Death by dying!
My plan was ambitious. It was foolhardy. It nearly broke me (or perhaps it did!)
The plan, was to create a piece of knitting, from a single strand of yarn (processed and spun by myself from wool collected from old hall community) which had been dyed 9 different ways. I was using 3 natural dyes, and 2 mordants. One natural mordant and one "chemical" mordant.
"A mordant?" I hear you ask. Let me explain. A dye is a solution of one or more chemicals which, when they bind to the thing you're dying, changes its colour. Problem is, a lot of those chemicals don't bind all that well to whatever you're dying, or they easily get knocked off from being rubbed or from light hitting it - hence things fading if left in the light. To overcome this, you can use a mordant.
A mordant is like someone who likes holding hands both with the dye, and whatever you're dying.
The two mordants I was using were 1. potassium aluminium sulfate (alum), the most commonly used chemically made mordant, and 2. Rhubarb leaves from Sarah's garden.
I discovered the rhubarb already made quite a nice colour as you can see. The alum on the other hand just left it a kind of dim blue.
the plan was to try out each die with each mordant. Any observant mathsy people at this point will be saying: "but hang on, you said 9 ways, but two mordants and 3 dyes, that's just 6 different ways of dying?" Well I couldn't keep things that simple could I? I decided I'd also leave some of the wool un-mordanted in order to answer the question - why bother mordanting?
Trying to leave my yarn as one strand did prove to become rather a logistical nightmare. I did the alum mordanting (blue pan) at the same time as my first dye - dyers chamomile, and you can see the unmordanted strand coming out of the chamomile, into two bunches - one for madder and one for logwood, before continuing round into the alum vat. The other strand emerging from the chamomile pot I decided to leave, to keep some just the colour with rhubarb. If you have really good eyes you might be able to spot some singeing on the strand winding round from the blue pot where it had been too close to the fire!
You'll also see a stick on the left. This was my stir spoon, tongs etc. Another somewhat logistical complication was trying to avoid using anything which might be used for food later. most dyes aren't deadly toxic but they're also not really something you want mixing with food. As such, weighing, sturring, straining, bottling etc, all gets more complicated when you're trying to improvise non-food items to do them with.
I reluctantly gave up on keeping a single continuous thread when I needed to rinse one lot, while keeping the other lot simmering in the pan! I also decided to label my pots "not for food", even though the weird colours left in them are hardly appetizing - you never know in a community!
These are the final two dye colours, which I had to get done quickly because I'd soaked them both, so had to use them before they went mouldy.
Little did I know my optomistic "of course I can get everything died in my evenings after work" would lead to what inspired the title of this post.
Work turned out to be the most stressful and busy week. Some my students were at a residential camping, others were doing an Alternative Curricular extravaganza. And then I realised I still had to spin up most of the rhubarbed wool.
That week, my feet didn't hit the ground, and I somewhat enjoyed the buzz rushing around getting everything done. Camping on Tuesday evening, spinning Wednesday evening, Thursday I did the madder and logwood at the same time, as you can see above,
That evening though, as I had finished rinsing the dyed wool (which had to be done differently for each dye of course - nothing simple about this game!) had bottled the excess dye, hung the wool up on the line, cleaned the kitchen and was just returning the matches to the pantry, the exhaustion hit me like a mallet.
I couldn't stop there though, as I still had to re-rinse the wool, store them in order and begin knitting them.
You can still see the madder clinging to the wool. I was supposed to strain the dye, but as I needed a second pan for that, and the other pan was being used for the other colour, I couldn't do it. I've been pulling the bits out as I knit though.
Taking it a bit slower, I've been knitting them up, and now I just have the final rhubarb mordanted madder dyed strip to finish knitting. From right to left then:
the dyers chamomile is all the yellow bits. Logwood is the brown and then two blacks, and then the madder is the orange-reds to the left.
Death by dying!
My plan was ambitious. It was foolhardy. It nearly broke me (or perhaps it did!)
The plan, was to create a piece of knitting, from a single strand of wool (processed and spun by myself of course) which had been dyed 9 different ways. I was using 3 natural dyes, and 2 mordants, one natural mordant and one "chemical" mordant.
A mordant?, I hear you say. Let me explain. A dye is a solution of one or more chemicals which, when they bind to the thing you're dying, changes its colour. Problem is, a lot of those chemicals don't bind all that well to whatever you're dying, or they easily get knocked off from being rubbed or from light hitting it - hence things fading if left in the light. To overcome this, you can use a mordant.
