Monday, April 20, 2009

Spring has sprung....


Stepping out this morning my dh said it smelled like spring, and it did, finally....and we were out gathering moss, and looking for mushrooms, but this is the driest spring that I recall.. all the swampy areas are dry this year, which does not bode well.

Did a lot of eucalyptus dyeing and then realized I had quite a few semi sanguinea left over dried, so I made a pot and soaked them for a few days with straight water, somewhat high in alkali as that is what my well produces. The liquid was a lovely deep color, so I strained it then put in three skeins : l silk/wool, l cashmere, and l silk/cashmere. All three had been mordanted at the same time in alum and COT ,I put all three in at the same time, and brought up to a simmer, and turned off immediately and let sit and cool in the bath..

the results were somewhat amazing. I usually find that silk sucks up the colors quickly and deeply but this time the cashmere was the big color suck...and then the silk and wool, and silk/cashmere. Don't really know why the cashmere seemed to pick up the most orange. I don't know whether you can discern it from the photo, the middle one is the cashmere and the silk/wool, on the far side and the cashmere/silk on the near side.....quite a surprise.

1 comment:

Helen said...

I have been dyeing cashmere and silk recently and found that the silk took the dye before the cashmere which was very pale.So your results are very interesting as well as as being such lovely colours of course. Why did your Cashmere take up the colour first? Hmm I have no idea!