I'm back with more adventures in dyeing yarn and deciding what the colours mean.  

The colours for this were, as the title might lead you to believe, inspired by spiraling depths and mysteries unknown lying within the vastness of the ocean.  

I imagined sirens with sinister secrets, giant squids with long histories of destroying magnificent ships that stranded too far off written paths, mermaids with longing and fanciful dreams, and spectacular scales of creatures never witnessed by human eyes.   

Even though last week i said I wanted to work more on the pastel range in future projects (which I still do), I wanted these colours to be rich and vibrant.  Colours that make you want to live a life at sea.  

Overall, I think it turned out delightfully sinister and magical all at once.  There are areas that are illuminated by the white contrast to the colours, and there are stretches that are dark where I squished the colour into the entire section so that no light could escape through.  

I have no idea what it's going to be yet, but I love that it holds potential along with the mystery.  Full of adventures and secrets.

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.

In full acceptance that this outs me as a crazy cat lady, this colour palette is only coming around because I'm madly in love with calico cats- especially my family's cat.  I could give you some magnificent story like I did with the Great Unagi, but honestly I just miss my cat.  She stays with my parents, and there isn't a day I'm not lonesome for her.  So here I am, making a tribute to her lovely colours and delightful soul. 

That being said, I did add some colours inspired by other calicos I've encountered that reminded me of my dear cat.  I figured if I go out of my way to pet them whenever I get the chance, they should probably feel this fibery love and appreciation.

Other than giving you sappy feelings about my cat, I also thought it was worth while to talk about what I've been learning with the more frequent hand painted yarns I've been doing.

This yarn in particular showcased how less can be more.  I was going for a far more light yellow that would blend well, and instead ended up with an electric yellow that quite clearly stands out.  For anyone getting into the dyeing game, I would highly recommend trusting that the colour will show even if there is only a little bit of dye powder getting mixed in (if you're going for less intense colours).  

The colours do fade a bit after being washed, but not too much (as long as the fiber was prepped properly).  

Here's the part where I get sentimental again.  I love this yarn even though it's not what I expected at all, which reminds me even of the very feline this represents.

My dad, brother, and I brought her home in a cricket box from a very small pet store in the town I grew up in.  She was the runt of the litter and terrified of everything.  My mother told me years later that she feared this little fraidy-cat wouldn't last if for no other reason that her heart would give out from being startled by the slightest sound.  

She changed though, she got braver and started to warm up to the family we brought her into.  She's 15 years old, 13 pounds, and the most delightful creature I've ever met, and even from a thousand miles away she makes my heart melt and want to be more.  

I think of her because she reminds of why it's nice to take chances even if you're not sure things are going to work out, especially if what motivates you is love.  

You'll be noticing some changes around the site in the next couple of months.  I'm filling out the website a little more, I've added a link to where you can donate if you so feel inclined (don't worry, blog posts and adventures will keep coming no matter what), and I'm taking further steps to making the Sweet Crafterlife a permanent fixture of my life, and hopefully yours.  

I'll keep you updated, but until then-

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.

At the last Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival I had immense amounts of fun just wandering around the booths and indulging in beautiful creations sold by talented people, but I also went there with a goal.  To find undyed fiber from a long time friend of mine, and enough of it that I could make my partner a sweater and not have to worry about running out.  

This is three pounds of fiber for that very purpose.  

The spinning and plying took me a good while, especially considering that I've been changing things up and spinning thinner than I did a year ago.  And no, I'm not putting the fiber on a diet, I just like working with a smaller gauge because I like to punish myself and make all of my projects take longer.  I like a challenge.

At the end of it all I ended up with 2,857 yards, which is perfect.  If I run out of yarn for his sweater with that much, I wasn't supposed to have enough yarn in the first place.  I'm so destructively hopeful about this yardage that I'm even hoping I will have enough leftover to either make myself a sweater too, or a matching pair of socks for the original sweater.  We'll see.  

I used the colour Scarlet from Jacquard's acid dyes, and promptly fell in love.  

Not just for the usual reasons either.  This time there was an added perk, but first I need to explain that I am a red snob.  Red is often done dishearteningly bad.  The worst culprits are lipsticks- they almost always have pink undertones or are simply puny and incapable of making anyone feel any emotion other than "eh".  Reds should make you feel something.  Red is powerful and fierce, in the best of ways, and to let it be a dull sizzle of evocation is criminal.  

If you're a snob like me, Scarlet won't let you down.  The photo below does it a disservice by making it look a shade or two on the pink side, but it's not pink at all.  It's red the way red should be.  Bold and strong.  

It will make for a perfect sweater (or hopefully two).  

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.

Dyeing has quickly become an obsession.  I thought that I would just do this for fun here and there and now I'm daydreaming about what new and fun colours to put together and taking pictures of inspiring colour combinations in the world wherever I go.  

Despite the fierce passion though, I'm still working out the kinks with how much dye to add to water to get the colour I'm picturing and coming to grips with the fact that I need to start ignoring the little voice in my head that always insists to add "just a few more dashes" to a bottle, even though it's supposed to be a light and subtle colour.  

When I first started adding the blue to this yarn, I realised I had definitely indulged that little voice far too much.  This was supposed to be a very light turquoise (practically pastel) and then I was going to do small hints of the green with proper spatters of the cherry red.  After I added the blue and red, and it looked like an aggressive fourth of July decorations, I decided that the green needed to swoop in and save the day.  

