Friday, April 24, 2009

BACK TO THE DYEPOTS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

As the warp gets close to being ready to weave, I decided it was time to get back to the dyepots.  That is, if I wanted any weft yarn to weave with!

Dyeing blues and reds Here are the blues and the reds simmering in glass Mason jars placed in a water bath.  The water bath is provided by an old electric frying pan.

Each of the red polyester cords is looped around a small skein of 60/2 silk.  This makes it easier to lift the skeins up and down in their little jars.  Lifting them up and down instead of stirring is how I get the dye to take evenly.

Those polyester cords also make it much easier to find the center of the skein when I am ready to insert my hands in the rinsed skeins to snap them.

Golds in the dyepot And here are the golds.  I know, the one on the right looks more lime green than gold.  But when dry, and not set right next to the more yellow yarn, it should look gold.  And if it doesn’t, I will use it and love it!

I learned that dyeing with two Mason jars in the electric frying pan is different from dyeing with six.  With only two jars, more of the water in the water bath is exposed.  This means it cools more quickly, or, to put it in reverse, this means that it takes higher temperatures on the skillet to keep the dye bath water the correct temperature. 

Covering the skillet, even partially, would help stabilize the temperature.  But that is impossible with a tall thermometer sticking up out of a jar!

The red and blue yarns are 60/2 bombyx silk.  The gold yarns are the still shinier silk tram only slightly heavier than the 60/2 bombyx.

Related Post:
   Dyeing Books: Some Favorites
 
   Dyeing the Skein
   Dyeing More Reds
   Red Wefts Dyed
   Dyeing Yellows


Back to the Dyepots” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 24, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

7 comments:

Janet said...

Hi, Peg! I've been reading blogs in Google Reader lately and just realized that I haven't seen yours for ages. For some reason your blog never updates - Reader and the Blogger blog roll widgets insist on pointing to a post from Nov '97. It's as if your RSS feed died on that date. Is that intentional?

Sorry to leave such an OT comment but I don't see your email address anywhere on the site and I really miss seeing your blog!

Peg in South Carolina said...

Janet, definitely not intentional. Maybe Google doesn't like that I use Bloglines to read blogs? (grin!) Susan of Thrums had this problem which I don't remember how she solved--I think she may just be going directly to my blog? At the time she commented I tried all sorts of things to see if I could figure out what was going on, but everything seems to be absolutely right in the layout. I'll do some sniffing around again and see what I can learn.

Peg in South Carolina said...

Janet, when I go to your profile and see the blogs you are reading, when I click on mine,it comes up just fine.

Janet said...

How is your RSS feed set in the Blogger settings? There's a "Site Feed" tab under the Settings one. Maybe the feeds are turned off? Or maybe something in the "post feed redirect url" field is causing problems?

Janet said...

Yep, but those are links directly to your blog's home page, not to an RSS feed. If you look at the blog roll in the sidebar on High Fibre Diet yours is way at the bottom 'cause the last post it can see in the RSS feed is from "a year ago" (really, 17 months). Same thing happens in Google Reader: it's looking at the RSS feed rather than the blog's home page. That's why I'm guessing it's something to do with your feed.

Do you subscribe to your own blog with Bloglines? Does it update properly there?

Peg in South Carolina said...

Feeds are not turned off. I redirect my feed through Feedburner. The url in the redirect is correct. Bloglines picks up my feed just fine. Any more suggestions?

Janet said...

Nope, I'm stumped. I've also got my blog stuff redirected to Feedburner so that shouldn't be it. I'm outta ideas, too - like your dyepots, my RSS feed intel is exhausted. ;)

If I think of anything (or glean any new info out of my tech savvy husband) I'll post again!