My Rope!

For the most recent fetish night, I needed to come up with an outfit. (Something I need to do for every party, but this one felt kinda special.) Kapelle held his first workshop only a few weeks prior, which was all about rope. One of our friends who attended found some awesome cotton rope at Payless Plastics and I took some off of his hands, paying him back later in the week. It was a very natural color, not bleached to a bright white. This would not do for the fairy girl, liking lots of color. (I purposefully try not to wear black to munches or events *grin*) So I set out to dye my newly acquired rope.

I found this YouTube clip of the Two Knotty Boys showing how to dye your own rope. I used that as a basis for my little project.

So, here's my rope:

(Click on any picture for a larger version)

I went out to find some dye, and came home with these Dylon powder dyes, from a local emporium, suitable for hot salt water setting:

This is where the fun began. I put a pot of water on the stove, enough to allow the length of rope I was dying to be completely submerged. The specific dye I used suggested in its instrustions to dissolve the dye in 500 mL of water before adding to the pot, so I did. (Be very careful what the dye touches. I'd never used it before and didn't realise it would literally stain anything it touched!) Now, I'm all set to start!

The already dyed water went into the main pot. I added two heaping tablespoons of table salt to the water now, as opposed to what TKB say, as I was using my dye packet instructions. A good stir, and I then could feed the rope into the pot gradually.

The water needed to simmer slightly and stirring the rope every 5 minutes is needed. This is so the rope does not manage to stick itself to the bottom of the pot, burning itself. Yummy colors!!

After 20 minutes (so after the fourth stir) the element got turned off and I let the rope sit for a final 5 minutes. Then the water gets poured out and the "difficult" part is over!

That's the rope sitting in my sink! A lovely dark red, but a lot of the dye actually rinses out. Popping on some gloves, the rope got rinsed under cold water.


This is actually quite a tedious part, as you need to rinse until the water runs clear. There's a lot of dye that comes out! I stood there for a good 10 minutes rinsing, squeezing every part of the rope out to remove all the excess dye. From here, it's quite simple!

I just tossed the rope in the washing machine (with no detergent, but you can use it) and ran it on a cool cycle, double rinse and no spin. We have a front loader, so if you have an agitator you really need to put it in an old pillowcase to keep it from getting wrapped around it. You can put it in a pillowcase anyway, which will keep it from tangling in itself.

When that was done, I popped it in the dryer because I'm impatient. You can tie it up to dry, or just put it in low or no heat in the dryer. Once it's done, voila! Pretty colors of rope!

My outfit for the fetish night. All of the rope tying was done by me. After putting so much effort into my rope, I realised that I do not like sharing it. Kapelle had asked me and I balked at the very thought! I'm normally quite good at sharing my toys. But not my rope! It feels like something too personal to share. I'll gladly use it on other people (as Verva learned that night) but not for other people to use it on other people. Call me selfish ;)