Blue?

I owe you some pictures of the indigo-dyeing! So I followed the instructions in "A Dyer's Garden" by Rita Buchanan, but I just had about half the indigo leaves that I should have for the amount of fibers I used.


It was a lengthly process, I think I managed to keep everything at the right temperature and the pot-in-a-pot waterbath system worked quite well. In the end the soup was quite smelly, so I thought I could have used urine after all, because that spectralite stuff can't be anything much different. I put in two portions of wool and wool/silk fibers and awed at the magic of color changing after airing the dipped fibers. The second portion was already much paler than the first one, so I decided to give them a second dip. And I am not completely sure, because it was already late in the evening after the first dip and I could not see the colors very good, but I think after the first dip the colors were deeper and not so pale. Anyways, I will try on it further if my plants ever grow back sufficiently. Here is my result:


The second portion has hardly any color and it looks more greyish. I think after the first dip it still had some ice blue, but if it faded because of the second dip or because of drying and washing I can't tell. Oh and the silk did not seem to take up the dye as much as the wool.