Posted by Peg in South Carolina
But first I had to take a photo………..
For those who are curious and want to see what this lump of silk looked like on the loom, here it is:
And to read about how happy I was to reach this point, go to this post.
“The Warp is History” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 25, 2011. ©2011 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina
Posted by Peg in South Carolina
This draft represents only a very small part of the threading. And the colors are not those I will be using. I chose them in order to see clearly what is going on. The treadling is based on overshot treadling. That is, for each given block, I simply repeat that particular treadle x times.
Overshot requires a tabby between shots or the floats will be excessively long. But that is not possible in this crackle draft because there is no plain weave possible. No plain weave; no tabby. So the threads that will be used to prevent excessively long floats will be called binder shots here.
What I would then ordinarily do is one of two things:
I have done something only slightly different here. For each block I have picked two different treadles for the binders and alternated them for the duration of the block.
But I have done something else a bit different as well. Not only are the binder shots a different color from the pattern weft; the shot on one treadle is one color, and the shot on the other treadle is a different color.
The pattern shots will be use 60/2 silk; the binder shots will use 120/2 silk. This difference will obscure a bit the pattern colors, which is exactly what I want.
The trick to all this, is going to be choosing colors. My overall idea is start with everything pretty much the same color—the browns and browned greens of the warp—and then slowly to bring in brighter colors, first in the binder shots, then in the pattern shots.
The photo on the left is from the original sampling, together with the as-of-then uncorrected threading errors. The place to look at is the last 4 blocks. Again, these are not the colors I will be using in the actual piece, but it does give an idea of the kind of effect I am after as well as the possibilities for manipulation of colors for lesser or greater clarity of blocks. In short, the binder shots wil serve much more than to provide a stable fabric; they will be an essential part of the color plan.
“Treadling Pattern Decided” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 25, 2011. ©2011 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina
Posted by Peg in South Carolina
GREEN IS GOOD
Yes, the table in reality is actually black. Why is it green in the photo? Because I fiddled with Paint Shop Pro to get the colors right. This meant ramping up the green and also, a bit, the yellow; and lessening the red. Doing this affects the whole photo, so the table got to be green as well.
How to avoid this? Yes, it is possible. Select the skeins out from the background, create a new layer, and work only with that on the color. I have not mastered the skill of selection and do not feel the need to. This photo is not for professional publication, after all!
So, what was the problem that led me to doing this? The green yarn on the left wasn’t quite bright enough. The yarn in the middle did not have enough of a green cast and the yarn on the right was way to red.
The results are not perfect, though there is definite improvement. The color of the green yarn is accurate. The red is still a tiny bit too red. The brown is quite off the mark. It definitely needs to be more of an avocado, though a dulled avocado.
TOO MUCH REDDISH YARN
But there is another problem, and this one is a bit more serious. The yarn on the right was to be my main binder yarn so I dyed three skeins of it. But it turned out way too red for that purpose. The middle skein turned out exactly right for that purpose. Clearly, when I moved from dyeing small sample skeins to dyeing 100 gram skeins, something went amiss in my calculations.
MORE DYEING TO DO?
Based on what I saw, I changed the dye calculations and came up with the middle skein. I am not going to dye any more of this color until I have started the weaving and can get a better estimate of how much more yarn I will need.
I would, however, like to dye a smaller amount of a green that is between the brightest green and the avocado green and also a smaller amount of quite a bright version of the red.
BACK TO SLEYING THAT REED…..
Not to mention winding skeins onto cones………..
“Why is the Black Table Green?” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on July 14, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.
Posted by Peg in South Carolina
COLORS AND PHOTOGRAPHY
I have fussed and fussed, but no matter how many images I snapped, no matter how much playing with the software, nothing captures the “real” colors. And I think that I now know why. This is shiny soft silk and so the colors are continually changing according to the light. I’m not just talking about things like florescent versus daylight. I’m talking about the time of day and the angle of viewing as well.
In other lights the reds are more brown and the browns are more olive. Those are what I have regarded as the “real” colors. But, gosh darn, when I get up and look at that warp, these are the colors that are showing.
Whatever.
I was nevertheless so enraptured with the iridescent complexity of it that I thought for one brief moment about threading to a straight twill and weaving it off as a straight twill. Well, if the crackle refuses to do what I want it to do, that is a definite possibility.
BREAKING THREADS
I did break some threads in the beaming process. First time I have ever done this. It took me awhile to realize what was going on.
