Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

Having learned from the shibori experience (take pictures, document your work), I was better prepared for Jessica Kaufman's "Incredible Ice Dye" class at Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance last weekend. Jess is the owner of Waxon Studio in Asheville, North Carolina. Jess teaches dye techniques, sells materials, and sells finished dyed goods. This time, I took pictures in progress and afterwards. For our class Jess had five-gallon buckets of "mordant" ready — recipe is one cup of soda ash/washing soda to one gallon water. Jess said this mixture can be used repeatedly. As for any dyeing project, start with clean laundered fabric. We dunked our fabric in the soda ash water for at least 10 minutes. This makes the fabric ready to activate the dye by shifting the pH to alkaline. Jess mentioned soda ash is sometimes used in pool maintenance and comes in 50 pound bags. If you have a friend with a swimming pool, you might be able to ...

It seems 2022 is the Year of Learning. At least, that's been the start. In addition to some knitting classes, I've taken two dye classes already this year. The first was shibori and the second was ice dyeing. Both techniques are easy and fun. Both used cotton fabric. Both used fiber-reactive dyes . In January, Textile Appreciation Society of Atlanta held a shibori dye workshop at Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance . Our teacher was Sophie Monsibais. She was excellent — I definitely recommend her! She showed us three different techniques. The first is an accordion pleating technique which is the basis of many shibori patterns. The second was a twisting and binding technique that produces rings. The third — which I watched but didn't do — was binding rocks or pebbles. Sophie had the dye vats already prepared. Although we were using fiber-reactive dyes, Sophie heated them, because she said she gets better results if they "cook" for about 2...