the first foray into yarn dying
I’ve gotten the materials together. Two pots, a colander, several wooden spoons (all these from the habitat for humanity charity store), and a yard of muslin (the local craft store). I bought the teabags on my way home from work today. The yarn arrived in the mail a couple days ago (you know this, you liked my story on Instagram).
I have to reference the book again — it has the instructions for the dying process. I wanted to do it tomorrow, which is normally a day off, but the week was kind of wonky at work so I’m making up hours tomorrow. I’m not particularly excited about it, but I’m also not particularly grumpy, so I guess that will have to do. (Mostly I’m just tired right now. I had a print job at work that took me three hours to complete. It was a lot. Also there’s a new employee who seems to be around my age, and I made the decision [mistake?] of striking up conversation and that was also very draining. I fear I have set forth a precedent of talking to me. Which is probably good for me generally but also yikes.)
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It’s the next day after writing the above portion. I went to work and made up some hours, but they didn’t have as much for me to do, so I did some backlog stuff and went home early. (There’s a little yellow-brown spider crawling on the linoleum next to me. I spooked him when I was putting away the dishes. He’s very cute, I’m kinda sad he’s not sticking around.)
I’m sitting on the kitchen floor as I write this, which could honestly stand to be a lot more uncomfortable than it is. I have twenty black teabags simmering in a pot of water on the stove. I was very surprised by the process of creating the dye — after a bit of prep and cooking, I mostly get to just leave it for a handful of days; I can come back to boil it occasionally for a stronger dye if I want as well.
The book I’m working from purports that this will give me a rich brown dye, although the fabric in the pictures looks a lot more like a dark mellow pink than a brown. I wonder what kind of doctoring the photos went through before publication, if any? But I also can’t rely solely on the pictures — the book is mainly focused on dying fabrics, though it does have instructions for yarn, so I’m not totally sure what it’ll look like on my natural white wool that’s sitting in a bag in the other room.
I’m finding the process quite peaceful. (The little spider has not left yet, and he’s terribly cute.) My head still hurts from all the dust at work, nap afterward notwithstanding. But the fridge is humming gently and I’m keeping an ear on the sound of the pot, and the whole house smells like black tea. I should probably make some bread as well, as it’s the weekend, and I might be going on a friend adventure on Sunday to look at a little electric car.
I feel at peace. Content. Like there’s a future ahead of me that I can be a part of. And part of that future involves straining black tea leaves from a pot of dye through muslin, and leaving some yarn to sit and soak.