A mordant is like someone who likes holding hands both with the dye, and whatever you're dying.
The two mordants I was using were 1. potassium aluminium sulfate (alum), the most commonly used chemically made mordant, and 2. Rhubarb leaves from Sarah's garden.
I discovered the rhubarb already made quite a nice colour as you can see. The alum on the other hand just left it a kind of dim blue.
the plan was to try out each die with each mordant. Any observant mathsy people at this point will be saying: but hang on, two mordants and 3 dyes, that's just 6 different ways of dying. Well I couldn't keep things simple could I? I decided I'd also leave some of the wool un-mordanted to see if it was any use at all.
Trying to leave my knitting as one strand did prove to become rather a logistical nightmare. I did the alum mordanting (blue pan) at the same time as my first dye - dyers chamomile, and you can see the unmordanted strand coming out of the chamomile, into two bunches - one for madder and one for logwood, before continuing round into the alum vat. The other strand emerging from the chamomile pot I decided to leave, to keep some just the colour with rhubarb. If you have really good eyes you might be able to spot some singes on the strand winding round from the blue pot where it had been too close to the fire!
You'll also see a stick on the left this was my stir spoon. Another somewhat logistical complication was trying to avoid using anything which might be used for food later. most dyes aren't deadly toxic but they're also not really something you want mixing with food. As such, weighing, sturring, straining, bottling etc, all gets more complicated when you're trying to improvise non-food items to do them with.
I reluctantly gave up on keeping a single continuous thread when I needed to rinse one lot, while keeping the other lot simmering in the pan! I also decided to label my pots "not for food", even though the weird colours left in them are hardly appetizing - you never know in a community!
These are the final two dye colours, which I had to get done quickly because I'd soaked them both, so had to use them before they went mouldy. Little did I know my optomistic "of course I can get everything died in my evenings after work" would lead to what inspired the title of this post.
Of course work turned out to be the most stressful and busy week (some my students were at a residential camping, others were doing an Alternative Curricular extravaganza) and then I realised I still had to spin up most of the rhubarbed wool.
That week, my feet didn't hit the ground, and I somewhat enjoyed the buzz rushing around getting everything done. I did the madder and logwood at the same time, as you can see above,
That evening though, as I had finished rinsing the dyed wool (which had to be done differently for each dye of course - nothing simple about this game!) had bottled the excess dye, hung the wool up on the line, cleaned the kitchen and was just returning the matches to the pantry, the exhaustion hit me like a mallet.
I couldn't stop there though, as I still had to re-rinse the wool, store them in order and begin knitting them.
You can still see the madder clinging to the wool, as I needed a second pan to strain the dye, so doing two dyes at once prevented that step. I've been pulling the bits out as I knit though.
Taking it a bit slower, I've been knitting them up, and now I just have the final rhubarb mordanted madder dyed strip to finish knitting. From right to left then:
the dyers chamomile is all the yellow bits. Logwood is the brown and then two blacks, and then the madder is the orange-reds to the left.
Sorry for going right to left - confusing but I can't work out how to flip the image, but anyway: Curled under but you can just about see it (you can see it better above as it's the only bit I'd knitted at that point) is dyers chamomile with no mordant. It's a really lovely cream-yellow colour... for now. Next is dyers chamomile with alum - a greeny yellow, and then my favourite, dyers chamomile on rhubarb leaves, a lovely golden yellow. The rhubarb alone is the lighter bit of the stripe that goes through the brown. That brown is logwood without mordant... we'll see how that fades. the two subtly different blacks are logwood with alum and then rhubarb. The logwood was supposed to be purple, so I'm actually hoping those will fade to see if they go purpley. Finally we have madder the orange is without mordant and the patchy red is with alum. I think I had the bundle quite tight, and each bit where the wool went through the binding strand it wasn't properly died. I don't know if it's caused by imperfect mordant or dying, but interesting I didn't have the same problem with the logwood. The final strand I'm still finishing is a slightly more orange rhubarb mordanted wool.
And there we have it. Next step will be to experiment with deliberately fading the colours in various ways - light and washing, to see what happens.
And there we have it. Next step will be to experiment with deliberately fading the colours in various ways - light and washing, to see what happens.