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Saturday 19 September 2009

colour sessions

I have been dyeing during all of last week, but today will be the last day for a while; hard to believe, but I am running out of stuff to dye! I picked another lot of alder buckthorn berries and had even darker colours than last time - silk in the middle, viscose on the right - and wool on the left. even though the blues are accurate - the "green" is not! it really is a green tone, not this yucky muck colour! (I put some samples of the first blues into the window to test the lightfastness - after a week in pretty bright daylight no visible change...)
same for this pic: I picked fresh fuchsia flowers (the red-purple ones that grow wild everywhere in the west), because I read that you can achieve purples and reds... this is my umptiest trial, I had everything from beige to biting yellow on wool - and as you can see, I had another very light yellow - though in reality the tone is far more golden yellow than beige. the silk however did turn pinkish - neither purple nor red, but not yellow either:))

this is the result of my dye sessions of the last few weeks. I assembled everything on the patio table, waited until the sun wasn't quite as high in the sky anymore - and still the colours look totally different in real life:(( I dyed loads of green tones, which hardly show up. pretty much all the colours look different in reality, far more autumnal, not as bright as in the photo! I tried changing all kinds of settings, but if the reds are ok, the greens are not etc... weird, but at least I have enough choice to keep me busy with the wheel and the knitting needles for some time:))
the plan is to blend some of the fine lace yarns for a shawl in autumn colours, yellow, green and reds. I am already spinning some of the blue tones into a lace yarn, though I am not sure whether to ply with a blue silk or with another blue-green woollen yarn. the two petrol blue skeins of tussah silk on the upper right side are going to be knitted into a lace scarf and I think I am going to spin a yarn with "glacier" colours from some of the lighter coloured viscose and silk, maybe together with a small amount of angelina and some white, either silk or wool (silk might be more fitting for a "cold, sparkly, icy" yarn?)
off to work a bit more on my miniature, while dinner is in the oven.....

6 comments:

Delighted Hands said...

WEll, even if some were a bit of a disappointment, the overall dyeing was a huge success! Now to the spinning!

Woolly Bits said...

I wish - there's still too much to do outside! good thing that the stash doesn't need to be fed - and it doesn't make noise either:))

Jana Muchalski said...

Oh Bettina... Die verschiedenen Blautöne gefallen mir ganz besonders! Aber es ist überhaupt eindrucksvoll, wenn die gesammelten Färbeergebnisse auf einem Haufen liegen, nicht wahr!?
Liebe Grüße
Jana

Woolly Bits said...

Jana, ich bin auch ein blaufan:)) vor allem, wenn es eher unerwartet blau wurde! es hat spass gemacht, alles aufzuhaeufen - irgendwie kommen einem dann oft gute ideen, was man daraus machen kann. was ich nervig finde ist, dass ich nie alle farben richtig im foto wiedergeben kann:(( wenn das blau ok ist, sieht man das gruen nicht usw. aber egal, ich hab sie ja "in echt" hier liegen:)) wenn ich bloss schonmal die ganzen lace garne auf knaeuel gewickelt haette....

Anonymous said...

wunderschön!!! da kann der kalte Winter ,dunkle Winter kommen..gruß wiebke

Anonymous said...

Hallo Bettina,
ganz toll, schoene Farben - fantastisch. Habe im Moment keine Mailmoeglichkeit, Computer kaputt.
Gruss Juliana