I think I mentioned that I am taking Elizabeth Barton’s online Basic dyeing class. Her method is new to me. You mix up a lot of dye concentrate to have on hand — we have done 6 colors. The soda ash is not added until the fabric has been in the dye for at least 30 minutes and you can wait until the next day. So, this week we mixed up our concentrates and then did a gray to black gradation. I think I like this method of having dye concentrate on hand, but I have to refrigerate it so I have ordered a cute little desk top fridge for my studio.

Here is my fabric batching:

And here are my results. It is so hard to get grays and blacks that do not have purple or blue casts to them.

I also would like to get more even coloring and not have the mottled effect – things to work on.

The other thing that has kept me busy is purchasing a new car. Mr C and I have made lots of changes in our life to bring down the cost of living on the planet to have more discretionary income in our retirement. Getting the Prius was part of that, but to be honest, we never fell in love with the Prius, for many reasons. So it is leaving us and we now have a beautiful small Class C Mercedes Benz. It was a loaner at the dealership and has very few miles on it and all the bells and whistles. We just love driving it.

We decided we needed just one little splurge.

We also got a new mattress hoping it would help my sleep problems caused by my bum knees. I found this duvet cover which I love. It is reversible. Really looks great and suits our design aesthetic.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2016 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Dyeing, House and home stuff, Stuff I Buy, workshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.