Natural dyeing: Step by Step
at the Table Rock Llamas Fiber Art Studio
After getting my senses wet so to say at the Skein Painting with Natural Dyes class and to further my dreams of color, I took the "Natural dyeing: Step by Step" class at the "Llama store" (as we passionately call it) with instructor Donna Brown.
It took me a whole day of wanting to close my eyes afterwards to recover from all this color. I think there is definitely something like a color overload for your eyes and brain, fine motor functions may cease the next day which results in dropping stuff like keys, wool samples, things and one might get thrown out of a wool store pending more destruction due to your presence ;) But here we go, this is how we made our sample skeins of COLOR:
All prepared for us were pre_mordanted mini skeins (15g) of wool (left) and silk (right). These work very well for sampling color, one gets enough of a "chunk" to appreciate what it really looks like. Like a color card that had too many protein shakes, thick and substantial! Not a little thread hanging down from a sorry cardboard. These looks good, all labelled for the silk_wool impaired and pretty untangled so far. Oh we did make a wonderful mess of the silk skeins, they stick and tangle wonderfully with each other.
And this is how the little skeins look dry. They come in bunches of 5 skeins together, so that's why these are so fat. Sorry about the no contrast whatsoever shot, I obviously wasn't looking.Silk bundle un top, wool bundle on the bottom.
Right into the action! Colors were mixed up in yoghurt containers, then filled into these very handy stainless steel kitchen tool containers, filled halfway or so with hot water and into the roaster oven on set to about 375 degrees F. Six of them fit into the waterbath, see the neat index cards in front that show what is what and where. The little wet skeins were set into the color baths, stirred gently. If you don't stir it up a bit (we used chopsticks) then the color can get blotchy on the skein depending on how fast the yarn will take the color. Our handout described if colors are slow, medium or fast, so that gives a general idea of how long one should leave the skeins in the dyebath. A fresh colorbath looks somewhat opaque, you can see that there is material in the water, like a hummingbird sugar solution gone bad. If you lift out the skeins and let the dye solution drip, if it looks all clear (but still with color, like a fresh hummingbird feed) it is pretty much used up. (no I don't use the red dye in my hummer feeders, but some people do, you'll know what I mean).
After their dye bath, skeins are taken out and can be washed/rinsed with water. If its a "muddy" color that leaves material, you can use some gentle soap to wash it, all color on the wool/silk should be set due to the heat in the dye bath. Then skeins were hung outside to dry. Skeins of one color were always accompanied by their identifying index card, so that nothing got mixed up. Clean those stainless steel pots so that any dye residue (like that ring that milk leaves in your pot after you cook it) doesn't contaminate the next color that you use in the same container.
This image clearly shows the dyer with two left hands.... how about those gloves eh? No wonder I was nearly color blind after the class :)
We are looking at two versions of cochineal dyed wools, the darker one had acid added (read index card). You can also see one of those highly efficient yoghurt containers for mixing the color and the little yardsale strainer that was used to strain color into the dye bath to avoid particles.
Aha, here you can see a large pot with black beans cooking - no, its actually walnut color. You can see how after pouring the dye solution through the strainer there is some guck left and it was a good thing Donna used the strainer for it. The color of those gloves is just killing me ;)
There are many uses for sheer stockings and this has got to be one of the more important ones: put your fuzzy dye into it so that it doesn't make your dyebath all yucky. Dyes that will leave too many little intensly staining grains if left to their own can be knotted into a stocking to contain them in the dye bath. After knotting that stocking the teacher gave each of us one color to melk. You just knead the stocking/dye blimp with your hands in the warm water until its all kneaded up. I spare you the details of this process, just know that its a very sensual thing to do ;)
Meanwhile, more and more little skeins join on the clothes line, get a load of that blue sky, highly unusual for this area, we only get about 300 days of sunshine in the year, so I think we really lucked out on this day ;) Just kidding, I think for the dyer, this mountain climate could not be any better, so dry that nothing really ever molds or rots and things dry very quickly. All that sunshine helps moods be at their prettiest....
At the end of the day, skeining up the pretties. There were a lot of colors, a lot of skeins and we got to label them and then TAKE THEM HOME!!
Some, but not all of my sample skeins! The upper ones are silk, the lower ones are wool. Hard to tell in this picture, but the nature of silk makes the colors appear more brilliant, more intense, often darker than their wool complement. Now you are not surprised I had a color overload, are you?
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