today mac came over to dye yarn. i had never used any chemical dyes (unless kool-aid counts) and had some procion dyes i wanted to try. i also had a groaning board of pristine yarn: a LOT of sock merino sent by another pal, and some aran wool that my ex brought me from ireland. (see off to the right is some of the undyed, natural jacob that came from ireland as well - some of that ended up getting dyed too.)
orwell's 1984 predicted, If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever. that is exactly how i feel about multicolored yarns. so i didn't make any; all i knew going into this today was that i wanted a blacky-red (surprise), and i wanted a really sickly green.
i started with the red. steaming hot, the lower left hand corner is the merino sock, the upper right is the natural jacob.
we have a laundry tub with a drain in it that
ben
was able to lug up from the basement; this way we could soak, and rinse, yarn without making a big mess in the kitchen. (note neighbors jimmy and joey's fig tree and grape arbor in the reflection.)
mac tried something rather adventurous in her crock pot, and something rastafarian in the dishwasher. how did they turn out? look and see.
we were surprised when three pounds of mac's own handspun all went into the same pot and each skein came out, well, completely different. even those among us with no color vision were surprised at the variation (and of course snubbed it.) we feel confident that mac will know what to do with it next. 
and thus concluded our morning's experiment! as you see on the chair, i did get my sickly green, too - more pictures when everything is dried and put up. how do i feel about this dyeing thing? it's interesting. i think i could learn more, and i think i could get better.
since mac and i were so busy
ben
had the whole morning to himself... which he chose to spend lugging laundry tubs, driving to get french pastries for mac and me, and making us espresso drinks!