Cochineal Silk

With the return of good weather, I was able to do some dying. Today, it was silk in cochineal. This yarn is for a special order of stockings. It is beautiful.

Let's start with what the yarn used to look like.

And then look at what the dye bath looked like. I used recipe #118 (pink - crimson recipes for animal fibers) in Gwen Fereday's book Natural Dyes. I love this book. Her recipes are always easily understood and I get consistent colors from dye bath to dye bath. It is nice to be able to see the color you want and then to make it.

And, the final picture is one of the finished yarn hanging outside drying.

There was so much red still left in the dye bath so I threw in 300g of wool after the silk was done. It should be ready to take out of the bath when i get back from grocery shopping.

Now to make the stockings.