Sade's Blog

This Easter I was in Belgium (see full post on our blog, and all the pics on our gallery). Since we have a big garden and room to work, it was the perfect time and place to dye the fabrics I had bought for making our medieval costumes.

We bought our dye and chemicals from Zijdelings, a workshop on textile design and mailorder service from the Netherlands (part of the site is English, but if you want to order, get ready to browse in Dutch). We got pre-reduced indigo, soda ash and thioureum dioxide. Fast service, and average prices – indigo is expensive, no matter what.

We did a pre-bath mixing 4 tablespoons of indigo, 4 tablespoons of soda ash, and 8 teaspoons of thioureum dioxide in 700 ml of tap water. Mix well and carefully(!), you don’t want to stain anything blue, like your fingers (I did *ahem* skin washed off in two days tho). Remember you are using chemicals, so be careful, work in a ventilated area, don’t touch the chemicals with your barehands etc etc etc . We let it rest a whole day in an airtight closed jar until it turned greenish.

The next day we filled our big bucket from Ikea with about 30 l. of (cold) tap water, and poured the pre-bath in. Mix carefully and let rest a bit. If you are careful and do not introduce much air in the bath, you’ll be able to dye right away. Else you have to wait until it turns greenish away. Now, put your fabric in and let it under the water (the fabric will have air bubbles and you have to push it down constantly) to catch the dye for some 5 to 10 minutes (I really didn’t time this process – the colours are totally non repeatable). Fish the fabric out, wring out well without splashing much using gloves, your hands will thank you ;p and extend your fabric so it gets aired and it turns blue. Keep dipping the fabric in the same fashion until the colour is slightly darker than desired (it will wash off a bit). With this bath and white linen fabric we got a pretty dark blue shade after three dips, that will be Jan’s tunic.

We did let the dyebath rest overnight, and used the nearly exhausted bath to dye the tan linen fabric as well. Two dips later we got a blue-greenish shade that I love and that will become my dress. Want pics? See here a couple:

For the whole set, please visit the photo album in our gallery.

Sade

When I first took up knitting, it was in my pre-internet era, so there were only magazines and help from my mother, who actually taught me to knit. I only made very easy things, since I didn’t have the resources to knit elaborated patterns.

Then the internet came into my life – that is, I got my own laptop, and I found that I could find more help and patterns and resources online. Happiness and bliss, there was a knitting life out there!

I started stalking personal blogs and specialized sites about knitting, and followed links around and about. I discovered new patterns, new techniques, and very helpful sites this way. I also found fiber related sites about fulling, diy tools, dyeing and spinning, and whatnot.

And so, I got the itches! I wanted to dye and I wanted to spin and I wanted to full… I wanted to try anything and everything fiber related. And thus we get to the present time: hereby I introduce you to my futute spinning wheel:

This beauty is a Louët S15, made back in September 1982. It will come home (or more accurate, it will get to Jan’s place) in about ten days, together with Louët hand carders, an upright skein winder, and a spinning hook. We won this wheel off ebay this morning, around 4:45 am. But no, I didn’t stay up that late to bid on it, there is this little nice trick that … well you know ;) The fun thing is I had a dream where my non-existant wristwatch’s alarm went off and I was so excited about this exactly auction being finished then that I had to check. And then it’s when I woke up and went check that we actually won the auction.

I will have to wait until Easter break (for me, the week between the 8th and the 15th of April) when I will be going to visit over to Belgium and then I’ll be able to check this wheel out and get the groove spinning my first yarn! That will be fun :)

*Very Happy Sade*

This next week I’ll be out visiting Jan. We’ll do shopping, visit places and friends, have fun, and all that. More upon getting back home (or perhaps I break in and post something here during the week).

Sade.