woodstock...?

Last year, I was in the USA on the anniversary of Woodstock. I was amazed and intrigued by the number of people sporting their tie-dyed shirts - you could tell some were new and some looked like originals, the wearers included, if you know what I mean. Anyway, since then, it seems to me there has been a revival of tie-dyed stuff, some good and some not so good, some psychedelic and some subdued.
I have always been a fan of random prints and batiks but they can be hard to come by. I made ‘A-shirred’, (the pattern is in No 53) in a raw silk yarn  (Yeoman Yarns Silk Bourette) that only comes in the natural colour, with the idea that I was going to get creative and somehow paint/dye/embellish/whatever and do something to my finished garment as my statement on the influence of tie-dye stuff.
Kelly Ripa on the morning show has been wearing this lovely dress by Michael Kors that is a very subtle abstract print blend of pale blues and greens, more pastel-y than I prefer for myself but I found it very attractive. I wasn’t sure what I really wanted the finished product to be, other than an experiment. And I figured, what the heck? if I didn’t like the result, I’d go buy some more ‘Rit®’ and over-dye it (VBG)!!
A couple of good friends who sounded like they knew more about it than I did, took me to a craft store to shop for supplies. After reading labels and debating among ourselves, I ended up with this tie-dye kit (it is actually called ‘Tie Dye Kit by Jacquard, for use with natural fiber fabrics’ - which my friends both seemed to think was a good brand) and a bunch of kids’ paint brushes in various sizes that I could use to ‘paint’ on the dye. The kit chosen, was supposed to, we thought, have red, yellow and blue powdered dye that, in theory, I could use to mix any colour I wanted. At home, reading the ‘fine print’, I had turquoise, fuschia and yellow - yes, those true psychedelic colours!!

Well, undaunted, this morning, with no home-dinner dates planned, I jumped in!

A couple of weeks ago, I had purchased a new grill and while unpacking it for assembly, I realized I could use the plastic bags the pieces were packed in as filler for my dyeing project, so I saved them all - there was one big enough to put over the top of my round dining table for protection. I had an old padded tablecloth, previously ruined in a past experiment (No 32, Leaf It To Me) - that time I was using fabric paints and working on dry fabric, but this one was a wet job. I began by soaking the finished garment, my original tension swatch, and an extra hood - the first was too short and I’d made the second one without having to unravel it. The garment and swatch had been laundered already, but the extra hood had not - I don’t know if it made a difference, but washing out whatever sizing, wax, etc wouldn’t hurt. The kit included a packet of ‘soda ash’ to pre-soak the items to make the dye hold better. We had chosen this type of kit/dyes, because there seemed to be no need to ‘heat-treat’ the final thing. So, while the items were soaking for 20 minutes in the soda ash, I began mixing colours and soon realized nothing much is going to take the turquoise (a colour I loathe) out of turquoise and there was not a great amount of each coloured powder. So, after messing and mixing with tiny, weeny dibs, I came up with several colours, shades of greens, blue, brown and a pinky-red, to experiment with on the swatch and felt that I could live with them.

I stuffed the extra hood to plump it up and practised a bit - I had this vision of sea anemones - I don’t even know what they are, but that came to my mind - that I thought I could manage to paint on my sweater. I’ll admit, it was a fluke - my brush dripped on the first try and I drew a line to connect the dots....

Anyway, I stuffed the garment with plastic bags, I even blew up some zip sandwich bags - that worked really well - because the garment was wet, and I didn’t want it to bleed through, I wanted each layer/side to be separated, stuffed the sleeves as well - then I began painting my vine-y anemones - I thought it was really cool how the colour bled and aura-ed at the edges and I was pretty psyched as the project progressed - the plan was to be able to leave this thing to dry undisturbed for 24 hours, so I had to make sure no portion of it was overlapping - as I finished a sleeve, I wrapped it in plastic so I could manouevre the whole thing, flip it over and work on the back without worrying that the sleeve would infect another part... how’s that for confidence - I actually started on the front - well, really, I had planned to start on the back and work out the kinks - who cares what you look like when you’re leaving anyway? - but in my hurry to begin, I forgot...

I’m finished, pretty happy and tomorrow, I’ll let you know...

The colour Purple - NOT!

'Purple Purls', in No 52 KNITWORDS, is a beautiful lace cardigan with some really nice details, not only a pleasing stitch pattern, but the bands and collar are pretty nice too, if I do say so. The yarn is Yeoman’s Cannele which I have used extensively (I get it from Cardiknits at www.cardiknits.com) - it is a crisp, mercerised cotton that has a lovely sheen. In reality, bright purple is not a colour that I would choose for myself. I had been wanting a plum shade, ordered ‘iris’ which turned out to be more of a bright royal blue - see ‘Spots in Dots’, No 50. My next order was for ‘aubergine’ which didn’t thrill me either - it was more reddish wine than eggplant - and I traded it sight unseen, by mail, with a friend in exchange for ‘cardinal’. My friend had described ‘cardinal’ as a really pretty purple - when it arrived, I kind of grimaced and looked at it for several weeks before gathering up the courage to use it. I loved the finished garment, but I still didn’t feel warm and fuzzy about the colour. I forced myself to wear it 3 different times in an attempt to become more purple-friendly. One time was lunch with my highschool girlfriends - they are always very complimentary of anything I wear, probably because they know I made it and maybe just to be nice, but they always say something. This time, nada! Not a word. Hummm....The last time I put it on, my son had taken me out for lunch on my birthday. He doesn’t normally say anything about anything that I wear but at the end of the lunch he looked at me and said, ‘That’s not your usual colour, is it? It seems a little bright for you.’ That did it! I was either going to have to give it away or burn it!
Now, several times lately, I’ve been meaning to experiment with over-dyeing a finished garment. The sour apple wool crepe deluxe of ‘Frill Ride’ (No 51) was going to be in line for the experiment, but Sue J at BT Yarns said she would wear it, so I gave it to her. Anyway, last week when I was packing up to go to the Knit Knack Shop’s Spring Fling in Peru, Indiana, I held up the purple thing and made a snap decision. I dashed to the grocery store and grabbed 2 boxes of RIT dye in navy blue - they only had 5 colours. I read the instructions...put on rubber gloves, got out my very big soup pot, put 8 litres of hot water in, heated it on the stove just a bit, maybe 5 minutes. Dumped in the dye powder from both boxes and a cup of regular table salt - I did debate for a second whether it would make a difference if it was kosher salt - I had a lot more of that on hand, but went with the regular - the water looked black! Threw in the purple peril, unbuttoned. With a old wooden spoon, ruined in a previous experiment, I stirred a bit, maybe 2 minutes total. It looked really black but that was okay by me. I took it off the heat and dumped it into the sink. Rinsed it several times in cold water, until the water was clear. The sweater still looked black. Then I washed it with ‘Eucalan’ like I normally would, rolled it in a towel to remove as much moisture as possible and laid it out to dry. The next morning I was ecstatic to see it had dried to a lovely deep plum.
The knitters in Peru were shocked and amazed!
Boy, do I have plans!