On top of the loom I had positioned the 1” grouping raddle. (Go to the post “Using Two Raddles” to see what this was about.) Since I had made the actual warp in slightly less than 1” bouts, the bouts were split most of the time. What was happening was that at the split, two warp ends, one one either side of the separating wire, would get caught and trapped. So they tightened up and refused to budge so of course----snap!
I think basically using that second raddle on the castle of the loom was an excellent idea. But I have to make bouts that fit between the dividers when I do this again.
I’m not sure that I mended things correctly---there were three different breaks as I recall. But things should work out anyway.
“Beamed Warp” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 3, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.
Posted by Peg in South Carolina
For a long time I thought that the direction the skein unwound from the skein winder made a difference. Was I ever wrong!
COMMERCIAL SKEINS VERSUS MY SKEINS
I also assumed that commercial producers wound skeins the same way I did. I wind skeins one section at a time. After winding a section of say 200 yards, I loop a contrasting yarn around it. Then I wind another section and, making a figure-of-eight, I loop the contrast yarn around it. And I continue in this fashion until the skein is complete. As a result, the beginning of the skein is at one side of the skein; the end of it is at the other side of the skein.
The commercial producers of silk yarn I deal with* do not wind skeins in this way. They make skeins by winding the yarn back and forth across the width of the skein. As a result, the beginning of the skein is at the bottom of the skein; and the end of the skein is at the top.
WHICH END TO START WITH?
I am now sure that a main key to smooth unwinding of commercial silk yarns is to make sure I start with the right end. The right end is the one that unwinds from the top of the skein as it sits on top of the skein winder. The wrong end is the one that, as I pull on it, comes from the underside of the skein.
So, what I did after I had put the skein on the skein winder was to cut the skein at the knot where the beginning and the end were joined together with a knot, and then to attach a small bit of contrast color yarn to each end. Then I tried to unwind with one of the ends. It was difficult to get it started because it kind of interweaved with the rest of the warp ends. But by the time I had unwound it one whole round, it was clear that this yarn was going to be drawing from the underside. That was not going to work.
I took the other end and did the same thing. It too was difficult going for the first round, but then it became clear it was going to unwind from the top of the skein. So that is the end I chose to use. And that is the end that worked.
Except……
A YARN BREAKS
As I was winding the first cone, an end very nicely broke. Thank you. I could not find it anywhere in the skein. Thank you again. Sigh.
If I started with the other end, it was going to unwind from the bottom of the skein. As I full well knew, doing that would give me nothing but grief.
The solution? Remove the skein from the winder. Flip it inside out so that the inside of the skein is now on the outside. Voila! the other end unwound from the top.
I would probably advise anyone removing and flipping the skein to make a few figure-of-eights around the skein before removing and flipping. This will make sure that the skein is as it should be. Brazen soul that I can be, I did not do this. It worked. Thank you.
ONE MORE TRICK
The only other trick that I need to remember when I deal with these skeins is to put the tension block between the skein winder and the cone winder. Doing that keeps the tension even as it enters the cone winder with less likelihood of incorrect cone winding. Doing that also means I do not have to watch the yarn as it leaves the skein winder. That leaves me free to focus on the yarn as it goes around the cone, which means that I catch immediately any slipping of the yarn and can easily make the necessary correction.
THE NECESSITY FOR PATIENCE
It is all about patience in getting started. Patience is not one of my strong suits!
Related Posts:
Silk Yarns
Coning the Warp Yarn
Tension Box: Another Good Use
More on Winding Fine Silk onto Cones
Winding the Dyed Silk onto Cones
*My silk yarns come from Treenway Silks. I cannot speak for skeined silk yarns that come from other sources.
“Winding Commercial Silk Skeins onto Cones” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 5, 2010. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.
Posted by Peg in South Carolina
Sitting on my triple balance scale in the kitchen are the three latest skeins of 60/2 silk I have wound for dyeing. Each skein consists of 1200 yards. Together, They weigh 109 grams. Divided by three, that means each skein weighs 36.3 grams, which, for practical purposes I will round off to 36 grams.
Why not weigh each skein individually? I think I might get more accurate results this way. At any rate, it is just simpler.
"Weighing the Skeins” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on December 1, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.
Posted by Peg in South Carolina
Why? Because this second skein is winding off so easily.
So easily that it tends to loop around. I solved that by putting a tension box* between the skein and the cone and then running the yarn through it. Any whipping and looping that happens will happen before the yarn enters and tension box, not after.
