Sherri Woodard Coffey

Dye session

The battery on my camera needed charging, so the colors are much richer in real life.  You can see the plant tags on the skeins and some of the mixtures used.

I’m not sure that Linda K even does the sample books that I mentioned anymore, but I can tell you the colors that I use. These are all Sabraset and the colors from ProChem shown on my screen don’t match the real colors: Deep Red, Scarlet, Mustard Yellow, Sun Yellow, Violet, Navy, Black, Turquoise, Magenta, and Royal Blue—guess I was wrong—it’s ten colors.

For anyone interested in starting in on dyeing–I know I’ve seen mention of color samples by other folks besides Linda Knutson. One is called Color by Number Basic Book is by Sara Lamb and Deb Menz (http://www.debmenz.com/books.htm). They are quite expensive, so maybe just put on the cloak of a mad scientist and experiment. For instance, a normal dye run uses a 1% solution, which for 454 grams of yarn would be 4.54 grams of dye. To mix colors, you might use 85% (of 4.54 grams) Sun Yellow and 15% Deep Red to get an orange. You can keep doing that using varying formulas like 60% Sun Yellow, 40% Deep Red, until you get a complete range of yellows to reds. I use these gradations quite frequently.

Dye sheet-I use a spreadsheet with formulas already plugged in—I just ad the weight of the yarn. All of the recommended additives are there, I just don’t use them now.

As for additives, from my point of view, the only one you absolutely need is citric acid. I have used all of them based on dyeing instructions, but gradually started doing without. That being said, I do weigh my skeins, dyes, citric acid with a triple beam scale. I use masking tape to label each skein with the weight and dye formula. You can also cut up Tyvek envelopes and use those for labels. A friend gave me some plant labels that loop back onto themselves, and those make great labels also (those are on the skeins above). I want to know how to achieve that color if at some point I’m designing and think that the perfect color is that one. I don’t want to have to guess at how that color came into being.

I also have pH indicators (http://www.daigger.com/catalog/product?deptId=&prodId=12520&q=ph+strips) that I bought from Daigger. I always check the acid level in my dyepots. I have hard water with iron content, so I like to use rainwater when possible. You can buy Metaphos from ProChem, which is a water softener w/o all the added stuff you would get in Calgon from the grocery store. I think ProChem has triple beam scales, but I bought mine from Earth Guild. The scales are quite an investment, so you might want to use inexpensive ones until you decide whether dyeing is for you. I buy yarn from Henry’s Attic in skeins, so that is one more prep chore that I don’t have to do. Since I weave with two strands of yarn, I always dye at least 2 skeins at a time, trying to find skeins near the same weight so as to come out evenly. Would that be considered compulsive? Or can I call it practical?

Good luck on dyeing. It’s a wonderful world out there, but expect some disasters too.

About a thousand years ago, I dragged my spinning wheel to San Antonio, Texas for a class held at what was then called the Southwest Craft Center. It is now called the Southwest School of Art and Craft. Rachel Brown was teaching a class on spinning and dyeing. She brought her Rio Grande spinning wheel, which I promptly fell in love with. But it’s the dyeing that really grabbed me. She used a method of twisting the skeins so tightly that they formed a resist. She started out with the lightest of the dyes to be used, put the skein in, and let it simmer. Then the skein was removed, untwisted, then twisted again so that a different part had the resist, added another dye to the pot, and simmered the skein again. This could be repeated several times with the result of wonderful painted-looking skeins. When I got home, I ordered dyes and then promptly left them in the box they came in.

Many years later I flew to Chicago to take a class with Michele Wipplinger on natural dyes. We used her Earthues dye extracts for hundreds of small skeins of color-I still have those hanging on my wall and enjoy looking at them. I loved that class and would have traveled to Seattle to be an unpaid intern of Michele’s except for the part about the day job. The class was held in a now-defunct center that offered many classes on Diversey Street in what (to me, a small town gal) felt like the heart of the city.  I stayed in a Days Inn hotel on the same street, and every day walked to my class wearing my backpack. I loved the dye process and continued for many years at home. I made my own yarn samples with careful notes in case I wanted to duplicate a color. I planted madder and weld, collected goldenrod, and searched for other plants to grow. I practiced indigo daily for several weeks. But my inability to develop a good black was discouraging, as was the fact that one had to mordant the yarns in advance of dyeing.  When you’re dyeing pounds of yarn for a project, the process can take a couple of weeks.

