Formulaic

 

I had a few firsts this last week. My first custom yarn order, which necessitated my first attempt at intentionally recreating a couple of colors. It's a task I had ever really considered before. The thing is, I have these color formulas I use for the low-impact synthetic dyes. I keep them written down on a few dye-stained pages in my master notebook. They're little bits of arithmetic for the colors I've come to use over and over. It's kind of like having my own personal pack of crayons, some with names I've given them myself. Names like rusty grape or broken black. But for all the times I've used them it never occurred to me to notice how close one batch has been to another. Variation is kind of built into the process. In fact I love being able to invite chaos in. The surprises generally outweigh the frustration and I know of no better way to learn something new than to just leap and take notes as I go along. Different fibers take up dyes at different rates and saturations and I have a habit of putting random combinations of fibers in the jars with each round of dyeing. So color me surprised when I got both colors I needed on the first try! I guess from now on I'll have to admit that, while I feel letting chaos into my process is essential, it's a controlled sort of chaos...with compulsory sparkles.