Monday, September 18, 2006

Dyeing to find out if it worked!

Okay instead of spinning yesterday, I reorganized the knit stuff and looked thru patterns to find what I want to do in the coming weeks. I also messed with some more dye.

First was the kool-aid dye. I took lemon-lime and added water and a glog of vinegar in the bottom of a jar. I added some gray mohair roving and then mixed the grape kool-aid with water and vinegar and added that to the top. Here is what it looked like in the jar...

And after it had sucked all the dye out of the water and was rinsed it looked like this..

And here is the goldenrod...
Boiled, strained, alum added to dye pot, dry cormo added while still hot and left to sit all day and night. After rinsing this AM this is what I had

When I was done hanging out the goldenrod cormo, I took some of the gray mohair and added that to the left over goldenrod dye pot. This picture doesn't do it justice as the red plastic Folgers can is changing the color in the pic. It actually came out a nice green color and I like it.I would show you a pic of it when it was done but the green doesn't show up in the picture I took.

Then I did the pokeberry. I clipped the berry branches off into a pan, then boiled them. I strained it and added salt to the brew and added dry cormo roving and this is what it looked like. I let that sit all day and night and this AM I checked it and when I squeezed a little bit the roving was just slightly pink. I dyed lincoln last year and it came out gorgeous but I remember that I simmered it so I simmered this and still only got this...

Then I went and got some Hopi Red Dye Amaranth. I didn't use this last year but I replanted this year just in case. So I saw it when I walked into the garden and thought okay we are going to do something with this instead of it just taking up room in the garden. I tried calling Cyndi because she has used this before but she wasn't home so being impatient me I fudged it... I cut the flowers and stems into pieces and put them on to boil. I poured off a gallon and added alittle more water and let that boil. Then I started thinking about the alum they recommended for the goldenrod and the vinegar they recommend for the plants. So I put vinegar in the first jar and alum in the second and added the dry cormo. The left jar is the second cooking with alum and the right jar is the first cooking with vinegar. This AM they didn't look like they were accepting the color so I decided to simmer them and this is what I got with the vinegar - it ended up looking like butternut (which I liked) and with alum it ended up looking like a pale flesh color. I don't like it so we will overdye that one. I went and clipped more pokeberry and boiled that up. Tomorrow I will try to get the same color that I got last year. I think I will add the salt and vinegar this time. I guess I should have documented it but that ranks right up there with swatching!!! I guess I like banging my head into the wall!

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