Dyeing and digging

I did a few more dyebaths yesterday.  Here is what I’ve done:

dyed silk, skeins and pirns

dyed silk, skeins and pirns

From top to bottom, they are:

  • tram silk, 70% Polar Red and 30% Golden Yellow WashFast acid dyes, immersion dyebath with acid
  • tram silk, Cibacron F Scarlet, fiber-reactive process with soda ash
  • tram silk, Cibacron F Orange, fiber-reactive process with soda ash
  • 140/2 silk, Lanaset Sun Yellow, immersion dyebath with acid

The two skeins in the photo are not dry yet, so they will be several shades lighter once dry.

(I spent four hours winding the orange pirn.  Pretty pathetic output for four hours of labor, isn’t it?  Especially considering the number of knots in it!)

Meanwhile, a good chunk of time has been spent on the house.  We have now laid down sheets of thick paper followed by four inches of compost on the mostly-dead weeds in the front lawn.  The theory, at least, is that the paper will smother the weeds and the compost will act as mulch and as a soil (of sorts) for the lawn we’re about to plant, a mix of clover and grass.  (Mike is very big on including the clover, both because he likes it and because the nitrogen-fixing clover will help feed the grass.)  Neither of us is wild on lawns, seeing them as a waste of space and water, but we need something to replace the weeds and we don’t have time to plan anything more extensive right now.  The hardwood floor is going in this week, and we move in four weeks, so our focus is packing and getting done the things that absolutely must be done before we move in.

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Broken threads

I’m starting to dye the reeled silk I bought from John Marshall, and am running into the problems I more or less expected.  I’m hand-painting the skeins, batching, and then rinsing very carefully to avoid tangling the skein.  The skeins unwind in an orderly fashion (it helps that I tied each skein in 12 places before dyeing), but the thread is fragile, and difficult to wind off without breaking it in lots of places.  Patient as I am, it’s driving me nuts.

I have been experimenting with different dyeing and unreeling techniques in an effort to reduce tangling.  I want to use fiber-reactive dyes because Cibacron F fiber-reactive dyes has a much brighter color range than Lanaset acid dyes.  The trouble is that soda ash damages silk.  I had (being impatient) been painting the skeins with fiber-reactive dyes and then “batching” in the oven for an hour or two at 180F, but I think that may have made the thread more fragile.  I’m now painting the skeins and letting them “batch” at room temperature for a day, in hopes that this will reduce damage to the silk.  The final step would be to switch to acid dyes – probably Jacquard since I can’t get the colors I want in Lanaset – but I’m putting that off as long as possible, because non-Lanaset acid dyes just don’t have the washfastness I’m looking for.

I am also thinking of trying an immersion dyebath instead of painted skeins – I may try that later today.

I have also switched from my heavy wooden swift to a cheap plastic swift.  The plastic swift is of relatively shoddy manufacture, definitely not as high-quality as the wooden swift – but is much, much lighter and so less inclined to break the yarn.  I have switched from my electric bobbin winder to a (yikes!) hand-cranked cone winder, which goes slower and gives me more time to react to a tangle instead of simply breaking the thread.

All that and it still took me 3 hours to wind on 18.5 grams of thread yesterday, with lots of broken threads and knots.  (Unacceptably many, I think.)  I’m really hoping that the soda ash + high temperature had damaged the thread in these skeins – because if the skeins really are that delicate, I’m not sure how I’m going to unwind successfully.

Fortunately I do have enough skeins to experiment: I bought 1400 grams from John Marshall, which is about 3 pounds, and it comes in 50-gram skeins, so I have 28 skeins to play with.  And I can always buy more – he said he’d bought about 1600 pounds of fine silk yarn, and while it isn’t all the same, I’m sure he has at least a few more kg of the stuff.

But if anyone has tips for unreeling fine thread, let me know!

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Weaving along

I’m continuing to weave yardage on the 10/2 cotton warp, this time to explore patterning in dye applications.  There are so many surface design techniques available that it’s hard to know where to start, but I’m going to start with a modest experiment: white on white except in places where simple figures are stenciled in, using thickened dye.  This will produce a “white” scarf with areas of pattern.  I’m looking at the balance between size of figure and size of pattern, so I will start by screen printing small circles, then larger ones, and meanwhile varying the size of the woven pattern.  I think I could produce some interesting effects by going with small circles with a small-size pattern, then larger circles with a larger-size pattern.  So that is what I’m trying next.

Also on the plate is the possibility of doing a “tie-dye” in multiple colors, showing the pattern clearly throughout.  Here the pattern becomes more of an overall pattern and the focus is on the interplay of color in the “background”.

