This rose is very determined to live inside, not outside.
I cut fresh flowers for the table last night --- I never tire of zinnias, the whole season long (or calendulas, either, or indeed any flower).
Today is D-Day --- Dye-Day --- God willing. Mind you, it hasn't come yet, but UPS tracking says it's out for delivery. Time to transform more things!
I slept late, so will drink a quick cup of coffee and take the dog for a spin, hoping that by the time I get back, there will be goodies on my porch. These things do excite me. Transforming something old is almost better than getting something new, and that's saying a lot, for the brain on its perpetual dopamine quest.
Wearing today:
I spent all yesterday thinking that it was the 31st and tallied my dress wears for July accordingly. But as we have --- well, in my mind it's a bonus day, but to everybody in normal-land, it's just the one last day that July is allotted every year --- anyway, as today, in fact, is the 31st, here's Camellia with one more July wear, bringing her total to 4. She ties with Brooklyn and both the Maggies in this third-place spot.
She's also freshly washed after our sweaty hiking attempt last Thursday, and as my original redyed wool dress, ready to preside at the redyeing of Sierra today.
Here, for your interest and edification, is a shot of my tights-and-leggings bin as it appears right now:
I'm also fascinated by how dusty my navies look next to the sapphire blue: navy Allbirds leggings in the top right corner, navy Snag merino tights next to the Sapphire tights at the bottom.
The one item really standing out in all this mix are those marble-patterned bamboo-cotton tights (top row, second from left). But they're going in the dye bath with Sierra, so will be transformed. I also note how faded my teal-striped leggings look, but I think that's okay. I actually prefer for the original black to be more like charcoal. I might consider overdyeing them with something one of these days, but not today. I don't need everything to be spruce green.
Anyway, even so, the cohesiveness of the colors in this bin really does please me very much. The scheme is (for the most part right now) cohesive in itself, but it's also cohesive with what's in my closet. I can't wear any of it for a long time --- all I can do is look and feel my core temperature rise just looking. But it'll be there when I'm ready for it.
More later.
UPDATE:
The dye is here! Sierra and the leggings are in their dye bath. Because I'm not worried about felting or shrinking (I've washed Sierra on hot and dried her in the dryer many times), I am following the directions exactly: hottest washing machine setting, longest cycle. I used roughly 2 ounces of dye for about a pound and a half of fabric, plus a very generous splosh of vinegar. This might be overkill, but it probably won't be. I want them both to dye to a pretty saturated tone. The machine is going now, and I'll take a photo of what both items look like at the end of this wash, before I wash them in detergent. I'm hoping for a pretty rich, bright blue-green, and also hoping that Sierra's gray seams don't show up too much. The gray is fairly dark, so my guess is that they'll blend well. If not --- well, that will be the look we have.
Still more to come.
OH: for what it's worth, I'd always choose machine dyeing over the bucket method. Things come out much more evenly this way, and it's not hard to clean out my old top-loading machine. If you have a front-loader I'd have second thoughts, but a top-loader works really well and recovers just fine from the dye process. You always run it through a cycle empty with some bleach or vinegar --- bleach is probably better, though I use whatever I happen to have on hand in the laundry room. Anyway, IF you have a top-loader, that's the way to go, in my view. Even my leggings, done on a much cooler setting than the instructions indicated, came out well and quite evenly dyed.
ALSO: looking back at that photo of my leggings/tights bin, I'm struck by how yellow those marbled leggings look beside all the blues. That's one thing I wanted to correct. The Spruce color is a very blue green, and I hope they come out with predominantly that tone.
Here's the rinse water:
The dye powder, dry in the jars, looked very mossy in color, but you can see here how blue it actually is. That's a good sign! I just added more vinegar to the rinse, and am letting the machine go through an extra rinse. Then I'll wash the items for real, and we'll see where we are. I have no qualms about putting either of these things in the dryer, either: been there, done that.
Meanwhile, I've been feeling schlumpy and squodgy in this hot weather --- I hope you know what I mean. I haven't been walking as much, burning as many calories, building as much muscle. That's prompted me, actually, to make sure to take photos of my dresses from multiple angles when I wear them. Here's the back view, not my favorite:
For better or worse, my broadest point. Much of my exercise, such as it is, has been focused on glute muscle, specifically. It's not so bad, but I am always glad that we meet people face-on, not otherwise.
But then I take side views, too, because the other thing I'm self-conscious about is my post-menopause gut, which . . . exists.
But then I am reminded that however imperfect my body is (and whose is not, I ask you), it's never quite as bad as the images my brain likes to send me by way of distortion. That's the good thing about photos. If you just look in the mirror, your brain can mess around with you. But if you take a photo and look at it, that's like hard evidence that your brain can't distort. Sometimes it's pleasant evidence, and sometimes it's not quite what you had hoped. But it is photographic evidence, not some weird dysmorphic phantasm produced by the "I Hate Me" filter in your brain. That is how the brain works, and it's tiresome, but there are workarounds. This whole blog, for example, is a workaround.
And now we return you to our regularly scheduled dye project. Or, eventually. Once the rinse cycle is over.
