Dyeing in Fire Season

     At the end of last year, my inventory looked like a plague of locusts had attacked it. In a way, it had: it was a very successful season. I checked things last week and my entire inventory is:

• 3 towels
• 2 washcloths
• 5 placemats
• 1 handspun, handknit scarf
• 8 skeins of handpainted and hand-dyed yarns

That small an inventory is enough to keep me from setting up the "shop" (my booth) at craft fairs and marketplaces this year. It also means I need to do a lot of work to have a decent inventory for next year.

     Top of the list was dyeing more skeins. I need the relative humidity to be low enough for the yarns to dry quickly, and warm enough to suit working outside in the dye yard. In California, this means dyeing in the fall, right before the winter rains start.

     Unfortunately, fall is also fire season. Fire season doesn't bother me. I grew up in what we now call the "Wildland-Urban Interface--we used to call it "the sticks"--and fall usually includes days of the powerful northeast winds known as "Santa Anas," "Sundowners," or "Diablos," depending on where in California you live. The winds blow, the fires burn the vegetation off the hills, and you try to stay out of the way.

     This year's fire season in Northern California is turning out to be more than a little frenetic. It doesn't help that a lot of the people living up here aren't familiar with fire ecology. It doesn't help that the local climate is becoming warmer and dryer. It doesn't help that pine bark beetles and sudden oak death have decimated the forests. And it doesn't help that the monopoly with a stranglehold on our utilities--Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)--hasn't been able to figure out how to manage their aging infrastucture. 

   

A rainbow of handpainted
sock yarns.

Last week started well, and by the middle of last week, I had a rainbow of handpainted skeins of sock yarn. Dyeing those skeins gave me a chance to use up a big bunch of already mixed dyes. 

     The weather continued to hold so, in spite of a forecast for wind, I started madder and brazilwood dyepots. Natural dyeing takes a lot more work, and madder is tricky--it takes several days to prepare the dye liquor, and temperature has to be monitored to get good color. The pots would be ready for dyeing on Sunday (normally a "work" day for me). By Saturday afternoon, everything was on track for a dye day, with yarns in mordant pots and tools at the ready. My cell phone kept chirping every couple hours with messages from PG&E about potential pre-emptive power outages, but every time I got one, I checked our address and we were in the clear. That wasn't surprising--I'm in the middle of an urban area, and not anywhere near a canyon that can funnel winds. 

     Everything changed at 3:40 p.m., when the City declared a Water Emergency and immediately instituted mandatory water rationing. Wait! What?? It turned out that the Water Department never bothered to install back-up generators for their pump stations, so the only water available was what was in the water tanks. Twenty minutes later, PG&E and the Solano County Office of Emergency Services sent out messages that the power would be shut off, beginning at 6 p.m. I ran around the house, positioning emergency flashlights, cooking an early dinner, and worrying about that madder pot. Six o'clock came and went, and the power stayed on.

My hard-won naturally dyed skeins. From left to
right, madder; brazilwood; onionskins; coreopsis.

     The wind woke me up about 5 a.m.: sustained 20 mph, with gusts above 30 mph. No matter--that madder pot was ready to go, and it was going to go no matter what. I got the yarns in and dyed, pulled the pot from the fire, and left it to cool. Everything else was left for the next day, when the water was turned back on and rationing ended. Monday was smoky but less windy, so I was able to finish dyeing the onionskin and coreopsis skeins. 

     The yarns are done, but I really need to re-examine when I do my dyeing. Our power never did go out, and we were never in any sort of danger, but I don't like being left "high and dry," without a reliable water source. The yarns don't dry as quickly during our foggy summer months, but at least the power stays on and water comes out of the taps.