During a chilly evening at the last Sussex meet, I was briefly taunted by another member (I won't name him, because he's under 18 and German... 
) who had a wonderfully warm wool blanket. Despite my claim that I was older and thus entitled to keep it, I spent the rest of the evening shivering and muttering under my breath...
However, I survived the night and went on a quest to find a blanket of my own, possibly to make a poncho with. A quick advert on Freegle (similar to Freecycle) saw me with a big Witney wool blanket. The main problem was that it was pink and I'm not masculine enough to really carry that...
Did some research on a different thread and decided to try dyeing it a different colour. Needed a suitable container to heat it in and remembered that I'd been given a stainless 10 gallon beer barrel a few years ago that I was planning on turning into a stove but didn't. A few minutes work with various power tools left me with a sturdy bucket with built in carrying handles. Wish I had a plasma cutter as it would have made a much neater job...
Anyway, the problem remained on how to heat such a big pot. Fortunately, I had a "roarer" stove in the garage that I'd bought in India - it's basically a big kerosene pressure stove. With a few bricks, made a suitable stand and fired her up:
Barrel fitted neatly on top and was quite stable:
I'd initially tried to dye with left-over coffee grounds but I didn't have enough to make a strong enough mixture, although the piece of cotton I soaked in it came out a nice shade of tan:
I then had the "bright" idea of using the left over sloes from slow-gin making. I filtered the gin off (using tights - top tip) and blended the old berries. I put them back in some old tights to make less mess on the blanket. My thoughts were that the juice/skins should give a nice colour and the tannin in the stones would help too.
I also had a load of sloes in the freezer so bunged those in too. As the water heated up it felt very odd, but somehow satisfying, to squash all these berries inside another tight leg. Looked very much like cleaning/cooking offal but smelt much better:
I brought it all to the boil and chucked some more cotton in to see how it would turn out. Left it to cool overnight. Cotton came out like this:
After this, I put the blanket in - really looked like a barrel of guts now:
Brought to the boil and kept hot for an hour or so. Let it cool overnight again.
It's now fairly dry and doesn't look quite as pink as it did before - more of a terracotta colour. It might all wash out, though, but I'm planning on dyeing it again with oak bark in the spring:
) who had a wonderfully warm wool blanket. Despite my claim that I was older and thus entitled to keep it, I spent the rest of the evening shivering and muttering under my breath...However, I survived the night and went on a quest to find a blanket of my own, possibly to make a poncho with. A quick advert on Freegle (similar to Freecycle) saw me with a big Witney wool blanket. The main problem was that it was pink and I'm not masculine enough to really carry that...
Did some research on a different thread and decided to try dyeing it a different colour. Needed a suitable container to heat it in and remembered that I'd been given a stainless 10 gallon beer barrel a few years ago that I was planning on turning into a stove but didn't. A few minutes work with various power tools left me with a sturdy bucket with built in carrying handles. Wish I had a plasma cutter as it would have made a much neater job...
Anyway, the problem remained on how to heat such a big pot. Fortunately, I had a "roarer" stove in the garage that I'd bought in India - it's basically a big kerosene pressure stove. With a few bricks, made a suitable stand and fired her up:
Barrel fitted neatly on top and was quite stable:
I'd initially tried to dye with left-over coffee grounds but I didn't have enough to make a strong enough mixture, although the piece of cotton I soaked in it came out a nice shade of tan:
I then had the "bright" idea of using the left over sloes from slow-gin making. I filtered the gin off (using tights - top tip) and blended the old berries. I put them back in some old tights to make less mess on the blanket. My thoughts were that the juice/skins should give a nice colour and the tannin in the stones would help too.
I also had a load of sloes in the freezer so bunged those in too. As the water heated up it felt very odd, but somehow satisfying, to squash all these berries inside another tight leg. Looked very much like cleaning/cooking offal but smelt much better:
I brought it all to the boil and chucked some more cotton in to see how it would turn out. Left it to cool overnight. Cotton came out like this:
After this, I put the blanket in - really looked like a barrel of guts now:
Brought to the boil and kept hot for an hour or so. Let it cool overnight again.
It's now fairly dry and doesn't look quite as pink as it did before - more of a terracotta colour. It might all wash out, though, but I'm planning on dyeing it again with oak bark in the spring:
