Washed and (Almost) Dried

This morning the silk yarn was still very wet, so I took it out in the sun, where even by 9 am it was so humid I could tell it would take most of the day for it to finish drying.

The first picture is the yarn still fairly damp.

The second picture is one of the original hanks on top, slightly twisted, and another hank that I rewound in a different length to see how the colours would play together.

The red did not come out as strong as I had originally hoped, but I am very pleased with the over all results.


Since Sophia has some of the exact same yarn, and expressed interest in what I have done with mine I'm going to give more a more detailed account.

I started by soaking the silk in HOT water in the sink, a drop or two of dish soap should be used in this step (I forgot). When the yarn is thoroughly saturated-takes about 1/2 hour- it can be moved into the dye bath.

For the Dye bath I mixed Cushing's acid dyes, Egyptian Red-1/2 packet, and Terracotta- small amount left over, with 12oz boiling water, and 2 oz white vinegar. I then added enough hot water to bring the level of the liquid up high enough to cover the desired amount of yarn.

I then draped the yarn over the sides of the bucket that held the dye bath. One end of each hank was in the dye, the other end was low enough that it would continue to syphon liquid out of the bucket, drawing dye up through the fiber. I let this soak until almost all of the dye came out of the water- over an hour since my dye bath was not being heated. Then I steamed the yarn for 1/2 hour, and allowed it to cool before rinsing.

With La Luz being an unplied silk there was a small amount of surface fuzzing that occurred during this process, but it is still beautiful, and very shiny.

The Gotland only needed about an hour in the sun to be completely dry. I was very pleased when I saw it this morning. Not only did it not fluff up more in the wash, it really was finer than I thought it was while plying. It's about 21 WPI. You can see several strands crossing over the dime beneath it. This will make a wonderful delicate shawl for my mother!