Experimenting with dye

This is a technique I'm trying to copy from a web page, to get multi-colored effects that aren't tie-dye: crumple garment in a not-too-large-container, pour in one color of dye to not quite cover, then pour in a second, contrasting color. I used purple and emerald green. Wait a bit (in this case, about ten minutes), then add fixative. Wait an hour. A heaping tablespoon of each, in about a cup of warm water each. (The dye has been sitting a while, which means I may not get as vibrant colors as I otherwise would, but it's been sitting in powder form, so should be basically okay.)

At the end of the hour, rinse thoroughly in cold water to get the dye out, then wash.

I hope I've read this right; the instructions here compare to her regular dyeing recipe, and I hope I wasn't supposed to use urea (if I read it right, I wasn't).

Posting now to have some record of amounts. Will update with results.

If this works well, I will have one silk blouse and one sports bra/top in a green-and-purple non-pattern. Worst case, I write them off and dye the rest of the sports bras in just green or just purple, which is what I'll probably do with them even if this does work. I threw the sports bra in partly because the instructions suggest that cramming the fabric tightly is good, and I don't have a huge number of containers to work with here.

ETA: To a first approximation, the technique worked, in the sense that there are visible green and blue or purple areas on both garments. Once they dry, I will know whether I like them.

Red-throated loon

cattitude and I wandered outside this morning, and stepped into the park to see if the mallards were eating mulberries. In looking for that, we saw movement in the water. We stood there watching it, speculating on what it might be: a large fish? Muskrat? Turtle? Then a woman and boy came along, with field glasses, and asked what we were looking at.

They told us that our moving water was a loon. They'd seen it mentioned on the web, and come to take a look. Specifically, a red-throated loon (Gavia stellata). The boy shared his field glasses, and I lucked out and had them at the right moment, when the loon was above water. We stayed outside for a few minutes, wishing for better light (it was an overcast morning).

The sun came out about ten minutes later. We grabbed our cameras (and a set of field glasses, but I never took them out of their pouch). The light was a lot better, and the loon was spending more time above the surface. We walked around the edge of that bit of water, taking photos, a few of which came out reasonably well. I uploaded several of mine to Flickr. Here are three, cut to save your friends page.

( photos of a loon )

Red-throated loons are less common than the common loon (which we saw one of in the park 15 years ago). Also, while New York is in their winter range, the summer range doesn't normally go south of Newfoundland and Manitoba.