More dyeing photos

The new dyeing from the last post has turned into this



(Hint - it's a bag. It's not finished yet, still got lots of edging to go, and felting.)

And more dye has happened:


It is destined to be some sort of shawl, and I think I've worked out what I want to do with it.

More dye!

Firstly, the shawl in the last post is finished


I had 0.8g of yarn left over(about 7m). I call that success.

And on Tuesday some more dyeing happened.

I intend to get better photos when it has finished drying, and after reskeining. In theory there are three skeins in each of those colours, which may or may not make things Interesting.

More dyeing

Got another two batches of dyeing done tonight - purple and green. The green looks like it's pretty much exactly what I wanted, the purple may be a bit redder than I was aiming for. I'll have to see what they look like when they're dry (and take photos), but I may change my plans slightly. I had been planning to do the fourth colour as a burgundy, but if the purple is too red then I may pick something completely different.

Dyeing and ribbon

I managed to get some dyeing done this weekend. Wasn't sure how it would turn out, but it actually worked approximately how I had hoped. The yarn is a 2 ply, one ply is a pale brown linen, the other ply a dusty rose synthetic. I used Earth Palette reactive dye (blue), and as I had hoped the pink failed to take any of it. The blue is actually darker than I had thought it would be (I suspect because I used the weight of the yarn, rather than the weight of the linen for my calculations). I'm still trying to work out whether I want to do a purple batch too. I think I may have to dig out one of my other dye pots and do two batches at once next time.

The tablet weaving is progressing slowly - it works well when I can sit down and work on it uninterrupted, but it's not so good when I'm trying to do things like cooking dinner at the same time. It's about 50cm long so far. There are a few mistakes, and the tension is horribly uneven (both of these are at least partly because of not just working on it constantly). I still like the effect of the floats, and I definitely like my new cards (super-thin plywood, rather than playing cards). They're much easier to manipulate, and seem to tangle a lot less than the playing cards did.

I'm not sure how well the ribbon will photograph - I'll have to have a good play and see just how good my camera is at close-ups.

Progress (and photos)

It turned out that my cold was actually a sinus infection (and probably caused by some sort of allergy that I never knew I had...). The result of all this was two weeks of being sick and not getting enough sleep, and therefore not getting much done. I've finally managed to get under way with not-quite-so-mindless stuff again, which is nice.

The madder dyeing was finally finished last Sunday. I'm not sure how much it was affected by the big delays between mordanting and batches of dyeing, but there is definitely some colour difference. In all three batches the first few are clearly lighter and then it gets rather hard to pick the order.

I think more time may have made more difference at the higher percentages of mordant, or possibly more madder (only used 50% of the dry wool weight).

I will get better photos when I have actually sorted them and twisted them into neat little skeinlets again.


I made the first modification to my loom in the weekend - I added a quick release cord so I can wind it on without having to get up. (It also means I can actually wind it on by just winding the cloth beam rather than having to unwind the warp beam by some arbitrary amount first).

It's the cord travelling from the back, and up to the top of the castle to avoid the beater. I did put an eye on the front too, but then I had to take it out again when I warped the loom (the raddle fits over the front of the loom). It seems to work reasonably well - it's an improvement on not having it, at least.

And I got a warp set up again. This time it's a wool/rayon blend (2 ply, one of each), set up in a rosepath pattern so I can just do pattern samples. I was foolish though, and went from memory in working out the width and sett and originally had it at 12 epi. After getting it all tied on and doing a bit of weaving I decided that it really was too loose. I then rechecked the wpi of the yarn, and discovered that I should have done it at 15 epi (which would have been easier to start with, since I have a 7.5 dpi reed). I resleyed, which took it down to around 7" wide, which I think is still wide enough for a couple of scarves although not as wide as I wanted it. And because I can't count I have one floating selvedge wound with the rest of the warp and the other one hanging off the back of the loom (conveniently tied to one of the weights from my warp weighted loom)


And here's a picture with it sett at 12 epi (just to prove that I really have done something)

I've now woven about 20cm of the first sampler - some of the patterns I made up didn't work so well, but it's all a learning experience (I think they really need a tabby to help them hold their shape)

The other problem I had with my entirely slapdash method of loom dressing was that I didn't actually measure the length, I just guessed that crossing the warping board once was close enough to a metre (it's a sampler, I didn't need a specific length). This has turned around to bite me in that I used up nearly all of the yarn I had (about 20m left), so I will need to order more if I want to use any as weft. And since I had planned to dye some with various types of dye to see what effects I could get from the wool/rayon difference I guess I will be getting more (maybe I'll do some small experiments first though). It's not really a problem, I think I wanted more anyway, and I have been very tempted by some of the other yarns from the same place...

The long overdue madder experiments

On Saturday I started the mordanting marathon. I'd hoped to get it all done then, but no such luck. About eight of the eleven batches were done on Saturday, the rest were finished on Sunday morning.

Of course I then managed to come down with a nasty cold and spent the rest of the day in bed with a fever, so no madder for me. So all I could hope for was that I'd be feeling better enough sometime during the week to spend a few hours dyeing after work - before the damp, mordanted wool had been sitting around for too long.

Today, I had a stroke of luck (if you could call it that...). I'd had basically no sleep the night before from being sick, so was not awake enough to go to work. Really, this meant a day of sitting around not doing much - but sticking a pot on the stove and vaguely poking at it every now and then isn't too energetic, is it?

And so the actual step of making things change colour begins...

First madder bath has taken place. I managed to pick the correct order of increasing mordant for the first six by eye, the last six (10% up) all looked much the same.

Pictures this weekend I guess, by which time the other baths should also have happened.

I apologise for any incoherence, my brain is full of cold and sleep deprivation.

Rough outline of experiment:
Wind many many (36) little skeins of wool (15m of lace weight wool each, approx 1.6g)
Organise into bundles of 3 (5g each) for mordanting
Mordant with the following percentages of potassium alum sulphate (by weight) for half an hour:
0%, 1%, 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, 10%, 12.5%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 50%

Reorganise into 3 sets of skeins, one of each mordant batch in each set.
Put water, 1/2C of vinegar in pot, heat to 70 degrees C
Put in 10g of madder, hold at temp for 10 minutes.
Add one set of skeins, hold at temp for 45 minutes
Remove skeins, top up water lost through evaporation and reheat to 70 degrees C
Add second set of skeins for 45 minutes
Repeat with third set.

In theory, there should now be lots of skeins in varying shades of pink/orange

Inaugural posting

I decided I wanted somewhere specifically for keeping track of textile stuff. Thus, Insanity Looms was born.

Textile projects currently being worked on:

On the loom I have a set of four napkins. The first four are woven, I just need to do the hemstitching on the last end. I appear to have plenty of warp left, so I think it may turn into a set of five - after all, you can never have too many napkins...


I haven't taken any photos since I was about half way through the first one, so here is a gratuitous partially woven napkin.

On the knitting front I'm working on a pair of socks (no pictures of these at all, they'll probably be finished by the time I get that far)

And on the dyeing scene I've got a zillion little skeinlets wound up to do some samples with, but that won't be getting done until next weekend.