Who needs the gym?! Snowzilla day +4

The third and probably final round of snow-dyes went into the washing machine this morning. This group was all double snow-dyed, and only 9 pieces, 6-7 of which were 4 yards long. Then it was time to clean the floor. I use an old garden sprinkler can that holds three gallons or so. The screens get rinsed along with the floor under them, then it's squeegee time. More sprinkling, more squeegee, then the mop. That big string mop is a seriously good core muscle workout, with shoulders and triceps thrown in for good measure. Moving the sprinkle can and the occasional 5-gallon bucket of water helps keep up my strength too!
On my last post I mentioned that I turn the water heater up to get 140 degree washout temperatures. Well, the furnace guy is coming tomorrow to put in a new aquastat. The current one can't answer "how high is up?" Right now it's set at 90 and the pure hot tap water measures 124. When it gets too hot the pressure relief valve does its job - maybe a little too well! The picture below shows the cloud of steam in the cellar when that happens. So I didn't need the sprinkler can after all. The floor got a good, really hot wash.
Now, for your free moment of dye education: to wash out Procion MX type dyes, you really need water at 140 F / 60 C plus detergent. The very hot water breaks any partially bonded dye; the MX dyes are called fiber reactive because the dye molecules bond to the cellulose molecules.
That brings me to the free gift for signing up for my newsletter: instructions on washing out fabric dyed with MX. You can click the link in the upper right corner of this blog, or click here to sign up. I'll send you that PDF - and right now a real human still sends it, not a machine. Thanks!

P.S. I hope to post photos of some of the snow-dyes, but they must be washed and ironed first.