Madder

When I think of madder, I think of rich, earthy reds and deep, mysterious browns. I think of walking into a deep woods and smelling the soft smell of leaf mulch and Grand Fir.

I don't tend to think of madder as being orange.

I read that if you mix madder with ox blood, the lining of a cows second stomach, and a whole host of minerals, than you might be lucky enough to get Turkey red or a red-orange. I never imagined that I would manage it by accident.

The yarn is handspun Cotswold, true-worsted singles. I used 20%weight of fibre (WoF) for the alum mordant and 100% WoF for the madder dye stuff. I didn't heat it much about 50C, and cooked the yarn in the dye for 1 hour. I should have heated it up more to get a browner colour.

I dyed some other stuff after to exhaust the dye vat.

Now it is very pretty; but, sadly, this colour is totally inappropriate for the project I have planed. I think I'm just going to give up on the whole thing and stash this orange yarn.

I have just enough fibre left to try spinning another warp. But to be honest, I've lost my enthusiasm for this project. Natural or synthetic - dye stuff never seems to do what it promises.