I’ll be in London all weekend and have no time to blog.
So here is an early one.
And as all I’ve been doing with my month is dye yarn and write short stories for competitions I’ve got nothing more interesting to show you than my constantly stained multicoloured hands of which people continuously comment on. Depending on how I’m feeling on the day my response is either, ‘it’s an incurable disease,’ to which they grimace. Or I say, ‘it’s my job,’ and then they’re really interested.
However hard I scrub and wash them the colour always stays. It takes a week after dyeing until they’re flesh coloured again and even then – the nails and little cuts and such that hands tend to get stay that colour.
So here are a few pictures. We start with Indigo. Blue hands. The toughest one to get off.
The second one is an indigo/fustic mix to make green. The hands only went lightly green, but it was exciting when it happened as they don’t do it very often,
And lastly there is the cochineal. Pink hands. It’s an amazing dye. When mixed up it’s a dark blood red, then when you put it into the dye bath is comes out pink. In this picture I’d just dyed a whole load of yarn cochineal (the pink) and then ate a grapefruit.
When cochineal is mixed with citric acid it turns red, even orange at points. The juice is mainly on the fingers, but it dripped orange paths through the pink. It’s wicked.
Sometimes they can be a purple grey from the Logwood, but my Mum (head dyer) has been in charge of that dye. The Madder (orange) and Cutch (gold) never really stain your hands. But the Madder creates thin layers of orange dust where ever it goes.
Till next week folks!
