- Get some wool. You can dye it straight off the sheep, washed and carded into roving, or after it is spun into yarn. I prefer the roving myself, tidy but not too predictable. Montreal steak seasoning and pepper mill are optional.
- Totally overestimate your “free” time and energy level.
- Stare at the wool. Yes, you know this wool is brown and doesn’t technically need dyeing but don’t let that stop you. Of your 12 sheep, one is white, two are black, three are grey, and the rest are brown. The alpaca and llama are also brown. Your hair is brown. You like brown; it’s a good thing. Sometimes, however, you can have too much of a good thing. Plus, someone once told you about “overdyeing” and how one of the loveliest colored yarns she had ever seen came from overdyeing black wool with red dye.
- Have a Taos Wool Festival flashback. Smile as you recall that time in the coffee shop waiting your turn with your fellow workshop participants. Remember the look of horror on clueless male patron’s face when we all clucked over our excitement to be taking a dyeing class. Remember man running out the door and driving away at breakneck speed.
- Listen to the wool. Wait for it to tell you what it wants to be. Become frustrated with wool’s indecisiveness and overrule wool (hey that rhymes).
- Find your enameled wool dyeing pan in the very back of the very back cabinet in the laundry room. Move two boxes of fabric, three dirty blankets, and two sets of unwashed sheets to get to it. Say fuck it and leave cabinet door open because you cannot shut it without reverse engineering everything you just did to get it. Throw soiled comforter over cabinet door as camouflage.
- Wonder if this is all worth the trouble but remember you are going to a wool festival and you are bringing your spinning wheel and won’t hand-dyed roving draw accolades from the uninitiated. And you know you need constant reassurance.
- Put wool in pot. Add water to cover without letting the water actually run onto the wool because that makes felt. There is a time and place for felt but this is not it.
- Glug white vinegar in pot. Don’t measure anything. You are not wired that way.
- Sprinkle different shades of acid dye onto the wool. Cock your head and add some more. Decide pot o’ wool reminds you of the La Brea Tar Pits, only more colorful.
- Turn stove to low. Cover pot. Simmer for thirty minutes
- Question whether getting a pedicure before your trip is worth it because your hiking shoes will probably wear off the polish anyway. Don’t come to a decision..
- Let wool cool (hey that rhymes, too! It’s the little things that bring you joy). Rinse scalding hot wool (because you were too impatient to let it cool so burned your hands instead) until the water runs clear. Get tired of waiting for the water to run clear and say fuck it again. You really are getting a mouth on you.
- Wrap wool in old towel. Set outside to dry. Walk outside in 101 degree heat every 7 ½ minutes and rearrange the drying wool. Remark that it’s pretty. Make husband walk outside to look at the pretty wool.
- Repeat steps 1 -14 until all wool has been dyed. Feel exhausted. Bitch about feeling exhausted.
- Drink beer. Get pissed off because the keg runs out and all you are left with is crappy Coors Light.
- On the following day, spend four to six hours braiding wool roving. Listen to the wool again because it is pretty and you are a sucker for a pretty fiber. It wants to be a tunic-length cardigan with a sash belt and no buttons. It needs to think a while on what else it would like to be. Gaze at it one last time. Get “Mountain of Love” in your head; substitute “wool” for “love.”
- Begin to sew new wrap skirt. Realize you are completely insane and secretly blame the appliances and Dick Cheney.
- Smile because the husband just called and said, “The eagle has landed,” his secret code for the capture of a fresh keg of Kiltlifter.
- Drink beer.
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MissOjib
Ann Nichols
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Comments
I can get as many sheep pelts as I want up here, practically for nothing. I thought about learning how to tan them and selling them at the farmer's market in the summer but I chickened out.
That wool looks beautiful, do you knit your own alpaca stuff too?
Anyone you know ever spin Sheepdog hair? I hear it's warmer than wool, no kidding.
I will take this advice. It is the best I've heard all day concerning my knappy hair.
And thank you, I do plan on posting about spinning something more summery I am working on as well as the other "rustic arts" I participate in.
I love you.
This describes an important early step in nearly every project of any kind I have ever started.
Also the "look at pretty wool" part.
Dang funny, pretend