The only thing I have to continue to watch with an eagle eye is the yarn as it winds onto the cone. The yarn can get caught and start winding either underneath or above the wound part of the cone. With the tension controlled, this rarely happens. And catching it immediately when it does happens makes it quick and easy to fix.
Here is a close up of the skein itself as it looks on the skeinwinder (viewed from the top).
It looks exactly like a skein should look. Smooth. Spread across the whole width of the skein winder. Flat. And the yarn feeds back and forth from across the top of the skein.
Now I finally know exactly what the skein should look like when it is stretched out. I also know I can try each end to see which end feeds from the top. Knowing these two things gives me the courage to try the Goko again. For if that skein unwinds in the same manner as the current skein unwinding, the Goko will work exactly as it ought to, turning free an easy as it lets the yarn unwind.
With the LeClerc, because it is so heavy, I have to turn the winder as well as the cone winder in order for the yarn to feed off. With the super-light Goko, the pull from the cone winder is all that is needed to cause the yarn to feed off of it.
*This particular tension box is sold at Purrington Looms.
"I Might Try the Goko Again” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 26, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.
Posted by Peg in South Carolina
I wasn’t sure I could get one whole skein onto a cone; I’d never tried that before. But it worked. Just took a while……….
Only 3 knots in the entire cone. Not bad.
From these cones I will make skeins for dyeing.
Why not make the skeins directly from the Treenway skeins? I could put the Treenway skein on my Goko* and wind from it onto my LeClerc skein winder.
I had tried that on an earlier project. But it was not totally successfully, as you can see if you read this post. Indeed, I got frustrated enough that I gave up and made cones instead which I then wound into skeins.
*Go here and scroll down the page to see Schacht’s Goko skein winder. To be clear, I want to say that the problem is NOT with the Goko. The Goko is a good piece of equipment. I just have to learn more about handling 60/2 silk!
Related Post: Winding Weft Yarn for Dyeing Continues
"First 60/2 Silk Skein Coned” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 23, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.
Posted by Peg in South Carolina
The next thing I needed to calculate was how much yarn I needed. My arithmetic (never trustworthy, even with a calculator) revealed I would need 8,305 yards of 60/2 silk for warp and another 8,305 yards of the same silk for the pattern wefts.
The amount figured for weft is not an honest calculation. An honest calculation would have required me to figure out the picks per inch and multiply this by the amount of yarn one weft shot would require, then figure out how many picks all the weaving (and only the weaving) would require. I simply took the lazy way out and figured I would need approximately as much warp as weft, assuming, of course, a balanced weave, which this will probably not quite be.
One skein of 60/2 silk from Treenway Silks has approximately 3,500 yards on it. So I will need a minimum of 4.7 skeins. I have 6 skeins, but think that for the time being I will wind off only 5 skeins as all my calculations are on the very generous side.
Then I will need 8,305 yards of 120/2 silk for the binder weft. Since I will be throwing a binder weft with each pattern shot (surely, this is bordering on insanity……..), I figure I need the same amount of binder weft as pattern weft.
One cone of 120/2 silk from Treenway has a little more than 15,000 yards. I need only one cone.
Now I need to calculate how much I will need of each color, once I have chosen the colors I plan to use.
Related Post: Initial Calculations
"More Calculating” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 22, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.
Posted by Peg in South Carolina
I was running out of the 2/20 silk on a cone. Since I have more dye sampling to do, I got out one of my skeins to wind another cone. I discovered, much to my horror, that the skein contained many cut threads.
Here is what happened when I put the yarn on the skein winder and started winding a cone.
No, this is not a bad skein from Treenway Silks. It is a skein from Treenway but the fault is entirely mine.
A year or two ago, I had received a package of silk from Treenway. They are very frugal with their packaging and so package the skeins very tightly. I was careless. As I cut the package open, I cut into the skein.
I did not throw the skein out. I figured it was still usable. On the other hand, I was very slow to wind a cone of it. So slow that I had forgotten all about it.
Before I started winding, I undid the ties and found the beginning and end of the skein. I started winding from one of those. The winding went well until the yarn stopped coming. I had reached a broken end.
If you look carefully at the top of the skein in the photo, you can see a heavier golden yellow piece of yarn hanging down from the skein. This is 5/2 pearl cotton which I tied to the opposite end. Doing this would keep me from losing it as I wound from the first end. That 5/2 pearl cotton attached to the end would be my safety net—a place to start again. I always do this, because I never know what problems are going to happen.
