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<\/a><\/p>\nThen there’s the big weed that’s taken over the side yard of an abandoned house near me.\u00a0 When it was small I thought it was milkweed.\u00a0 It’s clearly not.\u00a0 I feel like I should know this one, and that it’s bad, but I can’t place it.\u00a0 I should probably get out my wildflower book.\u00a0 The stalks are quite red, and probably 3′ tall.<\/p>\n
After that, remembering my recent undulating twill disaster <\/a>(different draft), I re-threaded for huck lace, but forgot to take a photo on the loom.\u00a0 I got both scarves woven, then spent a bunch of time online looking at websites and blogs about ombre dyeing.\u00a0 I have to say, there was quite a bit of inconsistency in process and time needed, so I figured I’d have to go with my gut.\u00a0 I got the scarves washed and rinsed, then brought the needed tools outside.<\/p>\n I mixed up a bottle of Rit dye with a cup of salt in about a gallon of water – maybe a little more.<\/p>\n Then I started dipping.\u00a0 Since the yarn was unbleached and quite creamy colored, I didn’t think it would look good with the center having no dye at all, so dipped the entire scarf quickly.<\/p>\n I ran back into the house and got paper towels and dish soap.\u00a0 Should have had those tools outside with me to begin with.\u00a0 I moved the scarf to the front of the arbor and started on the next scarf, mixing up a batch of red dye.<\/p>\n It was too red for me, so I mixed in a bunch of the blue.<\/p>\n You’d think I would have learned from the experience with my neighbor’s garage, and taken more care when I dumped out the blue dye in the weeds behind my own garage, but no.<\/p>\n Interestingly, the red dye really stained the dishpan and the blue washed out almost completely.\u00a0 I would have expected the opposite, since in my experience red dye runs A LOT.<\/p>\n<\/a>So other than looking at weeds\/wildflowers, what else have I been doing?\u00a0 Well, at the show last weekend it was clear to me that I should weave more bookmarks.\u00a0 I decided I wanted to do some monk’s belt, a weave structure I think I’ve only previously done in classes.\u00a0 I thought I’d wound a warp long enough to make 16 bookmarks, but I only got 13 out of it.\u00a0 That’s ok.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nThen I really wanted to try doing some ombre dyeing with Rit dyes at home.\u00a0 I had picked up 3 cones of a really nice pima cotton at a local resale store.\u00a0 It’s quite thick, 790 ypp, very soft, and I figured it would weave up quickly and take dye well, plus I wasn’t out much money if it didn’t work.\u00a0 So I wound a warp for two scarves, and wove the first one with an undulating twill.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Then I proceeded to lower and raise the scarf (note that it’s folded in half here), since I didn’t want distinct color lines.\u00a0 I dipped the middle section about 30 times.\u00a0 I wanted the bottom quite dark, and dipped it about 120 times.\u00a0 Then I hung it on my arbor (another story for another time).\u00a0 I went in the house to get the second scarf and the next bottle of dye.\u00a0 While I was gone the wind kicked up and blew the scarf against my neighbor’s fence.<\/p>\n<\/a>That wasn’t a big deal, but the splatters on my neighbor’s garage were.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>I wish the store had had more than 5 colors for me to choose from – these 2, plus black, brown, and dark green.\u00a0 Anyway, I followed the same process with the red dye.\u00a0 Here are both scarves hanging and dripping from the arbor.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>There was so much of it that it didn’t really wipe off.\u00a0 I decided since it’s behind the garage I didn’t really care.\u00a0 So I headed to the other side of the yard and started the clean up.\u00a0 Fewer tools needed.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>While the scarves were hanging outside dripping, I picked a mess of peas, went inside and shelled, steamed, quick-chilled, and froze a bag of them.<\/p>\n<\/a>After a while I went back outside and brought in the scarves.\u00a0 I laid out a long piece of plastic wrap on the kitchen floor and laid a scarf on it.<\/p>\n<\/a>I covered it with another layer of plastic and rolled it up.\u00a0 Then I did the same thing with the red scarf.<\/p>\n