I'll leave you with some photos of indigo dyeing I've been doing this week - I had a really good bath going and the colour is really rich!
On the far left is my Welsh sock wool, I've already hanked that into individual 50g's (it come in 500g hanks) then there's the embroidery wool - lovely and fine and finally some beautiful lace weight alpaca silk. I will have some of it at the Ravelry Day in Coventry next weekend.
Following on from an earlier post - having dyed the blues and then hanked up the Welsh I thought I'd better take a photo of my hand - just to see how much rub off there is - so here you are: 
I can't say my hand is spotless, but I can say that the colour is ingrained, not just come off the hank! I always run the thread through my left hand whilst winding off - so that's 500g - there would be a stripe of blue across the fingers and palm if there had been any problems!
The method I use when dyeing indigotin blues is my own combination of various people's - principally J Liles and M Whipplinger, with a little help from Ethel Mairet. I make a concentrate and then make up the dyebath, I do lots of blue from 1 bath - keep it going all day and do blues first and then overdyeing afterwards (greens and purples). The main dyebath has probably been on the go for about 12 months and just gets topped up with concentrate as and when I feel it needs it. I can't bear to throw any away, so I even save drips and pour them back after I've finished for the day. I only ever use natural indigo - there is no synthetic in my house, I will sometimes make up a woad bath if there is a specific reason to do so, but generally I use indigo.
I'm now going to head for bed - I'll tell you what I think of cruising on the Shannon - Erne waterways when I get back!
2 comments:
What a beautiful dark blue color! I love all the indigo shades, they always remind me of the sea.
Thank you! Yes indigo does give the best blues doesn't it! Helen Melvin called her Indigo booklet "the colour of sea and sky" which is very apt!
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