we are hanging here.

(par TONY KATAI)

film-grain:

This is my second time dyeing with weld, which is one of the most ancient plant dyes and gives a bright, acid yellow. This time I'm dyeing some handspun yarn as part of my undergraduate dissertation!

I had two 25g skeins of handspun yarn made from a fleece that I cleaned and combed myself, and one skein of other handspun yarn that I used to exhaust the dye bath. First I mordanted them using alum to improve the colourfastness.

I used 50g of dried weld with the first two skeins, meaning I had a 1:1 dyestuff to fibre ratio - this should guarantee a bright colour, which is what I needed. I added the weld to a pot of hot water and left it to steep overnight. In the morning I set it on low heat for 45 minutes and then strained the plant material out, leaving a dark orange-brown dye liquor.

I added the mordanted skeins and left them in the dye bath for half an hour, stirring every 5 minutes to ensure that the dye took evenly. They turned a bright yellow instantly but I still kept them in the dye bath for the full time. Then I took them out and rinsed them then washed them in a gentle soap to remove any excess dye that wasn't bonded to the fibre.

All of these steps were timed, as for my project I am analysing the labour that goes into the different steps of producing ancient textiles. The third skein however was not part of the project so I added it to the dye bath after taking the others out. I left it in for roughly half an hour, still stirring it every so often, and when I took it out and rinsed it the yarn was a slightly paler yellow, as expected.

I then hung them up to dry outside and when they were dry I twisted them back up into skeins, ready to be wound into balls when I need them for the next step of my dissertation project! Here's what the three skeins look like all done:

Panther finding a box in its enclosure.

allow yourself to rest and recover