A Dyers Retreat

Phew! What a weekend! I just took out my last batch of dye. It was awesome. There were 7 of us and there was dyeing going on all over the place.... colour all over the place.... and smiles all over the place. The sun shone, the wind blew, and we just dyed.... (no pun intended.... well maybe a little pun intended). I was given gifts, which was totally unexpected.... this hand painted banner was one of them....

I finished all my cleaning on Friday before lunch and the house and the deck with all it flowers looked absolutely great!...


I had started on Friday evening after the first of my guests arrived by dyeing pots of fibre on the stove in a variety of dyes. I was using Gaywool Dyes and by 11 p.m. I had tried out a whole bunch of colours, and had laid them out on the deck to dry.... don't they look delicious...?


Now I don't know if you are aware but this weekend there was a full moon so I was at my best for working till late into the night. The moon rose over the trees and made a radiant debut to us all and so we had to worship the moon in all it's glory with a little moonlight Chi Gong on the front lawn. This picture was taken as I came back from the moon worshiping. I just happened along in time to see the moon rising above the trees from the deck with the fire place and this wheel and a little of the fibre that I had dyed earlier in the evening.

The lady in the hat was our Chi Gong leader.....

We went to our beds with busy minds occupied with colour for our wool and silk.... this was fibre belonging to MF who showed up at 1:10 a.m. in the morning on Friday night/Saturday morning just as we were heading off to bed.... now that's dedication to drive so late at night to be here for dyeing.... well, at least I think so...

Some slept in tents... some slept in tent trailers, and some just slept in their car......

This lady.....

even brought her kitchen sink.... awesome set up, LS...

Saturday morning started out quite hot and windy. Things kept blowing around... but at least there weren't any mosquitoes... so we ate breakfast and got down to it.....

After breakfast, MW and I got down to it and started to work on our level 4 dyeing for the Master Spinner program... There were books all over the table as we methodically worked our way through the questions....

First, we did our Ombre dyeing.... and got very nice results.....

Then we tackled our colour wheel and could only do it in small amounts, so these are our first seven of twelve results....

All of our colour wheel skeins and our Ombre skeins look so lovely here that I couldn't help taking another picture.....

Meanwhile dyeing was taking over the deck.... there were pots brewing......

and more pots brewing.....

See those smiling faces.... well that's because there's all kinds of stuff brewing.....

This is NC measuring out the powder dyes....

And then the results started to role in.....
Now is that not an awesome display of colour... and creativity....

Some of us had worked really hard on that very hot windy day and so it was nice to find a quiet corner to yourself.... doesn't this look peaceful?

Books and magazines were hot topics..... and the short break in out of the elements meant for a few moments of time away from the sun.....

That evening there was more moon worshiping and and some of us couldn't hold up any longer after a day of hot sun and all that fresh air.... I for one was totally exhausted.... and somewhat dehydrated.... so the next day we put up a tarp over the deck to shade us somewhat.

The dyeing continued as one after another fooled around with colour and fibre..... what better way to spend a day? Sunday was a day of spinning for me since I still needed 8 skeins to finish my level 4 dyeing samples..... ahhh percentage dyeing is really quite fun!.... But as the day progressed on Sunday I knew I wasn't going to finish the spinning in time to get the dyeing done that day.... so MW stayed an extra night and then this morning we got up and carried on....

It was really nice because it was a whole lot cooler and a whole lot less windy.....
So here are the results from today....

This is Wensleydale (wool), silk, mohair, cashgora, and BFL rovings all coloured with beautiful colours....

Silk hankies and wool rovings with slightly different colours.

And a small amount of merino fleece....

And my favorite part..... my percentage dyeing.... which I am currently working on using in a knitted hat that I started tonight.... mostly because I'm just too tired to do anything else.


One last batch of dye is cooling on the counter.... I'm done... finito..... till next year..... boy that seems like such a long way off..... boo hoo, sob, sob.... that's not faaaaaiiiirrrr! : (

It was so sad to see everyone leaving on Sunday evening.... I'm so glad that MW stayed the extra day. It gave me a little bit of a buffer from feeling totally abandoned.

But I have so much lovely stuff to do between now and next year's retreat.... still, I can't wait till next year.....