Phew - it took over 2 hours to come to a simmer, then 50 mins to absorb all the colour, so it was 1/4 to 2 before I left it all to cool overnight and staggered off to bed. Today I have washed and rinsed it all. Outside temp has stayed well below freezing all day so I can't dry it outside, and it's now all layed out flat on a sweater mesh to dry. In its wet state it looks a bit uneven - never mind. Will try to get a pic.
It is such fun - not so much this plain pot dyeing, but multi-coloured efforts done in the oven are my favourite. I think I will do my 'heather hillside' again, maybe with the shetland yarn. When I did it before I dunked 2/3rds of a skein, hanging from a wooden spoon over the top of the pot, so that 1/3rd was left undyed, into a light purple bath. Then I turned it round and again dunked 2/3rds in a med green bath. Where the two colours crossed came out as a dark purple and dark green, and it knitted up into a patchy hillside with heather look. This time I will do it in the oven with smaller lengths of each colour ie shorter repeats.
There's another one with deep turqoise and green, which made a deep electric blue where it crossed, to represent a pre-thunderstorm sky. Great fun.
A bonus from digging out the baby Burco was that it had inside it the bag of onion skins I had collected a few years ago. I thought my OH had chucked it out, but it turns out he had carefully stashed it for me
So now I have two bags of onion skins.......I must decide what to dye with that.
I also looked out my old dyeing notes which will be very helpful. I had done all sorts of test bits with different concentrations and mixes of dyes to give a wide range of colours, and have kept all the paper and notes.
(I also found my dolly fleece which isn't as grotty as I thought. There are definitely some saveable bits
)
I think I've got the bug again