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Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Deep in the Dyepots

No weaving today, but lots of preparations for weaving, both on the dobby loom and the jacquard loom.

The dyepots have been busy, and will continue so for a few days. I have an image of a parrot ready to weave on the jacquard loom. Here's the image, indexed to 12 colors (6 values of green, a red, and 5 values of ivory:



But first I need the right colors of yarn, so out came the dyepots, and some skeins of Bambu 12, which is about the right size to use with the 16/2 cotton warp on the jacquard loom.







The ivory for the beak is tricky. On the cone, Bambu 12 is really a bleached white, and I want a slightly off white. Pale colors are always difficult to dye, but I think I'm getting better at it, and the skein above should dry to the right sort of pale ivory.

While the dyepots were processing, I wound off skeins of 20/2 unmercerized cotton for a warp of towels.



As it happens, I had cones of both white and natural but not enough of either for the entire warp, so I wound equal quantities of both, and will dye them together and warp them end-on-end so that any slight hue differences won't matter. The smaller skein in front is 40/2 mercerized cotton for hems. It'll be dyed together with the warp yarns, to a very pale blue color.

I've got a lot of 30/2 mercerized cotton in various blues (left over from the last towel warp) that will be perfect for wefts for the body of the towels. I think I miscalculated the weft yardage for that last towel run, and ended up with twice the yardage I needed. Oh well. Oops. It'll be used this time.

The warp will be threaded to a straight draw, and I'll use a variety of drafts from handweaving.net - I have at least 30 drafts, which is more than I'll need for the length of warp I'm planning!

Then, the plan is to dye some 60/2 silk for scarves that will be woven using the drafts I posted pictures of yesterday. You know how it is: once you get in the dyepot groove, you should stay there for a while...

1 comment:

neki desu said...

yes,contrary to what people might think pale shades take a lot of dyeing mastery.