I was not organized enough this year to post my annual costume-a-day but you can see them in the archives! Just click that label down at the bottom of the post that says “costume-a-day” and it will take you to see 24 quick and easy costume ideas that you can throw together in the next week. It’s my trick or treat to you!

I feel like I have lost 20 lbs! More than 10 inches cut off today and donated to “Locks of Love”. The “before” picture is actually from August – it was the only shot I could find with my hair down, so it was longer than that. I just keep shaking my head to feel how light it is.

I had a comment in a previous post and I thought I would answer it here instead.
“How long does it take you to dye your fabrics? They’re so gorgeous.”

It depends on what I am dyeing. To do most kinds of silk, I can steam set it and the actual dyeing part takes about 5 minutes. First, I mix up colors. Most of the dyes I work with are in powdered form. Sometimes with silk, I use food coloring or koolaid though. Then I “do stuff” to the silk – fold it, crumple it, stitch it – anything to give the fabric some texture. Then I put dyes on it, usually with squirt bottles, so I can control where they go. I usually only mix up 3-5 colors and do a lot of blending to get everything else. Finally, I either steam set in the microwave (2 minutes) or set it with a mordant and let it “cure” for 1-4 hours. Rinse, dry and iron.

Cotton is much the same, but not steamable to fix the colors. So cotton has to sit in the dye for an hour or more.

So, it’s pretty fast depending on the complexity of the pattern I am doing. I tend to do a whole bunch of small pieces at once, so I will have a dozen new pieces but only about 9×12 inches of each one. (The photo above is acually a batch of t-shirts sitting on our back step.)

Pattern: Ilean (downloadable on Ravelry)
Yarn: Louisa Harding Castello, wool, poly, nylon, acrylic. Close up it looks like a thread of blue, one of black one of shimmery gold. Used just a little more than one skein.

It’s basically a loop that I can slip over my head. It was a rainy day today and this was quite cozy. An easy to memorize pattern (which is usually very hard for me). Love it.