one handi work

Truly one handed handi work, but dyeing seems to be in for the past few weeks...knitting slightly painful but getting better, so for my upcoming birthday, sweet man, got me some lovely natural dyes in extract....so I can eventually, perhaps tomorrow, paint some skeins in multi colors...if I wasn't so pooped I'd be on that right now...so madder was in the works and the lovely deep old carpet oranges are just too much, and the batch went on and on with several layers of ever diminishing oranges...just finally having the last soak in the exhaust, because even if the color or shade is not desirable you can over dye or paint...also did some osage orange, very lovely yellows, potentially to dip in indigo, and then two batches of cochineal, one from the bugs grounds by moi. and the other an extract...so the extracts are too easy to use, feels like cheating.

In the Cochineal made from bugs I put some silk and wool skeins and after dyeing swished one skein in ammonia and water, for about a minute, and it definitely made a difference, brought the blue tones out of the red, and then did multi dyes of the cochineal, until I reached the softest pink....then with the extract it was a whole different thing...also did some roving which I would do in one step dyeing put the mordant right into the dyepot with the dye and this seems to be working fine...so much fun...even one handed, although that is getting a bit boring...
am now taking the cast off at night for a breather and arnica...tomorrow more colors, think I will do some fustic and some blending of extracts....hold me back!!!!