I am a bad blogger. Really, I am. There is lots of stuff going on around here, some of it actually crafty, but do I bother to document it? No, I do not.
But, I finally did something I am quite excited about. I took another indigo dyeing class, this time in central Oregon. Two days, lots of supplies, fun and so enjoyable.
Carlene Keller from Hawai'i taught the class and set up the dye pots and I wish I had paid a bit more attention to how she did it. But, there are instructions on the web and I should be able to figure it out on my own.
Class was fairly structured so we all did similar projects. The first day was about using thread as a resist and I only ended up with two finished pieces, but on the second day, we really dug in and churned out quite a bit more:
It took me a whole week after we came back to finally wash my pieces of fabric - we did have a bit of a heatwave and several "spare the air" days in a row, so that was my excuse. Plus I had to wash by hand since I have one of those "efficient" washers and I was supposed to use quite a bit of water for washing. I lumped all the cotton pieces together in the above picture and will need to take a few individual pictures to explain how I did the various techniques.
The above is the silk scarf we all did. Quite happy with how it turned out. Actually, I am very happy with how everything turned out. The color is a lot deeper this time around than in the first class I took. I have no idea why that is. Maybe the dye bath was stronger. We still did things basically the same way as in the first class, dip, wait for the color to change, repeat and repeat again. Fun, if a little messy.
Here are my gloves after two classes:
And here are the little indigo plants I planted several weeks ago, bad timing, I think. It's a little late in the season, even here where we have a long growing season:
Today, I am trying ice dyeing and, wouldn't you know, I forgot to take pictures at the beginning? Typical!
