24 hours Gone

I have had a sore throat and a sniffle for more than  a week and it decided to punish on Sunday night. I spent the night eating strepsils and decaquane but felt so bad in the morning that I stayed in night until 1130. Ate breakfast, emptied the car, cancelled two appointments for Tuesday and went back to bed.  Eventually I crawled out at 4 o'clock but did very little. I watched Murder on the Nile and retired to bed with the family cure for a cold, hot orange squash with lots of sugar and a hefty dose of whisky. And slept straight through until 7 o'clock. I feel quite energetic this morning.

 We had a great time at the acid dyeing class.  Some of us discussed this and decided it was me restricting the number of students to ten.  In the past, there have been up to 14. This time it was restful, every one, including me, got on with lots of projects. I managed to complete three! Two dyed warps are shown on the left. The warp on the left had tight knots tyed in it and was then space dyed, hot pink and dark grey. The one on the right was tightly chained and then dyed in chestnut, gold ochre and jade. It has come out much louder than I expected. Too much white. If I over-dye the warp, the jade and chestnut will end up muddy. I think I will dye the weft a pale gold ochre. I can see me putting this warp on the Voyager and trying out colours in the weft first!!

Actually I do wonder if it was the presence  of Yvonne  Withers that made the difference. She makes us all laugh.

And then there was this which, again, has not come out as I expected. Well, that's the joy of space dyeing. When we had all finished the cushions for the exhibition, some of us liked the yarn so much that we got Rosie Price to get extra some cones of it. I bought 2 cones which is more than 2 kgs. I wound off 200 grams in 7 balls and dyed them by injection. This means using a syringe to insert dye into the ball and you have to poke the syringe into the middle and dye there too. I discovered, on a previous occasion, that it is difficult to get a soaking wet ball dry and worried about it rotting. So this time, I wound the balls into skeins immediately, rinsed the yarn again and they are dry already. Again rather loud but I am proposing to have a plain undyed weft and that will tone the colours down.

I have found a lovely Linton Tweed yarn for my feather  draft and can't wait to try it out. As you can tell I am recovered. I can see lots of small jobs being finished today. Upstairs is a shambles as I just dumped all the exhibition stuff there.

A visitor at the Exhibition told me that a member of their Guild managed to go on a four week course in ikat in Kyoto. I wish I had asked more questions.