Blue Brew

I brewed up a dye pot this morning. The yarn has been hanging around for a long time. I initially painted the wool with earth palette dyes on a hot day.  Today it's wintry and landscape dyes on the stove were the order of the day. Both colours were called "sky", but evidently they weren't the same. That's just fine.

I'll be interested to see how the different colour distributions turn out when they're knitted up. I don't have a definite plan, but I have 600 grams. I'm wondering about a blanket with perhaps some navy wool to finish it off.

Stage 1--Success

Here's how my hand-dyed cottons look this morning:I've given them an initial rinse and answered my first and most important question. The dyes are great! I've achieved strong, consistent colour in all my samples. They're no apparent difference between the fabrics I rinsed out yesterday evening and the ones I left overnight. That answers my second question--whether they need extra time to react. They don't. Now I get a chance to play. It won't be today because I have the Northcote Makers' Market starting in a few hours. But I can relax about having the dyes I need for next week's workshop.

Here's the Colour

The cottons haven't made it to the sink yet. They're still "batching" and since it's a coldish day, I'll give them a good while, maybe even overnight.

Meanwhile, here's a picture of my lab:

And here's one lot of colour:

Since then I've added a second piece of fabric to each jar. I have another set of primary colours in plastic bags.

I'm using my oldest dyes. I've got a date of 21 November 2005 written on the jars. So they would have every right to have lost some of their reactivity. I have another set of primary colours that I bought a couple of years ago. If the result from this batch is disappointing, I'll try those next. Since I'm really just testing the dyes at this stage, I haven't done any colour mixing. Stay tuned for some results.

By the way, for once in my life I didn't manage to spill anything, so I took a bit of each colour and smeared it onto the bamboo test piece. I waited for 10 minutes before wiping it off. There's no colour left on the sample. That's the happiest negative result I've had for a while--unless I find that the dyes have lost all their reactivity, which I doubt.

Catching Up

This bottle of dye has been taking up space in my fridge for more than a month. It's the leftover from my "cold pad batch" of the January heat wave. I dyed four balls of lambswool at the time and had two balls left. I'm not expecting any more heat waves this season. Thankfully the weather has changed and we're in for a run of days in the mid-twenties. But I really don't want dye hanging around in my fridge until next summer. So, while my friend Anna was here yesterday afternoon, I skeined up the last couple of balls of wool, added the dye and left them to do their thing. Meanwhile Anna was figuring out her new camera, so we got this shot of the dye bottle ready for action.

Part of the beauty of this type of dye is that it's so forgiving. On a hot day, it will be ready to wash out sooner, in cold weather I can just leave it for a few days until it's ready. So I got to catch up with a friend and catch up with some of my dyeing. That's two less balls of wool floating around on my table waiting to be dealt with, and good company for the afternoon.

Hot, Hot, Hot!

It's too hot to think, let alone spin or knit!

I've arrived back in Melbourne to a "one in a hundred year" heat wave, as the taxi driver who picked me up at the airport was quick to inform me. His thermostat/ airconditioner thingy said it was 49.5 degrees outside when I got into the car. That dropped to 45 when we got moving. And it felt like it too. The taxi driver was very interested in the idea of my spinning wool and silk, but as I told him, the only thing I would consider doing in this heat is some "cold" water dyeing. I do still have some of the Earth Pallette dye--sky blue- in the fridge and some wool ready skeined. At least I will have no concerns about the colour not developing over the next few days!

On My Spinning Wheel

Here's a pic of the fibre I'm currently spinning.
Above, you can see the fibre as it comes out of the bag from the back room at Bendigo Woollen Mills and on the bobbin is how it looks when it's been spun and plied up. Below is how it looks spun on the bobbin, before I get to plying it.

It was an impulse buy a couple of years ago, and it's been on my mind. So I decided to just start spinning it. One thing about spinning is I get plenty of time to think and get to know the fibre as it passes through my fingers!

I've been thinking a lot about newsprint--I did a couple of papier mache projects last year and am wondering about how the marle texture would look in a garment just as is. Of course I'm also thinking about how it would go in a dyepot because only the white fibre would pick up the colour--that's an exciting thought. Of course "nowadays" newsprint isn't just black and white as it was when I was a girl:) so I could do both.

And then this bag has an alpaca-wool blend roving cousin stashed in a box under my bed, so putting the two in the same dye-pot could be fun--two closely related but different colour combinations.

Yesterday the temperature got up to 40--that's Celcius for those of you who speak a different temperature language, let's just say several degrees above human body temperature! So it was definitely not a day for spinning. Today the forecast is for 29--still not great for spinning. Sweaty hands and spinning are not a great combination. So I think I'll do some cold-water dyeing today. I have a few balls of cotton that need a colour lift. I suspect by lunch-time I'll need a cold water lift. Win-Win!