1. Depending on the gauge, it might not be firm enough. You want the ring to stay ring-shaped, unless you bend it otherwise.
2. You still need to seal the ends somehow, to prevent the metals in the core from affecting the dyebath.
3. Whenever DH works on the wiring in the house, he gets black rubbing off on his hands and clothes from some substance (grease? oily coating?) that's on the outside of new electrical cable. I wouldn't want that to get on my yarn...
Peg's suggestion of using heavy cord loops is a good one, but I have found that the loop folds into such a sharp angle that it acts as a resist on the yarn. The tubing-over-copper wire doesn't give me that problem. Besides, I only had to make one batch, and now that I've got 'em, they'll outlive my dye career!
The faux seersucker warp is almost beamed. DH felt it was important to show this picture, so here goes. This is the lineup of yarns I'm using - a selection of wood-dyed silk and tencel for the non-shrinky stripes, and a commercially dyed 30/2 merino in dark chocolate brown for the shrinky stripes.
I am still amazed every time I look at the incredible range of colors I've gotten from wood! The wonderful pinks, peaches, and golds...wow!
When I began the planning, I came up with a complicated scheme for randomizing the color order. Once I actually started winding the warp, I realized I was making things much more difficult than necessary, and switched to an easier method. For the silk/tencel stripes, I wound 3 ends at a time, and for each "round" I switched all 3 ends to new colors, grabbing a different 3-end combo each time. That resulted in much less tangling and snarling (and swearing on my part). Because I'll sley 3 ends of silk/tencel per dent in a 12-dent reed, 9 ends = 1/4-inch, or 36 epi for those ends. The wool was wound 2 ends at a time, and will be sleyed 2 per dent in the reed, or 24 epi for the wool.
The 1-inch sections on the warp beam are in mostly 1/2-inch stripes. The inner sections each have 1/4-inch of silk/tencel on the outer edges of the section and 1/2-inch of wool in the middle. The two selvedge sections have 3/4-inch of wool on the outer edges and 1/4-inch of silk/tencel on the inner edge.
2 comments:
I am glad you included the pic of all of your dyed colors. They are so yummy! And a testimonial to natural dye possibilities.
Actually, Sandra, the cord neither bends sharply nor kinks. I have had no problem with it acting as a resist. Occasionally, however, my figure of eight ties will act as a resist......! That hasn't happened for quite a while; perhaps the dyeig gods are on my side?
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