Whatever happened to standards of workmanship? It is something that has been bothering me for quite a while and it seems to be getting worse - last year I went shopping for some new trousers. I discovered that most pairs made from dark materials carried a label saying "do not sit on light coloured sofas in this garment" That surely is not acceptable to the general public - well it must be I guess. The number of items that are bought that have really bright colours until their first wash is incredible, we should expect better!
I have a google search set to find blogs talking about natural dyes and yesterday there was a link to a blog describing how this lady had been knitting with yarn she had purchased, dyed with indigo (It is described as natural and a mid - blue colour) There was a photo of her fingers showing the staining she was getting as she was knitting up the yarn. It wasn't a complaint - it was almost as though this was the norm and accepted.
It made me think!
As far as I can see either the dyeing wasn't done properly - indigo even when you think you know how it works will come back and bite you, rub off can easily happen if the dyebath wasn't correctly prepared. Or it could be that the yarns weren't rinsed at all after the dyeing - this seems to be common practice now! I would be absolutely devastated to see that about my yarns on the net (and yes the lady named the yarn)
I am obviously getting on my high horse here, but someone has to start making a stand. Standards in the industry just don't seem to exist and if shoppers just buy the products and accept the poor quality it surely must be up to those of us with standards to prove you can get better?
When I dyed the silk for the blackwork for the V & A embroidery the first thing that Wendy did with the yarn was wash it in "hot soapy water" - to check that there was no bleeding of colour - there wasn't, she phoned me to tell me how impressed she was! I took it as a compliment at the time but looking back I see it as a sad indictment that she should expect there should be!
On the other hand how would you know in advance if something was going to bleed or not - do we go round all the yarn suppliers and rub the yarns in our hands to see if colour comes off, do we carry a little bag of soapy water to test out with? As far as I am aware there isn't a British Standard that you can comply with, and if it expected and accepted is it worth putting all the extra effort in?
Maybe I'm the oddity for expecting things to be done properly - I could probably save hours of work if I lower my standards - but I'm sorry I won't!!!
We've been her for over two years now and it's about time we started putting our mark on the place - well you'd think! I'm usually pretty good at killing off plants that I try to grow, so it's quite rare that I put myself in charge of plants. Those that seed themselves - well that's another story!
It isn't quite ready to harvest yet - the seeds need to be formed properly. Many people think that this is when you get the best of colours but for me it needs to be when the plant has gone over to seed. I collected some weld once that was almost dead. The colours I obtained were the best ever!