Now I do not know whether to proceed with that end or to take one of those many loose broken ends you see hanging down to the floor. I know those loose ends will not unwind smoothly. I will probably have to make a fair number of knots. But the good news is that I am not dyeing this yarn for weaving, only for sampling, so knots don’t matter.
Related Post:
Loose End
Disappointment
That Badly Snarled Skein of Yarn
“A Bad Silk Skein“ was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 6, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.
Even with knots, silk yarn winds very smoothly from well-wound cones onto bobbins and pirns. The silk yarn would not have wound on to the pirns and bobbins at all well had I tried to wind them directly from the skeins. Taking the time to wind onto cones first definitely pays off.
To the right is a photo of the tensioner I use to help me wind pirns. It was made by John Stegmuller who designed something he calls the olympic pirn winder. This last was reviewed on Episode 18 of Weave Cast. Go here to listen to it.
I have used this tensioner for around five years now and am really happy with it.
The yarn, threaded on a big needle, enters the left side of the tensioner. It goes around the first pink thing, then in between the two black discs and around to the next pink thing and out onto the right side. The space between the discs can be adjusted by turning the wing nut at the top. The amount of space determines the tension on the yarn.
I hold the whole tool in my right hand and move it back and forth, just as I would if I were holding the yarn between my fingers. This saves burning of my fingers.
More important, this tool puts a lot more tension on the yarn than I can put by holding it between my fingers. That greater tension results in a pirn that is smoothly and firmly wound. Those are requirements for yarn wound onto pirns.
Related Post: Pirn Winding
“Pirns and Bobbins Wound” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on May 4, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina
The silk tram unwound quite nicely onto cones, thank you. But four of the six silk bombyx skeins gave me nothing but grief. This photo shows what happened with every one of those four skeins.
I have had to unskein these by slowly turning the winder, stopping, when the yarn catches, undoing the catch, turning the winder some more, and so on. The catch sometimes happens with every half turn, sometimes every turn. When enough loose yarn accumulates on the floor I then wind that onto the cone. And begin again. This is slow work.
I have to be very careful to make sure that this loose end, no matter how large it grows, stays properly aligned and doesn't slip over the end of the skein winder. I’ve learned that the hard way. On three of the skeins I ended up with an absolute mess as a result of not paying attention. I had to cut and knot. More than once. Those skeins are going to be miserable to weave with. But weave with them I will.
Related Post:
Silk Tram
Winding the Dyed Silk onto Cones
Silk Organzine Yarn Versus Bombyx Silk Yarn
“Loose End” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 30, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina
I put the silk tram on the skein winder. And this is what it looked 
I had checked and double-checked that the yarn was coming through the ties properly. I did this because one of my thoughts has been that I do not get all the yarns on correctly. And because this yarn is so flyaway, I really had to work at examining carefully the yarn at each tie.
Then I tied the half of the skein tightly with red yarn that was going to come of the skein winder second. The idea was to keep the yarns from the first half tangling with the yarns of the second. As I was doing this I did discover loops at two of the ties. As I checked these out I realized that they needed to be corrected so that those yarns would go on the winder correctly.
So what happened? Here is a photo of both the skeins wound onto cones. 
Indeed, with the second one a slight problem occurred that caused me to remove the ties around the second half. Still, there was only one place that I had to tie a knot and that was because there was a cut end somewhere in the middle of the skein. I had seen that when I was putting the skein on the winder but have no idea how that happened.
For all my worry about this silk tram, it wound on the cones just fine. What a relief.
Related Post:
Silk Tram
Winding the Dyed Silk Onto Cones
Winding Cones: Have I Found the Secret?
Silk Yarns
“Winding the Silk Tram” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 29, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina
This is the first time I have worked with silk tram. I knew it was shiny and meant for weft. I wanted it to help highlight the motifs in this piece. The photo gives a good idea of just how shiny the yarn is.
Here is what MSN Encarta says about tram silk;
Tram is made by twisting in only one direction two or more raw-silk threads, with 8 to 12 turns/cm (20 to 30 turns/in).
But here is what Habu Textiles says, in part, about it:
This is a "tram" silk, which means it is specially made to be used as weft yarn for weavers. There is virtually no twist in the yarn, so it is very soft and shiny…. Because of the minimal twist in the yarn, the silk filament tends to get caught in rough hands. Dyes very well.
