Since I have been plagued by osteoarthritis, I have had difficulty maintaining my garden. It looks more and more like a jungle but that's good since I saw ferns appear there! I collected enough that I could dye a few skeins.
My “dye workshop”.
Before continuing, let's take a quick tour of my dyeing area. This is my old kitchen, the one that existed before my house was extended. It became the laundry room and incidentally the “cat’s room”. The hotplate remained in place which allowed me to heat the wool and prepare my dye baths.
I emptied a few cupboards full of things that I finally threw away and was able to put away my dyeing equipment. I store my dried plants there, weighed and labeled, in paper bags.
In the drawer: my spatulas (one for stirring the plants, one for stirring the wool in the mordant bath, a last one for stirring the wool in the dye bath), mini precision balance for weighing the alum and the cream tartar, gloves etc…
Under the plate, the space for my pans, colanders, basins, salad spinner sacrificed for my skeins, vinegar to fix the dye when it bleeds too much, etc...
I don't forget to mention that I wear an apron and "expendable" clothes when I dye.
Let's move on to my fern tincture
I prepared my dye bath according to my usual recipe. I wanted to try to make a skein of several shades of this same dye and so I “tinkered” with an assembly allowing me to soak only part of my skein.
I bit 3 skeins of fingering from Alysse creations. In the first bath, I put a skein and part of the skein intended to be tricolor. I brought it to 85°C for 1 hour. I let it cool and rinsed the plain skein. In the exhaust bath, I heated the second skein and the undyed part of the skein intended to be tricolor, using the same process. And finally, I added a small amount of iron sulfate to what was left of the dye bath. I dipped part of this experimental skein into it. The result was beyond my expectations and I don't know if I will be able to reproduce it.
My skeins being tangled, I wound them before putting them back into a skein and I am very proud to show you the final result.
All I have to do now is find a project to showcase it
The colors are magnificent, a great success, well done
The result of the fern is magical.
And I discover the shade of blackcurrant, very cool