The fruits from the weekends labors:
Hand dyed silk hankies; these are a very labor intensive dye project. The hankies are weighed out into half ounce stacks and then need to be soaked for a good long time to be saturated. In order to "speed" the process I added a bit of Synthrapol (a wetting agent). Next day they were wrung out and then unfolded into a stainless steel pan and each stack dribbled and massaged with dye and then steamed in the microwave for two minutes. I generally do a minimum of two stacks of the same colors because you have to clean up between colors. They always end up incredibly vibrant and intense! They are a lot of work but very pretty in the end.
I also dyed 19 skeins of sport weight Polwarth and Silk (85:15), and 8 skeins of worsted weight Polwarth and Silk (60:40). Duncan and Lila both helped out here; Duncan did the vibrant blues on the right bottom, and Lila the purple/salmon skeins on the upper right. There are a couple skeins missing that were in the dye-pot at the time of the photo that are a lovely plum color. This yarn was a mixture of hand painting and kettle dyed. All of this yarn and the silk hankies will be going down with Lila and I to the Northern Michigan Lamb and Wool Festival at the end of the month.
Join us there if you can! :)
Some beautiful colours happening in this post! Sure wish I could be at the festival. Hoping you have strong sales and great weather.
ReplyDeleteVery pretty colors
ReplyDeleteI'm very late to this post. Those hankies are beautiful, I occasionally buy such things for my jacket's top pocket; very 'foppish'.
ReplyDeleteJust saw your blog. Wow, that looks AMAZING!!!! Love all the beautiful colors you created. Hope you sold it all:)
ReplyDeleteJessi
Beautiful! Hope all is well.
ReplyDelete