dyes in wool

for mom's birthday

Talk about living artfully! Mom is enjoying a quilt retreat at the ocean this week for her birthday. She's getting some fresh sea air, much-earned rest, and she's having fun quilting with friends as well.

So while she's away today, I dyed a knitted wool sock-blank with various colors inspired by fields of lavender. I'll send Mom and link and she can see these on her i-pad at the ocean.

The idea: Two stands of yarn are knitted loosely into this "sock-blank" which is dyed, set, then unravelled and knit into two socks with matching and symmetrical color patterns.

see the socks - scroll to page bottom

Today I had enough good light to color-match Mom's samples. So I soaked a knitted sock dye-blank and then brushed it with my silk dyes. Here above the dyes are all quite wet still. When dry, I'll steam the wool for permanence, like I do with silk.

Here are Mom's color references for me to match. She had saved them for a long time, hoping to eventually dye wool.

I noticed afterward a similar color scheme in Grandma's hydrangea's. So I took a photo of them, bold but shivering in wet October.

I've been working on glass projects so didn't have a good table space for dying. I just laid the wool over plastic wrap on top of my Fremont antique glass samples. They actually made a beautiful backdrop with complimenting and contrasting colors.

The next four photos show the wool from left to right.

The tiny ball of purple was my microwaved test sample. Microwaving didn't allow for the even temperatures of steaming. I'll steam the larger portion and see how it does.

on silk

With the extra dyes, I had to create a silk painting too. Here I've shifted the palette a bit and hues are more bold than the dyed wool. Here are Carolina sand dollars drawn from my travels to South Carolina in spring of 2011.

summary

So when the wool is steam-set, and when Mom has knitted the wool yarn into socks, I'll try to get a photo and post it here for fun. It's all part of living artfully.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

sock knitting progression

the rest of the story...

Below are photos showing how Mom has begun knitting two socks at one time, drawing one yarn strand from the double-strand knit sock-blank.

Above and below, right and left socks have have matching color patterns because the strands were dyed together.

More photos to come when the socks are done...