Dyein' in the Woods

New Michigan fiber friend, Meta, invited me up to her studio at her home in the woods near Carp Lake.  What an adventure!  Her driveway winds through tall, tall pines and then opens up into a magical clearing with her home, gardens, her husband's shop and her to-die-for studio. ( I resisted the obvious pun there.)  It's a precious house, really, with a porch, little garden with sunflowers sprouting up and then a big room with big windows and everything a dyer, spinner, carder a fiber freak could want.  Gasp!  I loved it.  These  coiled rovings were just artfully placed about.

Meta is super organized and precise. Her color book has all her dye formulas with fiber swatches.  Makes my seat-of-pants method look beyond sloppy.  I only occasionally mix my own colors.  I just buy more dyes.  Her colors are all custom mixed, lovely and subtle.

I brought Bombex and Tussah silk to dye to use in my art batts.  I got to select colors from the formula book.  That was hard!  I couldn't decide.  Then Meta carefully did some caluculations in metric measures and mixed the dyes which where then put in squeeze bottles ( she has a million).

We snaked the wet silk out on a length of plastic wrap.  I then donned plastic gloves and began squeezing dye onto the fiber and tamping color through the silk with my finger.

Love the results!
After we got my fiber in the dye pots, we rinsed her Romney curls "casseroles".  Yum.  I got to take some of this dreamy stuff home.

And, best of all, I got invited back!  Next time we are going to do casseroles of charcoal grey Wensleydale locks from Spring Trail Fiber Works.  They are in the mail.