Friday, January 28, 2011

KNEW IT WOULD BE A GOOD DAY WHEN...

I arrived at Monike's to see this bucket of locks...
 
Isabel, Wendy and Rosalee were already spinning ... 

... but my interest was in the dye pots in the kitchen. There were two: an onion-skin pot, and an indigo dye bath. I'd brought along some plain natural wool...

Indigo is amazing stuff! The dye bath doesn't look like you'd imagine... (I forgot to get a photo of Monike's but I found this one online)...
   The wool has to be pre-soaked, and then it's gently lowered into the pot. When it comes out it's a light blue-y green color -- and then the air causes it to oxydize, and get darker! Watch this...
 Here's some white lace edging that Isabel threw in...

And here they are a few minutes later...
Want to see that again?  :)

Here's a lace doily of Isabel's...


How amazing is that?

So I put one of my skeins in to the onion bath, and it came out a lovely gold color...

Then we put it in the indigo bath. Remember elementary school color theory?


Yellow plus blue equals green.

Then we went back to our spinning and knitting, surrounded by all the drying fibre-y goodness!

I'm SO hooked on this!

2 comments:

Esther V. said...

When we were kids, My Mom would save onion skins...then at Easter she would put them in a pot..cover them with boiling water..get that brewing then put in the eggs and boil them for 10 minutes (for Easter eggs)..they would turn out a dark golden brown..then she'd polish them with an oily cloth...AMAZING!! Your onion skin dye bath brought this to mind!

wendy said...

super pics, you have done it all justice!