All The Dyed Yarn

It took me a week to get the pictures of last Sunday's dyeing off my camera and onto the computer so I could post them to show you all. But here they are at last. It was a busy day; I think about 7 dye baths, two of which (cochineal and indigo) had multiple batches of things going into the bath, with over-dyeing and such going on.

First out of the baths were greenweed yellow (which I actually did Saturday night, and left overnight to cool) and orange from dried coreopsis. I usually get a gold from the dried coreopsis, so the orange was a bit of a surprise, albeit a nice one. One coreopsis skein was done with sections in multiple mordants, but the results weren't as dramatic as I hoped; it just looks like a splotchy orange and brown-green (furthest left), not very pretty. That may end up getting over-dyed at some point to try and improve it.

While the coreopsis bath was simmering, I braved the heat and mosquitos and filled pots with sumac leaves for grey and goldenrod plants for olive green. The sumac greys are always interesting because you get a slightly different cast of grey on different fibres and yarns - all three greys in the picture are on different bases, and you can see the difference.

There was also a bath with madder, but I accidentally overheated it and it came out a dull salmon-y rather than the tomato-y red-orange it should have been. Not bad, but not the best. One of the coreopsis skeins got over-dyed with cochineal to fill that gap in my palette. 

The cochineal, indigo, and walnut baths finished the day. Besides the solid skeins that were either plain or over-dyed, there was a dip-dyed greenweed/indigo skein, and a tie-dyed one with bits of coreopsis and cochineal showing through the walnut brown.  But I think the purples and greens from the indigo over-dyes are still my favourites.

Today I'm dyeing just a couple more skeins. A tan with tea, and a gold with onion skin, to fill the gaps in the palette. Altogether a lovely pile of colours, if I do say so myself.