For this particular skein, at least, Habu has got a better hold on the twist issue. That there is virtually no twist is obvious when I handle it for the ends simply untwist into their component threads. My hands are not rough. I have never had trouble with silk in that respect. With this I am going to have be generous with hand cream.
Silk tram comes in various weights. This particular tram is only slightly heavier than the 60/2 bombyx silk.
I am glad that it dyes well because I think I am going to have lots of trouble, so the dyeing needs to be worth it. When I took the white skein meant for dyeing off the skein winder, the yarn just “flew apart.” The photo shows quite vividly just how flyaway the yarn is. I think it is going to be very very prone to snarling and knotting. Oh happy day…………
Related Post: Winding the Silk Tram
“Silk Tram” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 27, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka 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!
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.
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
I didn’t think it was going to go well, despite what I had thought earlier.
SHRUNKEN SKEIN
First of all, the dyeing process had caused the yarn to shrink enough so that the skein became too small to fit my Goko—my unwinder of choice for fine silk.
But the skein fit fine on the LeClerc skein winder. However, unlike the Goko, when I unskein from the LeClerc, I have to turn it with the handle at the same time I turn the handle on the cone winder. The LeClerc is just too heavy for the cone winder to pull it around. The Goko, on the other hand, is very light.
THREADS DON’T ALIGN
Despite the flatness of the skein and the softness of the yarn, the threads did not align the way they do with my hand-made skeins. And it was clear that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
I tightened the LeClerc as tight as I could get it. But part of the skein was still a bit looser than the rest. Not a good sign.
FINDING THE OUTSIDE END
Then I looked for the place that the ends were tied together. I cut them apart and attached a length of 20/2 pearl cotton to each. I do this primarily so that the end I am not using to wind from does not get lost in the event that the yarn I am winding breaks and I cannot find the end. Then I can always begin with the end of the skein.
I checked to see where the ends came from. Both ends appeared to be on the inside of the skein. That is how I put the skein on the winder. But I know that each end has to come from the opposite side of the skein. Sure enough, I found that end and worked my way with it to the front of the skein. I pulled at it for a few rounds and it very nicely came off across the top of the skein.
This is something I had never bothered doing. In fact, I had never even thought about it until Laura mentioned that it was important to use the end that ran across the top of the skein. But I’ve decided that this is pretty significant.
UNWINDING BEGINS
I undid the figure-of-eight ties and gently started to unwind the yarn. It did just fine. I put in through the yardage counter and attached it to the cone in the cone winder and got to work. 
Well, maybe not perfectly. Because the skein is not perfectly taut throughout, loose ends crop up. In the photo you can see a couple of loops that had just come up and caught onto the unwinding yarn (the black arrow points to the unwinding yarn). But all I had to do was grab that end and jerk it gently away from the skein and all was well again.
This happens from time to time, but not enough to be annoying or cause a significant slow-down.
If you take a look at the skein, it really looks like a mess. But apparently it is not. When I watch the yarn unwinding, I see it go back and forth across the width of the skein. Clearly these skeins are made in a manner different from my process.
THE OTHER END
Also, the white thread visible at the top of the skein is the piece of 20/2 pearl cotton which is tied on to the other end of the skein. Clearly that will be easy to find if I need it.
Related Posts:
Silk Skein Dyed and Dry
Winding Weft Yarn for Dyeing Continues
“Winding the Dyed Silk Onto Cones” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 31, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina
But I’m not going to. It will be the crackle warp for the upcoming sample/scarf.
It is not just the color that is beautiful. What is just as beautiful is what has happened to the yarn as a result of all my snapping and slapping of it. It is flat and soft. The divisions that the pink figure-of-eight ties make in the skein are clear. I have high hopes for the unskeining to cones process.
Still, I can see her woven as huck lace…………
By the way, take a look at what I’ve been spinning from The Spinning Bunny. This is wool but doesn’t the color look familiar? I must really like this color!
Related Post: Dyeing the Skein
“Silk Skein Dyed and Dry” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 24, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina
As I continued winding skeins of this 60/2 silk, winding it from my Goko skein-winder to my LeClerc skein winder got a bit easier. I still couldn’t, most of the time anyway, simply wind the LeClerc skein winder and have the yarn freely come off the Goko. Instead I pulled the yarn off the Goko by hand, piling it up on the floor and over my legs. Then I wound the loose yarn onto the LeClerc. That would give me about 5-7 yards of silk.
HICCUPS
Sometimes when I came to the end I would find the yarn feeding smoothly off the Goko for a little bit, or with only slight hiccups that I could deal with easily with my left hand. The really tough hiccups that forced me to stop happening just a little less frequently. So things were easing up.
