Tuesday, September 19, 2006

More dye jobs to document

So I know what I did next year I will write this out. I will of course not add measurements as I never measure, but at least I have the general idea of how I got what I got.

I redid the pokeberry dye. I clipped the berry branches into a steamer about 3/4 full. I added about 3 inches of water and put them on the side burner of the grill. I let them cook for about 20 minutes on low. I let them sit overnight. This AM I strained it, added some salt and a glug of vinegar. Then I added some white cormo wool, the fleshy color from yesterday, and some gray mohair roving. I put that on the burner on low and left the lid off for about 30 minutes. I let it cool down and then put on some gloves and rinsed it. And this is what I got...
The white is on the left, fleshy in the middle and the gray on the right. I love the way the gray came out. I took more gray roving, wrapped it from my hand to my elbow and put the one end in the pot to soak and left the other end out. Tomorrow I will see what it looks like and maybe simmer it for a bit to add more color if needed.
Then I was still in dye mode so I took some of the gray mohair and used food coloring...
I love the results. This picture makes it look real bright and it isn't. It came out teal, green, bronze metallic-y looking. The man says it looks like chrome illusion paint for cars. I said it looks like oil on the road when it has just rained. Whatever you want to call it I will try to make more of this.

Now I guess I should get spinning some of this. I finally realized I had more than one bobbin even though they sit right in front of me so now I have no excuse. In knitting news I finished one of the sideways gloves. Hopefully I can finish the other tonight.

1 comment:

finnsheep said...

Very, very neat! I've never tried poke berry, but maybe I will give it a try. I love the colors over the grey!