Stitches-Studio

Rusty Madder etc

May 3, 2012 By Victoria Leave a Comment

Finally got round to dyeing a batch of yarn that has been sitting forlorn and waiting for me to find time, the most rare commodity of all these days. After bouts of the plague hit the family, overseas visitors came etc., etc., I finally got around my pots out and set to work. I have to say I am very happy with the results. I used Madder for the first time and I also used some Pomegranate and Cochineal. This time I added Cream of Tarter to the alum mordant. I read that this softens the wool and can push the cochineal towards a more pink or red.

Here’s the cochineal: a lovely bright pink! As well as the Cream of Tartar, I used a slightly less concentrated dye bath. I used an alpaca lace weight from Pollika (gorgeous and soft), on the left, and a Briggs and Little pure wool 4ply. The Briggs and Little looks textured in the picture and feels quite rough to touch. There is a considerable price difference between these yarns.

The madder and pomegrante produces some lovely shades from brick red, through orange, to yellow.

On the left is another Pollika wool in a worsted weight. The right 3 yarns are the Briggs and Little. The 2 left skeins were dyed with a bath of Madder at about 100% weight of fibre (wof). I added a Tums to the Madder because this pushes it towards a more brick red. I think I made the dye bath a bit to concentrated per wof and maybe could have gone with 60%. I’ll try that next time. The yarn contained particles of dye that I had to rinse forever to get out of the skeins. I will still have to do another rinse. The yellow yarn is pomegranate. And the yarn on the right is pomegranate over-dyed with Madder. The Madder produced a lovely brick red and I love this blend of ‘rusty’ shades.

Here’s the whole batch. I am quite excited about these shades and because I didn’t do anything fancy or tricky, I am confident that I can reproduce them again. I am going to use the Briggs and Little for a felted project, perhaps a small bag or purse. This will be something I can put into a kit. I think striping or colourwork is going to work really well.

The Cowichan Sweater

April 21, 2012 By helen Leave a Comment

Spring colours

April 16, 2012 By helen 1 Comment

Logwood chips and the colours of bean, cochineal and brazilwood dyed wool yarn

I’ve had so much fun this weekend in the dye studio.

I’m trying to get just the right shades for my spring beret. To begin with I had another round with Brazilwood, using a range of different yarns. All the reds and pinks here are from the same Brazilwood dye bath, except the very pale pink in the top row, which is from Cochineal.

The blues are made with black bean. What do you think of those three fat skeins on the top row? Those are the ones I’m planning to use for the fair isle beret. But I wanted another strong, contrasting colour to complete the design.

I remembered Victoria’s intense purple results with Logwood and thought that would be go beautifully with my other colours. I made a fairly intense dye bath and went for it with my various types of yarn…I was not disappointed:

The deep purple in the foreground is the final colour for my hat! Now to write up the pattern and test the kit…

I had a lot of dye left after I’d done my intended skeins. I thought I’d play around and make a variegated skein of sock wool by making half of it damp and just dipping one section in the dye. The dye ‘wicks’ naturally up the skein as it dangles in the dye bath, giving a gradual variation from warm honey brown (the original colour of my sock wool achieved with previous hibiscus and onion baths) and the deep purple/brown from the logwood dip. Yummy!