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Monday, June 02, 2008

Fire in the Dyepots!

My first experience using my mini dye kitchen has been a success. A few posts back, I moaned that the counter space amounted to a mere 2 sq ft. I lied. It's a tad under 3 sq ft. Big whoop.

Actually, that's not a problem. Mostly because the stove-top, although it has 4 gas burners, isn't big enough for more than 2 large dyepots at once, and then only if they're arranged diagonally. I can squeeze in 2 small dyepots along with the big ones, but it's a tight fit!



Oh, well, if I'm weaving a 2-color interleaved threading, I need 2 big dyepots for the warp skeins, and I usually do them both at once. Then, the next day, I use small dyepots (as many as I can squeeze on the stove) to dye weft skeins, which are tiny by comparison. For this project, the color A warp skeins (about 4900 yds of 60/2 silk) weighed about 150 gm. Each weft skein (about 1100 yds of 100/2 silk) weighs about 20 gm.

Here are the warp skeins, fucshia and an orange-red, both very intense, saturated colors. I'm hoping these will approximate the colors in the drawdown produced by my weaving software, and will give the effect I'm after.



Three of the weft skeins are dyed and drying on a breezy patio, and the skein for the two remaining scarves (both will have a black weft) is still rinsing. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

1 comment:

Peg in South Carolina said...

So far the largest 60/2 silk skein I have dyed contained 1,000 yards. I shudder to think of dyeing a 4,000 yard skein! For that matter, I shudder to think of winding a 4,000 yard skein! The colors are beautiful. Silk dyes so gloriously. One question. On your large skeins, how many figure-of-eight ties do you make and how many yards do you put in a group?