Cleaning Out the Dye Shed

When I look back on all the blogs I have written, there seem to be quite a few that talk about my just having cleaned up (or cleaned out) the <insert location here>.  I clean up the studio and I talk about it.  We clean out the loft and I talk about it.  I clean out the dye shed and I talk about it.  You might think this indicates that all those places are usually a mess.  You would probably be correct.

We have a group of ladies coming out here tomorrow and one of the things they have asked for is a demonstration of chemical dyeing.  We are most often asked for a demo on natural dyeing but these ladies have already had that demo somewhere else.  We are tickled to do a chemical dye demo, partly because we don't do that very often, partly because it is so much fun and partly because we have 15 pounds of yarn sitting here that needs to be dyed.

Last weekend I started on the dye shed clean out.  I decided to use the same rules Peggy and I worked under when we (mostly Peggy) cleaned out the loft this summer.  Do we really want this?  Is it still useful and useable?  How long has it been sitting here since we even thought about using it?  Does it still have all it's appropriate tags?  A huge amount of stuff did not make the cut.

I filled up several large heavy black contractor garbage bags, one of which was too heavy for me to carry to the garbage.  I intended to power wash the cement floor and the walls but after quite a few attempts, we couldn't get the power washer started, so I used a great brass nozzle on the hose and scrubbed away on the table tops and the screening underneath.  I washed all the glass jars and all the measuring cups and spoons along with all the plastic tubs.

This was on Sunday when the temperature hit 90 degrees.  It was sunny for a change and while it was hot there was a nice breeze so it wasn't bad.  By the end of the day the shed itself was nicely clean and only the dye pots and extraneous smaller plastic buckets were left to be washed.  My back was killing me but I felt very accomplished.

Early Monday morning a cold front blew through and dropped the temperatures into the 50's.  Well, crap.  I was not going out there in 50 degrees and rain to wash anything.  I managed to put off washing the dye pots till Wednesday but got them done easily.  Now it's Friday and it's time to finish off this task.