Friday, February 04, 2011

Yellow & Blue Don’t Always Make Green

Yesterday my Spectrum Study Group came over and we played with some more yellows. I had saved the leftover coreopsis and osage baths from last month in buckets in my cold room under the front stairs. It’s nearly as cold as a refrigerator this time of year so there was only a tiny bit of mould. The osage was pretty pale so I simmered it for about another hour (it already had 3 hours last month!) and got yet more colour out of the sawdust. The coreopsis only needed the flowers removed and reheating. There was still lots of colour left in it! I also did a 4-part extraction of about 500g of my frozen marigolds. Mordants used were aluminum sulphate or aluminum acetate. We didn’t use any modifiers at all this time and the yarns were everything from wool boucle to fine silk and tencel/cotton. The colours we got were glorious!

Yellows

The oranges and peaches are from the coreopsis – actually the third and fourth dyebaths from those well-used flowers. They are much clearer colours than we got last time. The light bright yellows are from the osage exhaust and the chartreuse and lime colours are from the marigold pot. We only got one exhaust bath from that and the colours were slightly less greenish than the first bath. They are all so beautiful! Amazing to me how every single different yarn came out a different colour from the same bath. Eight people contributed skeins and each did their own scouring and mordanting so that might add to the variations we got. I consider this dye day a big success even if I didn’t have any of my own yarns in the pot. I was kept very busy anyhow! And it’s back here again next time for browns.

My dear friend loved her Annis du Pastel shawlette. I don’t give a lot of gifts so I like them to be good ones and if they are a complete surprise - even better! Here’s Debbie Double modeling for you:

Annis du Pastel

Another more pensive look out the window:

Annis du Pastel2

And a detail shot:

Annis du Pastel_det

When I washed it quite a lot of woad came off and it’s now a couple of shades lighter than it was. No more crocking though. And still very pretty blue. Most of the details are in my last post so I won’t repost them here. It only took me 4 days to finish it, not counting the day it took to block dry! I was a bit disappointed that the top edge still curls a lot but that also might be because of the curved shape. It just naturally wants to straighten out under its own weight and when it can’t, it coils. I think I need to make it again with a different yarn.

I also finished the socks for my niece and they are currently drying on the bathroom counter. (I’ll get a pic when they’re dry to show you.) Just in time to present them to her when I see her tomorrow! A contingent of the family is heading up to Gibsons to help celebrate with yet another auntie who has reached the grand old age of 90. I’ve already shown you her shawl. I’m all about the pressies these days, aren’t I?

Speaking of which, I’m using the leftovers from Ali’s socks and started on a third pair for baby Rosebud. She needs lots of socks that will actually fit over her cast. Eventually she’s going to need them to wear in her boots-and-bar system. They’ll hopefully get a lot of use before she grows out of them.

Gotta go check on my baby plants. Quite a number of them are up now including the woad. Weld is still not in evidence but then I knew they were slow. I didn’t cover them this time which I hope will help. More anon.

4 comments:

Heather said...

Fabulous colours - very exciting! I am hoping to get some dyeing done next week. And the shawlette is lovely and a truly thoughtful and caring gift.

Louisa said...

Isn't dyeing fun?! I was amazed that we got so much colour out of about 500g of dried coreopsis flowers. I think the total is somewhere around 1.4 kilos of yarn dyed (though we didn't keep a very careful count)! The very last exhaust was a lovely light peach. I have more flowers in my stash too.

deborahbee said...

I have just fallen over your blog and love it. Reminds me a bit of me with so many fibre things going on. I am a beginner dyer so I was fascinated by your experiments with yellow....and definately identified with buckets under the stairs. I will visit again

Louisa said...

Welcome to the Pond, deborahbee! Hope you find some babblings of interest to you here. Glad you commented!