A Dyer's Journal

[ursulas_alcove]

It starts with cones of yarn by the pound. Cotton comes from Peru, linen from Poland, wool yarn from Maine, and raw silk from China. Right now, I run a strictly manual operation. Not because of a desire to martyr myself or a sense of self righteousness, just manual because I have to start with what I have or I'd never get anywhere.



Then the yarn needs to get skeined or wound into a skein, whichever English you prefer. A skein allows all the dye to saturate every part of the yarn. One hopes evenly. That doesn't always happen.



I really wasn't happy with that one. Either I did a bad job of scouring (washing the yarn) or the mordant didn't disperse evenly in the process. Either way, I hate it. Onion skins to the rescue. Onions do not require a mordant. Therefore, the yarn will not get damaged from metal salts being heated a second time. I also cooked it at a lower temperature. It evened out the color nicely. It's currently drying. There is a lot of in-between wait-time in the natural dyeing process.



Happy with the color saturation, I move on to the next project. I need to skein at least a pound each day until I get a mechanized system. Today I wound a natural, undyed sock yarn and labeled all the sock yarns. Labelling is another labor intensive process. Holes need to be punched, string measured and tied onto the tags. The tags have to accurately list yardage and dye lots. Time consuming but necessary. Most of the information is preprinted on the tag. I think the hardest part is cutting the tags. I have given up on Kinkos or Staples ever being able to cut tags straight. Hang tags have information on both sides. I use an Exacto blade and a metal ruler.



Hoping to get started on the linen dyeing in November, I am winding linen to be scoured soon. I have more sock yarn as well to wind and scour over the next week. Repetitive strain is bad both for the dyer and the equipment. I've repaired the umbrella swift more times than I can count.



Both the linen and the wool can be scoured together. They will get dyed and washed separately. Each fiber has unique properties and requires different techniques to dye it. For example, linen and cotton do well with tannins. Their cell structure is different from wool. It takes different chemicals to get color to stick. Silk is neither one thing or another. You can treat it like a bast fiber even though it's not or you can treat it like wool. Here, my silk and cotton did not take a strong brown color from the lichen. They only look dark because they are wet. I tossed them into an oregano bath. That is cooking outdoors on the camp stove as we speak. It needs to cook for about an hour. No clue if I'll get better color saturation or even a color shift. It's a mystery!