Even though it wasn't what I was originally going for, it did start to capture my heart and eventually my brain took to the new input and started conjuring strange and mystical scenes where this yarn would belong.

My favourite tale for this was the story of the Great Unagi, an eel of colossal proportion that makes its home in a vast lake that fishermen attempt to trek and fish on.  It would be a magnificent creature with mostly blue and white scales with the occasional red and green- as if it were calico like a koi fish.  

If the fishermen on this lake didn't 

If the fishermen on this lake didn't show respect to the waters or to the upkeep of their boats or fished in a reckless or greedy way, the Great Unagi would awaken from its slumber and rise to attack their ships, leaving them stranded with their only option for survival being to try to swim ashore.  

I imagine these people who fished going home to their families, and reminding their partners and children to be mindful of how they treat the lake and to always be cautious when going out onto its waters.  They would gather around the table to eat, and tell stories of the most exquisite and sturdy ships being pulled into the depths, never to be seen again.    

Then of course, you would have the old fishers of a forgotten age that would know to share their biggest fish with the Great Unagi, and so long as they stayed kind and humble in the face of this magnificent being, they knew they would go unharmed.

Someone then would of course have a story about how a bad storm came one night when they were trying to get home, and the waves caused the ship to capsize.  Frightened and struggling to stay above the crashing waves, they called out for help.  It would be then that they feel a strong yet slightly ridged form underneath their feet, and before they realise what is happening, they find themselves held slightly above the rough water's surface and being taken to land.  

The person would tell the story with a wistful tone, as if in that moment this fearsome creature had become a friend they knew they would never lose.  

At least, that's the story I hear when I see this.  Maybe it says something different to you.

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.

Like I promised, I'm back again this week with a different dyeing technique that is supposed to keep my colours bright and in their place.

Steam bath.

I followed Anette of Fiber Artsy's Tutorial because I wanted clear directions and to be a little more sure of what I was doing.  I love to improvise and take chances, but there's a time and a place and I for this round of dyeing I wanted to do it right.

Yet, despite following a tutorial that was well documented for being successful, I did get a bit nervous at this stage because of what happened to my colours last week.  

I love this intense dark purple with sunshiny yellow, and didn't want to see them muddy into nothingness like they did last time, because while I do like the look of the yarn, it wasn't what I was going for. 

However, it doesn't do any good to worry at this step in the process so I wrapped it up anyway and let it steam for an hour and cool overnight.

Waking up and unrolling this in the morning before work felt like a special present.  Not that I expected the tutorial to have lied to me, I just expected that some gremlin I forgot to pay off would have hopped in the pot and mixed my colours to the point of hideousness.  I mean, what kind of universe would let my colours turn out so nice?

The steam bath outcome is on the right, and last week's dye bath result is on the left.  As you can see the colour is perfectly preserved and well defined with the steam bath, whereas the dye bath melded the colours together completely.  They were given the exact same amount of dye, had the dye painted on them the exact same way, and the dyes applied were mixed to the same proportions (because science is only reliable when you repeat the steps with diligence).  

I found this to be a fantastic learning lesson, and am also pleased to say that I love both of my outcomes, just for different reasons.  I plan to make sweaters out of both of them, and fondly consider them the sister sweaters.

So until those sweaters come around, or at least until I get another project on the books...

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.

With holiday deals zipping around my inbox in the last week, I decided to get some ready-to-dye yarn and try my hand (at long last) with Jacquard's Acid Dyes and share the experience with you.  So here we go!

First thing's first- Jaquard Dyes' website is LOVELY, and I'm not being sarcastic or paid by Jaquard Dyes.  They did a proper good job.

On the website for the dyes, there is a clear and direct PDF that directly states exactly how to best use their dyes.  I love when you can tell that someone actually put thought into what they create, because far too often instructions seem like the product of being at the wrong end of a bottle of vodka.

Since I was dyeing only a couple of ounces of fiber I used 0.25 ounces of the lilac dye and a dash of silver grey (yes I should have measured but I just wanted to play with dye today- don't judge).

From the very beginning this fiber was immersed in my magical cauldron of swirling purple I started feeling a strong preference for acid dyes over natural dyes.  The natural dyes are fun to use, but I couldn't get over the vague disappointment that the colour was never as brilliant as it looked in the dye pot.  With acid dye, the colour is there and it's there to stay- and that's what I want.  None of this "will we, won't we" nonsense- it's a colour that can commit and I respect that.

And as if this experience wasn't magical enough- I discovered the pure wonder of chemistry that is citric acid in a dye bath.  It creates a process that Jacquard Dyes refers to as exhausting the dye bath, which basically is when citric acid (or vinegar) is added to the dye bath and it makes the fiber soak up all of that luscious colour.  If you look closely at the photo above and the photo below, after the citric acid is added, the water that was once dark and mysterious is suddenly miraculously clear, as if the water had never known the presence of the dye. 

To further my love for using acid dyes, the colour didn't bleed at all when I washed it afterwards.  The water I used to wash my yarn looked just about as clear as it did before I added the freshly dyed yarn.  

This process was so overwhelming positive that I will warn you now, you will be seeing my hand-dyed yarn from me.  I'm hooked and I think there's nothing that can be done to save me, this is my life now and I'm happy with it- so consider yourself warned.

Until then though,

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.