a movable feast

This is a parable.You have to do things at their right time.To everything turn,turn, turn. If not you risk having the man in the house, the aesthetic ruler in person, exclaiming OH no we're back to the 70's!

i had never ever indulged in textured weaving as i thought it was the most evident and the easiest way out. Take some textured yarn and pedal away and you'll have a hit. When i started weaving i wanted to take all those old fashioned patterns that appeared in Davison's green book
and update them by giving a contemporary look. i have a tendency to be blinded by ambition.

After some years it wasn't enough and i started designing my own patterns and that brought me to fine yarns.
All of a sudden the 70's were over and i had overlooked the lumpy clumpy yarns in fashion never to look back.
It is very comforting to be able to refer to the 70's in weaving circles. In the DIY circles most of the people were not even projects in the 70's :) But i'm digressing.

My own personal stash reducing campaign put me in contact with the Haitian cotton skeins i had acquired way back. Well, yes, a table runner, something simple and quick as the goal is stash reducing. It resulted in a time warp confirmed by husband-san.

The table runner needs a very hard press to flatten it a bit but we will be using it no matter what. We've got the dishes that go with it . Scandinavian, of course :)
That's it for unplugged and unplugginess.

i'm done with wabi-sabi for a while. i want to weave something complex and intricate now in very,very fine threads. Moving on.

neki desu

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photo by Liz Plummer

The other day the periodical alarm regarding dyes went off again.It has always annoyed me and the tales about how incredibly toxic MX dyes are have always amazed me. Yet everyone goes about the house happily spraying oven cleaner, window cleaner etc etc. etc without giving them a thought. The reasoning behind the lack of concern might be that as they are household products they are perceived as safe. WRONG! and yes i'm shouting.

Hand in hand with that myth, -excuse me you're not going to eat the powder as a spread or breath into the jar as you judiciously would not breath into any unknown jar, right?-the following go around and around in the ferris wheel of dyeing and they periodically re-surface causing varying degrees of alarm to new dyers and fiber artists.
And now without further delay and not in any specific order here they are, the MoD s - those magnificent myths of dyeing

you should use hot water to dissolve MX dyes.

If you do that what you'll be doing is activating the dye making it react with the water before it can hit the fabric.It means waste of dye and weaker color yield.

MX dyes cannot be used for silk.

Yes, they can be used, provided you use acetic acid as the auxiliary chemical. Colors are as bright as you are able to dye them.

Avoid using soda ash with silk.

This is a half truth. While in strong solutions it may weaken and dull silk, weak solutions do not present problems. In fact silk is scoured using a mild soda ash solution in a number of short baths.

Salt is needed to fix the dye.

Not really.What salt does is reduce the solubility of the dye in water and this favors the adsorption of the dye by the fiber.It also acts as a surfactant by suppressing the negative surface charge on the water so that the dye molecule can move towards the fabric and attach to it. (Knutson.p 51)

Dyes have a shelf life and after that they are useless.

Another half truth. They will probably not work with cellulose fibers, but will perform satisfactorily on silk with acetic acid as the auxiliary chemical. Shelf life depends on the storing conditions, light and humidity. We too have a shelf life.

MX can be used to dye in cold water.

Well, depends what you call cold. They need at least 70ºF(20ºC) to perform optimally as immersion dyeing.below that, you're throwing dye way and wasting your time.
And i will not discuss batching temperatures here as this is a topic all by itself.

Fabric/fibers should be rinsed in hot water.

Not the first rinse. This one removes the salt and chemicals. Then you can rinse the fabric in hot soapy water until it runs clear. The last one -and this is me- should be with Synthrapol just to be sure there's no more unfixed dye.

Natural dyes are greener and eco friendlier. Yes, provided you do not use any mineral salts as mordants. However there's a debate as the amounts and dilutions a home dyer uses will not change the eco system in ages. There's a personal choice here as with most things in life. Yet there's also the issue of toxicity in plants. Not all plants are made equal and being plants is not a synonym of being pretty and friendly. This is my all time favorite myth, seems that not too many have been attacked by a nettle plant :)

And the onions you may ask. Apart from the fact that their skins give beautiful oranges and yellows they also make me cry just like the above.

There is an excellent on line resource all facts as it is kept by a chemist. It's also a labor of love . If you have doubts about dyeing visit Paula Burch's site

neki desu

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