Dye, Dye, Dye.

So there I am, in the utility room, dyeing away. Why is it when you're up to your arms in coloured water, gloves and mask on, someone always either comes to the door or phones? Or both. Usually to offer you cheaper insurance, or a bank loan... sigh. As was the case today.

I didn't have all that much time to dye today, just as well that the made up dyes can go in the fridge and wait for Saturday. I found myself dyeing oranges and reds, having made some turquoise cloth the day before (which worked out quite nicely, as it happens, or it seems to have done, so far; some of it is in the queue for overdyeing. Reds and oranges, particularly yellows, are not my favourite colours. Well, red and yellow aren't. I use them, but I find them difficult to work with. Orange, though, I find to be energising, but not overly so. Yellow, though, seems hard and harsh to me...yet today, I find myself making up more yellow, planning to make some single coloured cloth.

I went through a phase of reading quite a bit about colour healing, the idea that colour can help us to face all sorts of different problems, physical and mental. And there are examples of that working, for instance, in Edinburgh, the police experimented with holding cells painted pale pink and pale blue. They became rather popular with the 'regular' inmates, apparently...oh, just take me to the pink cell, I'll be all right then... Personally, I admire houses with bold colour schemes, but wouldn't want to live in them. Light is really important to me, and I want it to reflect off the walls, rather than be soaked into them. Yet I work with dramatic colours, all the time.

But I do wonder about that yellow...why do I want to work with yellow???