Dye day II

I spent Monday morning grocery shopping and other necessary chores. In the afternoon I was back down I the dye studio mixing colors in preparation for dyeing the semi-solids. 

I have a a system of Excel spreadsheets to keep track of my color mixes. When I am ready to mix dye stock and mix colors from that, I only have to plug in the values, print out my information and get to work.

I start that process by weighing out the dye powder on my triple beam balance scale. (I forgot to get a picture of this step, and besides I have to wear a respirator and gloves which makes handling the camera difficult.) Then I need to mix 1% solutions of the primaries I mix from. The next step is actually mixing my colors from my recipes. While I was doing all this Meredith and the other girls spent the afternoon getting the yarn ready so we could be all ready to go on Tuesday morning.

I like to listen to music or an audiobook while I am working.  Here’s a “lovely” self portrait of me with my iPod. :-)

I went out after breakfast and put the yarn in to soak while getting the pots set up for the days’ work. We decided to set them up under the trees for a change where it would be shady for most of the day since the heat index is in the triple digits this week. It did help so we will probably keep doing that. It is only a few steps farther from the water and worth it for the shade.

We had the first batch in the pots by about 10:30 or so.

After the cooking process we put the yarn out on tables to rinse. We have an old washing machine in the studio for spinning out the excess water. This helps the yarn to dry faster and also gets all the processing water out.

I know you have seen our drying lines before so it’s nothing new, but here’s some anyway. I just love seeing the lines full of freshly dyed yarn and can’t resist the temptation to take pictures of it. So here you go. :-)

Thanks for indulging me with your patience with all the pictures.  

To finish off this post here’s a few adorable pictures of Elijah from yesterday.

I should have a knitting progress report next time.