Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Sunny afternoon at work

One of the great things about running a cottage industry is that you get to do all kinds of new and interesting jobs - usually when you could be out enjoying yourself on a glorious late winter day.

My Lureweave meshes used to arrive all nice and green only requiring popping in a padded envelope and posting out to eager customers. That was until a batch turned up white.


I dyed some up using the washing machine, with reasonable, if a little pale and inconsistent, success. Then when I last went to get my usual dye from the local DIY store I found it had been discontinued. I bought what they had and the results were rather on the pastel side. Not very macho.

A phone call to the netman got me the advice I was after and now I'm kitted up to do a better job. With a consignment of meshes arriving yesterday afternoon and the sun shining today I fired the boiler up, calculated the dye requirements and set to work.


You'd expect that if you keep using the same dye-filled water that the outcome would be progressively paler. It didn't work that way. The second lot that went in came out darker than the first. The third lot was lighter but not as pale as the first. No two batches have been the same. However, they are all acceptable.


As soon as they are all dried they'll be available in my webshop.