What causes these hiccups? I don’t know. The yarn gets caught by the yarns further inside the skein. And I don’t know what causes that either. In any case, this was going much more smoothly than some of my earlier frantic unwinding some of my dyed skeins of silk organzine. So I was grateful for that.
SKEIN TO CONE
When I finally finished winding off six separate skeins for dyeing—three for blues and three for reds—I decided to wind off the rest of the original skein onto a cone.
Now things got progressively easier until, when I hit about the 900-yard mark, the unwinding started going very smoothly. All I had to do from that point on was to turn the LeClerc skein winder and let the yarn coming from the Goko run over my left hand. Though I could feel tiny catches happening with some frequency, rarely did I have to use my left hand to undo a bad catch.
A BROKEN YARN
And then I ran out of yarn. But there was still a lot of yarn left on the Goko. I knew there was a broken yarn somewhere. I had seen the two individual ends periodically as I wound. So I knew this was going to happen. I couldn’t find the broken end in the skein. Fortunately, however, I had tied a contrast yarn to the other end of the skein itself before I started winding so that I found easily.
What worried me was………….am I back to slow winding off again?
NEXT SKEIN?
I am now thinking that the next time I go through this I may just begin by winding the entire skein onto a cone and then making the small dyeing skeins from that. Just an idea for now. Part of this will depend on how unwinding the dyed skein goes. Stay tuned!
Related Posts:
That Badly Snarled Skein of Yarn
Disappointment
“Winding Weft for Dyeing Continues” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 23, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina
I let the dye pot sit overnight with the yarn in it. That way all the possible dye that could attach to the yarn would. I need not have worried.
RINSING
When I looked at the dye pot the next morning, the water was nowhere near clear. With these kinds of dyes, unlike with the MX dyes, the dye pot is supposed to exhaust, if not completely, almost completely. The result is very little rinsing needs to be done.
Not so here. I pulled the yarn out of the pot, squeezing out as much of the dye liquor as I could, and dropped it into the waiting rinse water. Within seconds the rinse water was so darkly stained I could not see the yarn in the water! I was in trouble.
I rinsed and i rinsed and I rinsed, making very little progress. I was getting tired. So I started letting it soak in hot, hot water for 30 minutes at a time. About five hours later I had made some progress………
WASHFAST ACID MAGENTA
I started contemplating the fact that part of the dye was a bit of washfast acid magenta. I had recalled that that was a dye that tended to bleed. I went to Paula Burch’s site called All About Hand Dyeing. I was right. So I did one more hot soak. I observed that the red had changed in hue. Indeed, it did look like the washfast acid magenta. Then I rinsed in cold water. Hardly any dye. Then I rinsed in cold water with a bit of vinegar which I was sure the yarn deserved after all its travails in rinse water.
Did I mention that I made a mess on the countertop? I did not put down my usual oil cloth, as I had anticipated an easy rinsing with little or no dye left in the water. All I put down were newspapers. The remaining dye was so intense it bled through the papers to the counter. I will have a lot of cleaning up to do. I will tell DH to think of them as blueberry stains………
I removed the yarn from the vinegar rinse water, squeezed all the water I could out and placed it inside a terry bath towel which I promptly stomped on with full body weight to get rid of more water. I took it to the bathroom. I slapped it against the tub a few times, then snapped it vigorously a few times. i repeated this process a couple of times and then hung it to dry. Wet, the yarn looks positively black, though I know it isn’t.
So the question of the day is:
WHERE DID I GO WRONG?
The answer in general is obvious. Way too much dye powder. Way way too much dye powder. But the specific answer as to how this happened is more nebulous. Somehow in my calculations I got very very confused.
So I went back to my trusty Ashford Book of Dyeing and re-read its instructions and then re-read my dyeing instructions for this piece. And here is what I discovered: I was using calculations based on 1 kilo (i.e., 1,000 grams) of fiber! 30 grams of dye will dye 1 kilo of fiber at 3% depth of shade. I was dyeing 100 grams of fiber. If my arithmetic is correct, I had used 10 times as much dye powder as I needed to use.
My face is so red. This was not even an arithmetic error. It was a failure to read the top of the chart in the book.
Related Posts:
I Really Ought Not to be a Dyer
Dyeing Miscalculations
I Ought Not to be a Weaver
“Dyeing the Skein” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 20, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina
