Procion MX dyes need 70° temperatures for 4 hours to set but we keep our house at 65° (brr, I know) so it’s hard to do much dyeing in the winter. At 90°F, Procion dyes set in just an hour or two so I couldn’t resist dyeing on an unusually warm April day. All I had to do was get just a little yard work done first.

One of the challeges of having Chronic Fatigue is that I don’t always know when I will run out of energy. Our yard needs a ton of work, so I have been tackling the mulching an hour at a time. That usually leaves me enough energy to eat, help kids with homework, and sometimes even write or sketch for an hour. Unfortunately by the time I got my yard work done, I was done, too.

The first mistake I made was deciding to dye, anyway. Once I am tired, I start making bad decisions.
Then, since I was dyeing, I decided to do a large batch. Then I decided to use a color I haven’t used in a while. And I didn’t look back in my notes so I didn’t remembered that my red dye hues strongly towards fuschia. (That’s mistake #4, if you are keeping track at home).
And my scale was acting up so I eyeballed measurements. And rushed each step. And then when things started to go wrong, I started mixing colors, willy-nilly. Then end result was less than satisfying. 3 mostly-wasted yards — 4 – 1/2 yard pieces and 4 fat quarters.

Not at all the colors I was going for, and far too many mauves, pinks, and purples. I felt pretty demoralized.
Working in the front bed this morning, I discovered that my favorite bush is coming into bloom and my fabrics are the colors of my lilac. So perhaps all is not lost.