So on the Saturday after the book launch, I decided I deserved a little break, and signed up for an indigo class at a local fiber studio.  I was super excited, and I’ve always been the advance prep sort, so I decided I’d snag some napkins and do a bit of work ahead of time (as always, amazon links are affiliate links).

I went, I dyed, and…eh.  I don’t know if it was because I was tired from the launch or because it was hot or something else, but I wasn’t all that thrilled with the results.  The color was super light, and the patterns were not distinct, and I just didn’t care for it.  So I decided to fix it.  I bought an indigo kit, dragged some buckets out of the garage, and got to work.

I mixed up the dye and left it to sit.

I tied up the napkins again (rubber bands people, you need lots and lots and lots of rubber bands) and tossed them in some water to soak.

Then I oh so gently nestled the napkins into the dye.  It looked inky and dark when they went in.

But after just a moment it cleared up and went bright, celery green.

I let it sit for a while (cough, overnight, but some lovely folks online have told me that was unnecessary and a few minutes would do just as well) then pulled everything to get some air (and watch the show as they went from green to blue in the space of a moment or two).

Back in the bucket for a second dip (I was fascinated to see the bits that had turned a lovely blue in the air went back to green, albeit darker green, once they were in the dye again).

Then out again for another battle with the air (I left them out for a good long time, like an hour, to make sure the bound up bits got air too).

I did this for a total of four dip/air cycles.  By that time, they’d stopped turning green when they went back in the dye, and the dye itself looked blue instead of green too, so I decided I’d likely gotten as much out of it as I could.

I hosed the ever living crap out of them while they were still bundled up (here’s where I say seriously nice things about having a pressure washer…forget cleaning the fence, this is much more fun), left them in the sun for a few hours to get mostly dry, then snipped the rubber bands.  And that’s where we’ll pick up next time!