I sometimes wing it in the dye kitchen.

Here's an example of how.

Cushing dyes come in annoying little paper envelopes, so when I’m using that brand I pop the dye powder into small bead jars and then label the tops in Sharpie. These bead jars, in turn, are kept in stackable trays.

Two weeks ago I was in the Rockland studio working on ‘Prey’ and realized I was about to run out of the hand dyed blue sparkle wool that I’m incorporating into the sky. It was a real disappointment, but I pivoted and started working on ‘Don’t Play Small’ instead. I didn’t relish the prospect of having to get into the dye kitchen in Paris to duplicate the blue I’d been working with and I knew I also didn’t have a recipe for it. At the same time, I knew that after over a decade of dyeing wool and yarn, I’d be able to match it, or at least get very close to matching it.

To be clear, I do keep some dye recipes, my own and those of generous mentors who have shared some with me. I don’t always wing it in the dye kitchen, but I will say that winging it is a frequent mode for me. As you can see from the photo below, we (by we, I mean myself and my super-skilled assistant, Heather Daggett) keep a notebook of recipes, with clipped selvedges, so that we can reproduce a color if we need to. This was especially important back when I had a more full scale retail operation going, before my level of burnout and advancing sense of memento mori led me to lean more into art and writing full time. The recipes on the page shown are in Heather’s distinctive hand. Whenever I’ve been doing a large commissioned piece I’ve also kept painstaking records of how colors were produced in case a) I needed more of it while the rug was being made and/or b) the client reached out much later with damage that needed repair.

A page from Heather’s and my handwritten dye notebook, with ‘Prey’ to one side for reference and the Cushing dye chart to the other.

(If you are anywhere near Maine and would like a beginner dye class for you and a few friends, get in touch at northatlanticfiberarts@gmail.com. Or, if you would like a Zoom workshop on beginner dyeing, let me know. My beginner class currently covers wool fabric pot dyeing, microwave dyeing, casserole dyeing, overdyeing, and also a little tutorial on dyeing wool yarn.)

As I said, in the case of my sparkly sky blue, I had no recipe. Either Heather or I had made a one of a kind dye on that wool, so it was time to reinvent the wheel. Here’s my thought process when I need to do that.