OUTCOME, PRE-WASH:
Here's Sierra, looking very emerald:
The photo, as usual, doesn't quite show the color --- it's a little more vibrant than this. Definitely greener than Pacific, for example and, not surprisingly, more gray-based, since the original dress was charcoal gray. I think it's going to be fun.
The bamboo leggings, rather to my surprise, turned out a lot lighter.
They're much more of a grayed sage, though as you can see, the marbled pattern still shows up just fine, which I had hoped it would do. Again, the colors are greener in real life than they appear in these onscreen photos. I am happy with this. I didn't really want them to match the dress exactly --- as they are, they'll make a nice tonal accompaniment. AND they'll look really nice with my wisteria/periwinkle Willow, for example, as well as with all the blues. Last summer, especially, I was really grooving on sage green with various blues, so I welcome this development. I think I will wear these leggings, and enjoy wearing them, a lot more in this new color than I did when the background was white. They just always felt really conspicuous, too light with whatever I was wearing them with. I think this will work a lot better.
So now both items are washing in detergent, and I'll bang them in the dryer once they're done, so the next photos will probably be the finished products, dry and ready to wear. Sierra was feeling really huge, which I do not think is a function of my body's shrinking (it isn't). So if this process shrinks her up a good bit, I will applaud. I had been thinking that if I bought another, I'd go for the regular length rather than the long. I do like the long length for belting, and have enjoyed wearing this dress that way this summer. But if I can enjoy her beltless again, that would be nice, too.
Stay tuned!
UPDATE:
Clothes are in the dryer. I'm really happy with the dark-green Sierra. I'm thinking the leggings might look a little brownish, not sure. If I decide I'm not happy with them, I could overdye them with a small amount of teal, not enough totally to change the color, just to add some bluer green to the now-existing shade --- I think that might correct the brownness, if in fact I decide that that's a problem.
But Sierra is a very dark green, somewhere between Wool&'s Pine and Forest Green, I would guess. I think I'm going to like that a lot. It will play as a good neutral, but not be quite as . . . blah? . . . as gray. It's definitely not a repeat of any color I currently own, though it's in the same neighborhood as the green cotton cardigan I recently outboxed. I hope the color looks all right on me --- that's the one big question. But I think it'll be good. It's not a loud kelly green, and it still has a gray base. Once these things come out of the dryer, we shall see what we shall see.
FINAL UPDATE:
I am thinking that the bamboo/cotton fabric just didn't take the dye that well --- really I should have used salt as a dye fixative for that kind of fabric, not vinegar. Lesson learned. I've already ordered some Rit Sage Green dye for a second round, because I've had good results with Rit on bamboo fabric before. AND I'll add salt to the dye bath next time. The outcome isn't bad, but you can tell, looking at the leggings, that the fabric just didn't hold the dye well at all. Fortunately I wasn't going to wear these leggings any time in the next six to eight weeks, so I have plenty of time to experiment and remedy! Also fortunately, dye experiments are fairly cheap.
You can maybe see here how the dye took a little bit right at the fold of the waistband, but not otherwise.
Sierra, however, by striking contrast . . .
. . . looks fabulous! Here she's a little rumpled from the dryer. Because she's still a tiny bit damp, I've taken her in and folded her over a bar of my drying rack to finish drying and let the wrinkles fall out. I definitely don't want the armholes stretching again. Anyway, I love the color. It is a rich, blue-based green that will look fantastic with everything I own, I think. I'm already envisioning how fun this green will be with my blue Nordic leggings in the winter, or my Sapphire Snag merino tights. With purples. With everything. Or just on her own, on my body in the summer. Now I think she'll feel a lot more summery, too, and less like, "Hello, it's 95F, and I'm wearing a total-body sweatshirt."
The gray seams show, but only minimally. I don't think the contrast is enough that anyone would notice.
Actually, the leggings would be nice with this dress just as they are, but I'm still going to overdye them with the sage green. It might still end up looking kind of olive, because the coloring here feels yellow-based. But it'll be greener, which is the direction I want to go.
So --- a good project overall, and one which taught me some things, chiefly that dyeing bamboo-cotton in the same lot as wool isn't a recipe for success. But I'm happy overall with the day's efforts.
Here, Sierra is still a little damp, but I went ahead and tried her on:
Not much shrinkage --- if any --- despite the hottest of hot washes and the turn in the hot dryer. She's probably had enough of that already and has given up the elasticity ghost.
I'll still prefer to wear her belted, but then I had arrived at that anyway. My double-wrap belt will look great on this green background.
I think the color will be fine for me:
Green is always a risk, but this is blue/gray based enough that it works. It's decidedly a different green from my Pacific Brooklyn, which is good. But I think it's both dark enough and non-yellow enough that it doesn't drain the color from my face.
Here are some preliminary experiments in color combinations:
Green Sierra with both my Sapphire-dyed wool items of the other day.
Green Sierra with shades of teal, plus burgundy.
Green Sierra with shades of gray: Snag microfiber Rainy Day (bottom) and Slate, which looks positively lavender against the green.
I haven't tried cardigan combinations yet, but I expect that'll be fun, too. This is an interesting shift from yes, yes, gray does go with everything to wow, these are delicious colors together. I was in the mood for the latter.
I'll probably kick off August by wearing my new green dress, but for now I'll leave her in peace to dry, while I get on with the rest of my day.