Red Cabbage #2

The basics:

4 oz of wool, mordanted with 2 T alum and 1.5 t of Cream of Tartar, simmered for about 35-40 minutes.
3lbs of red cabbage, taken from the outer portions of two different heads.

Followed the directions (somewhat) for Recipe #232 in Natural Color by Ira G. I did change the ratio of cabbage to wool. Instead of the 8 parts cabbage to one part wool, I increased it to 12 to one. (I think. 48 oz of red cabbage to 4 oz of wool. Guess my math isn't that bad...)

Put the cabbage in the crock pot (...wow... that's a lot of cabbage) and added tap water. The original recipe said to use distilled. Don't know what difference this is going to make, but another experiment might be to use distilled. I'm cheap.

I soaked the cabbage and wool overnight. In the morning, I pulled out the wool, and added 2 T of salt to the cabbage, stirred and returned the wool to the bath. Plugged in Crocky, and put it on high. That was about two hours ago, and it's still not "simmering". Will check again in a bit.

After it's been at a high temperature for about half an hour or more, I'll unplug the crock pot and let the bath sit over night.

Here's to hoping it actually does something this time...

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Looked into other people that have had success with red cabbage. One site blended it first, which they claim made it easier to extract the anthrocyanins, the compound that makes purple and blues (gee, given the color of the cabbage, I never would have guessed.) ;)

Might try that with the remaining cabbage. I don't think I cut things up small enough. I might try slicing the cabbage like I would for slaw, or running it through the blender like one person did.