Saturday, July 21, 2007

Magical weekend

A few magical events this weekend




Chromo mudança




Okay it wasn't quite that easy.
Last fall I collected the berries (sloes) from my blackthorn tree (Prunus spinosa) and have kept them in the freezer.
Last weekend I made a dye bath -using 230 g sloe and left to cool overnight before filtering

Yarn was mordanted (Copper Sulfate)


Yarn was dyed.

I premordanted 2x 114g skeins with 28 g CuSO4, and only dyed one skein so I can use another type of dye with the other skein. I am not overly enamored with this colour, while I was preparing the dye bath I thought I would end up with a more greenish colour. When I removed the skein from the heat I thought it was going to be a walnut brown.

However, after all the rinsing and the yarn is now mostly dry it is more of a khaki colour. I'll have to think carefully what I am going to make with it since it is not a colour I normally wear.
A question to throw out there. Before the yarn went into the water, the strands seemed balanced (not sure if that is the correct word or not). After all the dyeing the yarn seems to have to much twist to it and is twisted back on itself. You can see the difference between the two skeins above. Is this a normal process? Is it just going to be a pain in the ass to knit with or can I correct it somehow. Can I prevent this from occurring in the future? Is this just because I used magic improperly.

The other part of the magical weekend...


Ali and I both finished reading it this weekend. Ali picked it up Friday night and finished early Sunday morning - I finished it at about 2pm this afternoon. Ali blogged about some of his thoughts while reading it (starts here). I won't discuss it anymore as I realize that most people didn't read the entire book this weekend.

3 comments:

Wily Jeneric said...

Did you weight the yarn as it dried? If not, it will kink. The yarn is balanced, but needed some weight to help set the twist. Try wetting the yarn again and attach a bag of coins or something to it - should correct the problem.

Also, don't forget you can overdye to reach a color you prefer. Are you keeping good notes so you can avoid this color in the future (if that is your desire)? That's the tricky part of dying - keeping track of what you've done!

Thanks for the heads up on Ali's blog. I will refrain from reading it until I have completed the book. Wish I could read straight through, but I've got some thesis editing to finish!

Teresa said...

I didn't weight it. When it was almost dry I thought maybe I should have done that. It is still damp in places so I'll do that.

I have thought of overdying and thought about that before I began. I do have a good set of notes on the process so I will avoid it.

Ali's blog about the HP book is done by chapters (some entries are several chapters) and the chapter numbers are in the title of the blog.

Wily Jeneric said...

Finished the book last night. Just left an extensive comment over on Ali's blog. Perhaps we can have our US/Canadian HP discussion over there? 'Cause there's lots to discuss.

Yep, yep. I think weighting is the solution. I've been pondering overdye colors and since you need to go darker, I'm thinking a purple or perhaps a dark green. How to get those colors, I don't know (yes, you can use pokeweed berries to get a rich purple, but I believe it's photo sensitive and fades quite quickly).