A friend of mine, who is a professor of Entomology, invited me to learn to dye fabrics with cochineal dye, which comes from bugs that live on cactus plants. It makes the red color you see in fine Mexican rugs. Of course, I jumped at the chance. You can get many different colors from just one dye bath, depending on the mordants you pretreat the fabric with. These are silk scarves. It was really fun. I can't wait to try it on sock yarn. Look for red yarn sometime soon.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Bug dyeing
A friend of mine, who is a professor of Entomology, invited me to learn to dye fabrics with cochineal dye, which comes from bugs that live on cactus plants. It makes the red color you see in fine Mexican rugs. Of course, I jumped at the chance. You can get many different colors from just one dye bath, depending on the mordants you pretreat the fabric with. These are silk scarves. It was really fun. I can't wait to try it on sock yarn. Look for red yarn sometime soon.
The Zen of Socks goes to Germany
My hand dyed yarn is getting away from me before I get it photographed for the blog. However, I did get a photo of Tibor and the yarn he bought (along with a DVD) to take back to Germany to his mother. Tibor was an exchange student 13 years ago here in Moscow, and came back to see how we were all doing. He is a corporate lawyer in Berlin now, and a charming young man. I'd like to think his time in Moscow had an influence.
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