Old Entries - black bean, and more

Dye jobs - black bean

So the black bean dyed wool came out interesting. I knew that I wouldn't get the show stopping blue that others got because I was using regular wool and not the superwash stuff. And I'm fine with that.

Here's the bean soak after an hour:



I soaked the beans for about two days. Soaked the yarn in alum and Cot for about a day. Soaked the yarn in the dye bath for about two days.

And here's the yarn. It's been rinsed with cold water and aired for about an hour so far:

 No flash

 With a flash

It's a grayish bluey purple as my best description. Or, it's a shade off of my bathroom wall. ;)

As for the rest of life, it really does seem like this is a sucky year for a lot of people. At work - one coworker's dad had a stroke, another coworker's daughter (31) had a stroke, my boss is on temporary bedrest in the hospital after she started having contractions at six months into the pregnancy.

So, I'm going to take simply joy in transforming natural wool into a blueish color. Lame, but it's a small thing to be excited over.

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JUN. 25TH, 2010

Experimenting again

Experimenting again, and this time with black beans. Not food, funny enough. Apparently black beans can be used to create a blue dye. Have the alum. Will get cream of tartar tomorrow (as well as a "use for dying only" set of utensils).

I have two batched of 4 oz of Fisherman's wool. I'm going to try to reuse the dye bath and see if there's any color difference. (And someone who had done this before said 1T+2t of Alum and 2t of CoT per 4 oz/wool.) Have a general game plan. Amazingly enough, I have a general game plan. ;)

It's going to take a few days, but this should be interesting. :D

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