Here are two skeins of Beauregard's 70/30 wool/mohair dyed in the combined small left over dye bath exhausts from a few exercises with Indian Madder root.
One of the batches had a high level of calcium carbonate (chalk) - used to harden soft water; this from an experiment comparing results from low, medium and high level of content. The other leftover was from a dye bath that had been cold filtered prior to dyeing by soaking the madder root in cold water for a day, then decanting that water off and repeating for a few days. The dye bath was ultimately made using heated water on the cold rinsed root. The cold water decanted off is what I used in a previous blog post, while this time it was the heated final exhaust that went into the pot.
This is a round about way of saying there is no way I could ever replicate this batch!
Which is too bad, as this is a beautiful coral tone.
Madder root That is amazing! The one on the right has so much depth! Gorgeous!
Gorgeous!! For sale??
I've lost count how many pair of moorit Shetland sport socks I've knit since Christmas. Lots. For many years I had sport socks made up with my wool at a mill, but generational change at the mill, rising prices, and huge increase in transportation costs spelled the end of that, and instead I'm making my own.
What better way to take a break from endless brown socks than to knit up some brightly coloured eco socks using scraps from one of my many scrap bins. This bin contained mostly commercial yarns from Opal, Fortissima, Regia, and I think some DGB Confetti.
Yes I see ! Using the cuff,heel, toe ....seems to balance everything . Awesome how the left pair worked out for the cuff!!!
Doug you make the very Best scrappy socks EVER!!!!!
I had two pots of dye leftovers that I didn't want to toss. So I dyed one skein of Beauregard's 70/30 ShetlandxCormo wool/ mohair fingering yarn in each pot.
One of my dye course lessons was changing the colour of madder root dye by soaking it for a day in cold water, then decanting the liquid off the top of the soak, then repeating for three days. The resulting dye bath made from the remaining sludge produced a colour more orange than the red expected from madder.
I saved the liquid I decanted off the cold soaks, and that's what I dyed the top skein in. I was surprised is came out as orange as it did - I thought it would be red since the exercise was to remove red from the actual dye concoction. The madder root used is from the Indian variety of madder which is an orangey red to start with.
The second skein I dyed in the exhaust of a bath made from European madder, which is a redder red. There was enough left in the bath that I got a medium shade skein, although more on the orangey red side than samples in the original bath (no photo) that were a deep brick red.
The two skeins complement each other and to my eye are like shades of salmon.
Valentine's Day around the corner, and spring (supposedly) coming early this year - a good time for some Koigu laceweight. This pair is size Small, which I would normally knit on 54 cylinder, but for laceweight I use 72 cylinder. Pattern conversion is easy as I just increase the tension to desired rows per inch and then use my pattern for one size higher. This colourway is L851.