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Colour magic
Jun. 23rd, 2008 01:22 pmThe yarn we dyed this weekend is so exciting I could hardly decide which photo to post here. We experimented with a variety of different fibres: 100 per cent wool, superwash wool and nylon, wool and silk, alpaca and silk, and 100 per cent alpaca. Danny also threw in some small all-silk samples.
Then there were the dyes. Brazilwood provides a dark lavender colour when treated with a basic post-mordant (baking soda), or peachy-coral with an acid (alum and cream of tartar). Padauk, another tropical wood, gives a colour I call vermillion, though the wood particles had been used once before so we got a lighter peach colour. Saxon blue is a derivative of indigo, yielding a deep sea-blue.
Most of these fibres will be suitable for weaving, in fact some will probably be used for my first project. Louisa has offered to teach me the basics.
The pure wool is too bulky, more appropriate for knitting. It was left over from a dyeing weekend at the cottage in September 2006. I decided to show the wool here, because it had gone into almost all the dye pots, giving a nice comparison of the colours (the other photos are in the dye set on Flickr. The only exception is third from the left—the fibre in that dye lot was to be post-mordanted with baking soda, so we didn't want to contaminate the dye with wool that had received an acidic pre-mordant—the superwash wool and nylon is shown in that case.
I love colour. This is pure magic. The dyes are described from left to right, with the post-mordant in brackets.
- saxon blue (alum, cr. of tartar)
- saxon blue, second bath (alum, cr. of tartar)
- brazilwood (baking soda)
- brazilwood (alum, cr. of tartar)
- padauk (alum, cr. of tartar)
- goldenrod flowers (none)
- goldenrod flowers, second bath (none)
- beech leaves (none)
