Problem Water

I have a commission I'm working on at the moment - I was hoping to be putting a lovely report here about it, however instead I am reporting a problem that at the moment I haven't a clue how to deal with!

I need to use cochineal to get the shade of red I'm looking for, I know it doesn't like hard water - but even with soft water in N Wales I had got into the habit of starting with de - ionised water, then adding that to the main bath.

I started sampling for this commission when I was still in Wales, so the colour I have to match was dyed there - I have already done some cochineal dyeing with the hard water we have here - so know I can get good red! The photo shows some wool I dyed just a few weeks ago, although I wasn't trying to colour match with this particular hank!

So to my problem! Last week the water went off - the whole village  was turned off and no one had any water coming into their house for about an hour. After it had been turned back on a note came round from the Commune to say that we must not drink the water, couldn't even use it to clean our teeth. It must be treated with "Javel" (bleach) at a certain percentage before consumption. This state lasted for a few days and then a couple of days ago we got the all clear. I have been doing my preparation work over the past few days - the scouring, mordanting and rinsing. Now I'm not sure if even the mordanting has worked properly. 

 The cochineal itself I did my usual method of soaking out in de ionised water, heated to boiling and then allowed to cool, I wanted as much colour as possible from this dyebath! The colour at this point looks rich and red, seems a good colour to me!

Yesterday I filled the big dyebath with tap water and then added in the cochineal. Horror - the bath went black! Then the cochineal precipitated out, I've never seen anything like it! It's horrid! It smells like a cochineal bath, but there the similarity ends!

This morning it looked gloupy and thick and black! I took a small amount out into a pan and added a small hank of wool and a small piece of cotton ribbon, heated them to boiling to see if there was any "dyeing" power in the bath at all - this is the result. A bit of "purple" maybe but I'm not a happy bunny! I wonder if they could have added more bleach - in the form of ammonia,  rather than chlorine but I really have no idea what they have done to my water!!!

I have now made lots of small hanks of the same wool but from some I had mordanted before, so I can do some experimenting! I will wet out in de - ionised water and then try making a small dyebath with filtered water, try other dyestuffs with the tap water - try anything to make it work!

 It's not good for a dyer to have problems with the water like this!

A good Red

With everything that is going on at the moment the last thing I would have expected is a new commission! The photo shows the current state of my workshop - I am in the throes of packing everything down ready for the move - hence the even more cluttered than normal appearance - how on earth am I supposed to work in this state?

I needed to produce a good red - in fact replicate a colour I produced back in 2006. My notes could at the moment be anywhere - so I had to rely on educated guesswork!

I have used cochineal and brazilwood, as with my soft water I am more likely to get the correct colour tones from those dyes. I tried cochineal two different ways - firstly the whole bugs and then straining them out and heating them several times to extract as much colour as possible. The second method I used I ground the bugs up first, as finely as I could and then soaked them overnight. I have got some fabulous colours, the photo I've taken is not showing them to their best advantage but they are really rich and deep!

I did have a lightbulb moment whilst doing this work - funny how things hit you really! There is often talk about how much colour rinses out when dyeing with cochineal and after I had completed the first hank - dyed with the liquid from the whole bugs, I was surprised to see how little colour came out in the rinse water - this photo is the first rinse honest!

When I did the second hank in the ground cochineal there was lots of colour coming out - I was stunned, then I looked at the side of the washing up bowl after I'd tipped the liquid away, lots of little grains of cochineal stuck there - too fine to have strained them out before dyeing, and the wool feels fine one rinsed and dried, but the "grains" have to go somewhere! So my tip from this is use the whole bug, or be prepared to do lots of rinsing!

The brazilwood (100%) I soaked overnight heated to boiling and then strained the wood chips off. Allowed the liquid to cool down and then immersed the yarn. Re heated and cooled. Very simple basic method, but it works!

The brazilwood red is the one in the middle, the ground cochineal is at th top and the whole bugs is the one at the bottom. The colour matching seems to be quire accurate too!