Yesterday in photos.

But first. HELP PLEASE! It's fairly quick, painless, and free. -- Anyone remember the tetrachromacy discussion around here? Mutation? Extra cones in the retina? Super color vision? (If not, it can be found here.) Well, if anyone out there in blogland is willing to help me out, go take this test and drop me a comment with your score. (Lower the score, better your color vision is.) For refrence, my score was, uh. Three. (The husbeast leaned over my shoulder during the test and said something profane I'm not repeating, but I think the operative word was 'freak'.) Everyone else I've asked is scoring from twenties to forties, except one female friend who ALSO says nothing ever matches. She scored a six.

Anyway. Yesterday I dug into my super-high-tech dye studio (I am praying to any god listening that when we move, we will have a basement with a laundry sink in it - anyone know any dye gods?) and started figuring out how to dye with 'real' dyes. Namely the Procion MX dyes developed for cellulose fibers, instead of my fooling-around food coloring deal. Here's the studio:


A milk crate full of stuff in my office, and a five gallon bucket in the bathtub. Yeah, baby. It's all about the tech around here. (I figure our ancestors did amazing work with a couple clay pots and some smashed shellfish, I can do this.) I'm dyeing in the bathroom in an attempt to keep the chemicals totally separated from food, and even I do not prepare food in the bathroom. Seemed the sensible way to go. So far I have not turned the tub or sink any odd colors.

I had gotten a pack of a dozen 'blank' bandanas for experimentation purposes, and laid down some primary colors (primary in terms of ink and light mixing - cyan, magenta, and yellow).

Today, tie-dye, batiking, and secondary colors. I've already got the bees' wax ready to go in my fondue pot. (It's got a temp control. And come one, bees' wax won't kill anyone without allergies, I can clean it out and use it to melt chocolate again.)

First color for the day, green. Learning all this color theory stuff is becoming downright handy. Who'd have thought? (Just the other day the husbeast said in all seriousness he did not know what colors mixed to make purple and I stared at him like he'd just landed from Mars.)

Otherwise I got in some knitting while timing dye soaks. As stated, The Octagonal Thing looks just like it did twelve, fourteen rows ago.

And I've been dyeing roving. For hopeful sale. I'm not thrilled with the maroon, but I'm hoping someone else will be.



I'm feeling better. Sort of like if I'd upped my thyroid meds without permission. But I'd never do such a thing. Nooooo. Not me. I've got so much respect for doctors because they're always right. (Wow, do I feel better. They're going to have to do some fast talking to get me down to my lower dose again. Like threats of heart disease and/or dropping dead.)