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!

End of the Red Dyes Workshop

Today was the last day of the Red Dyes workshop, it's been running on the Online Guild for the whole of April, I have really enjoyed doing it and because it's all online you get written responses and photos of how people are getting on - so there is a record of it all, it's very rewarding!

The photo shows all the samples I have dyed during the workshop. On the far left is my madder (it's orange!) cochineal is in the centre on the right is sticklac and bottom left is brazilwood. There is a silk hankie in there (very hidden) that was painted with madder, lac and brazilwood extracts. The workshop has been good for me - it's made me look at some of my methods and try out new ideas. The kind of thing you don't have time for in the general run of being in the dyehouse. I am determined to get back to doing more research! (OK that's research and spinning I have to do more of - so what is going to lose out I wonder?!)

I have a lot of dyeing to be getting on with over the coming month - at the beginning of June there is the Ravelry Day - I have a stall and am running a workshop - and at the end of June is Woolfest. It's not the dyeing that takes up all the time it's the hanking up! It really seems to take forever, I have now got John looking on the web for any hanking machinery that we could use. It really is so time consuming when you can only do 1 hank at a time! To be fair John is fantastic at making things - I have a super ball winder for the linens, but he just hasn't had time to deal with the wools issue! I'll just have to plan to do so many hanks per day!

For once we are home for a Bank Holiday plus my sons are both coming home - so it'll be like Christmas!!! (wonder if I can get them hanking up?!) Hope the weather is better than it has been today! Nick I have to collect from Chester station tomorrow lunchtime (which means some retail therapy may be required in the morning whilst waiting!) David will drive himself up later in the day. I think this is going to be a nice weekend!