Dye Days

I have been working really hard at getting my fiber combed, carded and mordanted, because its time to dye all my fiber for spinning. Here are some of my results:



The first 3 are coreopsis tinctura. The first is on shetland the other two are on tunis.
Next is Sulfur cosmos exhaust on tunis. Sulfur Cosmos first dye on tunis. Sulfur Cosmos + an ammonia rinse.
The last 2 are tunis and shetland respectively. Black Eyed Susan. I hadn’t been getting the green I wanted. I thought if I added a reducing agent (ala indigo) unfortunately it didn’t work. Got yellow! (Bummer). I’ll try the BES again after I collect a bagful on Wednesday. I have to do some cochaniel batts to so I'll have them to overdye on the weekend to get some purples. This should be a great spinning winter.

Wednesday will be another try at BES, Jewel weed, Milkweed and Goldenrod. The weekend will bring another indigo dye vat. I've been holding off on making another vat to give the plants time to set seed and mature, hopefully giving me a darker color and more variations with the exhaust.

Here are a couple of pictures of the cotton crop (Yes, I'm still trying to get a VT cotton crop). If it doesn't work this time I'll try one more time in a hoop house. That fails, and I'll be buying my cotton evermore.