Those considerations made me change to acid dyes, even though part of me still wants to use natural dyes. I read dye books. All of it seemed like gobbledygook. Finally, I bought a book of dye samples (with formulas) called Shades of Wool with Lanaset Dyes by Linda Knudson, and started in. At first I would travel to camera stores that had acetic acid, but then switched to citric acid—so much easier. It has taken lots of practice to finally get the colors I want when I want them, and to develop the spreadsheets that I use. All I do is enter the weight of goods (WOG) and the numbers for citric acid, dyes, etc just magically appear! I use a triple beam scale and waxed paper to weigh the ingredients for the dyepot. Amazing that a square of waxed paper can weigh 0.5 grams! I keep a calculator in the dye room to add in that weight to the strange numbers I get with percentages of the WOG. I no longer mix up the dyes ahead of time in a 1% solution. I just weigh the dye powder on the scale and throw it in the pot. The only problem child with this method is turquoise, which stubbornly refuses to dissolve easily.

  I have always used the Sabraset dyes from Pro Chem.  My palette is total of 8 colors in the Sabraset dyes that I can combine to mix almost anything I want. Recently I have tried a few colors in the WashFast line that I couldn’t mix easily with my regular dyes. Today I am dyeing what the WashFast folks call Deep Orchid. I bought the color because it would take going through many skeins of experimentation to achieve that color for myself. Okay, so I’m lazy—and in a hurry!

And in that vein, I also bought Key Lime. So far, both of these colors are looking really good. Only 30 minutes more for this dye session.

Earlier, while trying to get various shades of browns for a client, I bought other shades, some worked, some didn’t. What was interesting to me in these pre-mixed colors is how the various colors that make up the dye are visible during the mixing process.

Now about storing all these dyed skeins …

Various yarns dyed lately, usually 2 skeins of each color. The red one is really than this picture shows. It’s a combination of magenta and scarlet. Doing darks today, hope for overdyeing ikat tomorrow, then orchid and lime on Thursday.

The only positive thing about the weather here lately is that I can catch rainwater. We have had rain almost daily and no sunshine for at least two weeks. It’s getting old, even though I love rain! Under the pecan tree is a veritable forest of toadstools. In the back, there is a tower of some sort of fungus growing up from the ground around a small tree trunk. The first thing I think of when looking at these growths: Is it good for dyeing?

But—the weather has been good for my dyeing. I have planned out my next few projects and possible projects, then made a day-by-day plan for dyeing the yarns. I have been using the same water over and over, filling as needed with rainwater from the buckets under the drips. The only bad part of this method is carrying 5 gallon buckets of water to the dyepots and lifting them. I can never remember how much a gallon of water weighs, but it’s heavy to lift and pour w/o getting it all over you in the chilly air! (It’s much chillier than usual for this time of year—my heat is coming on) By using the water over, I am reducing the amount of citric acid in the dye water each time. The dyes have been exhausting well, leaving water free of color at the end.

Next weekend our guild is having a 3-day workshop with Jennifer Moore called Mathemagical. I am really looking forward to it.

Saturday I did something really, really dumb. While helping my mother with a garage sale, I opened a door (crowded by stuff) right into my face. I broke my glasses and now have to buy a new pair, as the lenses don’t fit anything current that I like. I really like these glasses and so far haven’t found anything else that I like. It’s a blow to vanity and the checkbook! But Gorilla glue is working well in the meantime.

Since the dyeing on takes checking every 1/2 hour or so, I am tying ikat and listening to audio books. Finally learned how to get back to the right place on the iPod. But today I am determined to do some vacuuming, dusting, and bathrooms. One of my least favorite things to do.