I’m also experimenting with different fibers for the weft.  I don’t like combining cellulose and protein fibers generally, because the care requirements are so wildly different.  Cellulose likes alkaline environments and a hot iron, protein fibers like acid environments and a cool iron.  Up until recently there really wasn’t much choice if you wanted to do cross-dyeing.  However, there’s a new product out, EZ Dye Cotton, which has been pretreated to accept dyes where normal cotton won’t.  I’ve bought a cone of that and will be experimenting with it as weft.

So many things to try!  I’m really excited about this, I think it has a lot of potential.

House-wise, the flooring has arrived at the installer’s warehouse and is being delivered to the new house today.  They expect to be done installing by the end of next week, at which point we can actually MOVE IN!!  So I have started scheduling things.  It’s time to start packing: our move-in date will be June 23.

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Beginner’s mind

Someone asked me (offline) whether I thought of myself/my work differently since getting my work into a museum, getting published, winning awards, etc.  The short answer is yes, but I’m trying not to.

Let me start by saying that it’s fun to pick up honors and awards.  There’s nothing like the thrill of picking up a blue ribbon, or having an article published, or having a complete stranger come up to you at a weaving conference and tell you how much they enjoy your blog.  It’s fun, and I enjoy it.

That said, I think it’s unhealthy to get caught up into the ego game.  Your work doesn’t care; it cares about the skill and work that you put into it, not what others will think of it.  And focusing on building and maintaining a reputation, winning awards, etc. can be tremendously destructive, both personally and artistically.  I went through this in high school and I learned my lesson: the more you think of yourself as above the rest, the more stress and grief you create for yourself in trying to maintain that position.  It’s just not healthy.

The other reason I think it’s unhealthy is that viewing yourself as an expert can destroy “beginner’s mind”: being open to ideas, exploring, and learning from everyone, even those who are just starting.  It’s too easy to close off your mind and think your way is the best way, or get frightened of exploring new things because you have a reputation to maintain.  (I have seen good artists fall into ruts for exactly this reason.)  I prefer to think of things the same way a good martial artist would: the black belt is not the summation of achievement, but an indication that you have mastered basic techniques, and are prepared to learn more.  This allows one to maintain “beginner’s mind” – instead of an expert, you’re a fellow student, maybe someone who understands well enough to teach things to other students, but fundamentally a traveler on the same path.

All that said, there’s a lot of positive to winning awards, the main one being that it can bring more self-confidence to those who are unsure of their abilities.  It’s easy to be too hard on one’s own work and skill level; it’s handy to have a total stranger, an “expert”, tell you that your work is good.  I didn’t really take my weaving seriously until I entered “Tiger Eye” at CNCH 2008 and won an award with it; up until then I figured I’d only been weaving a year and a half, so how good could my weaving be?  It does make a difference knowing that I can produce museum quality work; it encourages me to stretch my abilities.

But fundamentally, it’s not something I want to focus on.  I want to do good work, and I think it doesn’t help to aim for awards.  That’s something external to my artistic voice, and I want to make my work for myself, not others.  So, while there are positives to winning awards, it’s not something I want to focus on.  In the end, the work is what matters, and the work doesn’t care.

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Fiber-reactive dye chemistry

After a week of cat-in-ICU stress followed by a weekend at a weaving conference, my body said “Enough!”  I fell over exhausted on Monday and spent sixteen hours sleeping yesterday.  But I feel much better today!

And I have discovered something intriguing…fiber-reactive dyes will actually dye wool and protein fibers in an alkaline environment, in what is most likely a fiber-reactive covalent bond with the protein fibers!  I asked Paula Burch (probably the greatest expert on dye chemistry for small-scale dyers) and she wrote a very interesting reply in the dye forum on her site.  The short version is that fiber-reactive dyes will (mostly) dye wool in alkaline environments, just as they dye cotton.  And the bond is the stronger covalent bond characteristic of fiber-reactive dyes on cotton…so it is very permanent indeed!  The only problem is that the high pH will damage wool, which is why it isn’t done that way.  (Used at a low pH, the bond is the weaker ionic  bond, so is not terribly washfast – definitely not superior to acid dyes.)

This, of course, leads to a rather annoying conclusion: it is not possible to do a “pure” cross-dye by dyeing protein and then cellulose in totally separate baths, since the dyes for cellulose will also dye the protein fibers.  (There are dyes that are designed for cross-dyeing – Dharma’s Alter Ego dyes – but they are hideously expensive.)  On the other hand, this does simplify matters somewhat since it means you only have to process the fabric in one dyebath after weaving.  And it is still possible to do interesting things with two dye processes…I just have to think about how to place colors and designs.

So now I plan to weave up several yards of a couple different patterns – twill blocks, crepes, fancy twills – and experiment with different ways of applying dyes.  I will probably not finish before we move, but it will give me some exciting things to play with before, during, and after the move!

Speaking of moving, the flooring has finally arrived at the installer’s warehouse!  I’m still waiting to see when the installation can begin, but I’m guessing May 28. If that’s the case, we’ll move in mid to late June.

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