Warp Painting

Today seemed to be filled with some long range planning and administrative work and a little research.  The planning and research is interesting and stimulating, not so much the administration tasks.  Hands-on work had to wait until tonight, but had to be done, so I found myself warp painting after dinner.  Notice the glamorous workspace.

These warps are chenille and planned for scarves for the fast approaching winter season.  The weather of the last couple of weeks is fantastic for drying yarn so I want to take advantage of the forecast and get a few more warps dyed.  I'm using Procion MX fibre reactive dyes and painting with a sponge paint brush.  I don't bother thickening the dyes in most cases, definitely not when warp painting.  Tonight's warps are wrapped in an electric blanket set at medium and will be ready to wash out in the morning.  I have also used a heating pad with a nice thick wool blanket wrapped around the bundle of warps and heating pad.  Both methods work well.  On the Yarns Plus website you can find the instructions that I follow for dyeing, either direct application of the dyes or immersion dyeing.  I find dyeing to be quite exciting and magical as long as I stay flexible and open-minded about the colours that might result from my efforts.  You just have to jump in and give it a try.                                            This is also a fun activity.  Put your images into a graphics program and distort and play with them and you may find an idea or two for some woven work. You could use only one part of the image if you so desire.  Hours can pass with just this sort of play.

Don't forget that you can click on any of the images that are within a blog post and they will enlarge.  These 2 distortions will be much more interesting enlarged for sure.