Dye job

Being a rug hooker is being a recycler. It fits very nicely with my personal philosophy of re-using and making do. There's nothing so satisfying as finding a new and unexpected use for something others would throw away.

The other day, I was reading Gene's blog about dirty salt and was inspired to try it, too.

When I mix the dye colors, I have to clean off the measuring spoons after each color. How I do it is to clean the spoon in a bag of kosher salt. Then I further clean it with a cotton swab. The bag of salt never got changed and just continued to take on the various colors. As his salt grew dirtier and dirtier, Gene was tempted to discard it. But instead, he dyed with it.

I thought: hey! I can do that, too. And I did. I used some white wool cloth that had very little texture. I scrunched the soaked wool in a casserole pan and just shook the salt mixture over it. Then I cooked it in the microwave. This is the result. I kind of like the birch tree look it has but of course that might be lost in hooking. It's also very earthy. Who knows what it's next life will be? It was fun playing, though.
Now I have to wait until I get another bag full of dirty salt. Could take a while.