A Crockpot To Dye For

Laurel, my 90 year-old neighbor is trying to clean out her house.  When I was over planning our garden seed order, she asked if I wanted an old crock pot that had been in a box of "goodies" she purchased at a local auction.  "Sure."  I figured I could use it to make a nice warm oat mash for the horses.  But its a small one and wouldn't hold enough oats.

We are in the midst of a bathroom remodel.  The kitchen, the office/wool room, and the dining room are all a disaster. So many things out of place.  On the floor in the wool room were two small bags of  washed wool that I had been wanting to dye.  The wool is short lambswool that I want to sell as crumbles.  It will be good for adding accents and color to felting projects or for cutting up and adding specks to make a tweed yarn.

So I soaked some wool in a 4-cup glass measuring cup of water and a quick squirt of dish soap for twenty minutes. Then I transferred  it into the crock pot full of water.  I added a teaspoon of dye, gave it a gentle stir, turned it on low, and walked away.  A few hours later I had dyed wool.  I kept this routine up for a week.  Sometimes I'd turn the crock pot on high, sometimes on low, and sometimes I'd forget to plug it in so I let the wool sit in the dye bath over night.  It all worked.  It was fool-proof. I dried the wool on towels.  If it was still damp the next day, I put it on top of the wood stove to finish drying. 

It was really a mess-free way to play with color in the midst of winter.  I started with my darkest purple.  After dying the first batch of wool, I was left with a weak dye bath.  Next I added blue to the dye bath so that I got a blend of the two dyes.  Then I dyed the third batch blue.,  I repeated this process over and over, resulting in a wide range of colors and more interesting colors.  Very little dye was wasted. Honestly, it wasn't messy at all.  That little crock pot on the counter was very inconspicuous sitting next to the toaster.  No one complained about mom and her big messy projects that take over the house.  Heck, the bathroom  remodel took that award. So the next time you come across a crock pot at a garage sale or auction, don't just dismiss it because you already have one.  Pick it up and go on your own dyeing adventure.