Saturday, April 04, 2009

Dyeing with cochineal

I've been busy preparing myself for the April OLG workshop given by Debbie Bamford. Roots, woods and bugs: working with red dyes.
I've been making lots of small skeins in the last few weeks so that I can do different experiments with the red dyes. Yesterday part of the skeins were cleaned and mordanted.
At the moment my first colour is on the stove: cochineal.
I have to wait until the dye is cooled down so that I can add the skeins to the dye bath. I'm doing 2 dye baths as I have grey Shetland wool and white wool to dye. When I cleaned the grey, the water stayed very dirty (and that was only soaking in water stage) but I did get clearer rinsing water after I had cleaned the yarn with soapy water. I opted for separate dye baths as I do not want to risk that the grey will affect the white wool. Later tonight, the grey wool will go in and I will do the dye bath for the white wool tomorrow. I will post some photos when I have my first results.

No comments:

Post a Comment