crock-pot-especially-for-dyeing-yarns-and-fibres a go, and also experiment with using procion dye and acid on protien fibre.

First, put vinegar soaked skein in crock pot.
Look at that potential!

Then mix up some dyes. My sister requested purple, red and black. Allrighty then!
mmm, rich red! rich purple!
and black black. Black is a bugger to dye with, since getting a nice dark black is a supreme pain in the rrrrrrs. But it worked this time! Hooray for Drimarene K Jet Black.


Now to get the syringes ready for squirting the colours,mwahahahaha.and the pics stop there, folks :( why? I have no idea. I was doing the colour and my sister was taking some photos, but we got so excited about the dye that we forgot about the photos! Sorry, blog followers. Sometimes the process is more important than the documenting :) But the yarn turned out great, and the crock pot did a wonderful job. I can't wait to do some more heh heh heh.

I have had a few dye jobs sent my way lately. Dyeing things for other people, especially dyeing expensive baby carriers for other people gives me such an adrenaline rush, after all colour is so difficult to describe, and to photograph, and usually the people that I dye for live a way away, so most communication is by email. Don't get me wrong though, I love it! I love the textiles, the patterns, the textures and most of all the colours. I love the process as well, splashing around with colour is one of my favourite things to do.

Mulberry Leo

This carrier started out as a Natural Leo Storchenweige wrap carrier.

His owner lives in Adelaide but was coming for a family holiday in Canberra, so she brought Leo with her so I could dye it while she was here. And lucky it worked out that way...

The leo was supposed to be a nice purply colour, but not to vivid, so we decided on a colour like dusky violet from Kraftkolour. I ordered the dye, and when the Leo came to Canberra (and it was so great to meet another babywearer that goes on holiday with the car boot half full of carriers!), he went for a swim.


but turned out an icky gun metal grey colour :(


His owner wasn't thrilled with his colour, and neither was I, so back he went into a magenta dyebath, and turned out a much better colour. He is now called Mulberry Leo.


I am not thrilled with Kraftkolour's mix of dusky violet. I think that I will stick to my old reliable dye supplier at dyeman.com, and stick to pure colours and play with mixing them myself.

Scarlet Vicky

Vicky was a yellow Storchenweige wrap that was living in Darwin and wrapping some gorgeous twins, and the twins were born on the same day as my Monkey 4. Vicky is yellow with yellow stripes, and the owner of the wrap really didn't do yellow so well, so she wanted Vicky to go red.

I put her in a strong bath of stock red dye from dyeman.com (see, nice and reliable!),

and she came out looking like Lego brick red, with subtle stripes. Her owner was really happy with her transformation and now calls her Scarlet.

Mulberry Osnaberg

When people see woven wraps, they seem to say "but can't you just make one out of fabric?", but up till now finding a fabric that behaves properly (ie not much horizontal or vertical stretch, but some diagonal stretch) has been a challenge. Recently the good women at TheBabyWearer.com have been going crazy for a fabric called Osnaberg. It is a roughish sort of fabric that is used for quilting and other things, but has the diagonal give that is so comfy when wrapping a baby to an adult.

Being the fabric addict I am, I decided to jump on this bandwagon and see what all the fuss is about. I sourced 3.5 metres at a local fabric store (at four times the price it is retailing in the US, what is with that???), hemmed it, gave it tapers, and gave it a burl.
Pretty comfy for a rucksack back carry tied under the bum, and doable for a reinforced rucksack carry tied at the front in the tails.

I need more practice with gradation dyeing, and wanted to know how the Osnaberg would dye, and had a whole heap of Kraftkolour dusky violet dye to use up, so I did a gradation dye with a blend of dusky violet and red. It turned out pretty nice.




and it kind of matches my bag :)