MX Fiber Reactive Dyes – Daryl's Blog

A Watched Pot Never Boils…

…Though this is probably a good thing if you are mordanting yarn…

True confessions… I hate to baby-sit anything. I am bored, distracted, whatever you want to call it after about 5 seconds. Yes, I’m the most patient person in the world, but I have ADD, meaning I get distracted easily, and always have to have my hands busy…

So I finished my Fiber-Reactive dye sessions for January, my shelves are overflowing with colorful skeins that I’m itching to play with. Dyeing with MX Fiber-Reactive dyes, you set up the pot and leave it over night. Set it and forget it…

February 1st, I decided it was time to revisit and continue on my natural dye education and move onto the next step, which is mordanting the wool yarns, and wool fabric in the kit I purchased from Maiwa, to be able to follow along in the 10 module class.

I had previously attempted to mordant yarn, a step necessary before dyeing, and was using a regular electric hot plate, and of course, because I absolutely can’t stand to sit and watch a pot to keep it from boiling, I got distracted by something else in the studio, and I ended up felting the yarn.

I decided it was the fault of the hot plate, since it was electric, and I’m use to cooking with gas. I had seen instructors use induction burners, and I thought, that would be perfect. So I ordered one. I found out pretty quickly that it wouldn’t work for my purposes because it had two settings, 140 degrees, which is about my hot water from the tap, and 212 degrees, which is boiling. Nothing in between. You can’t hold anything at a simmer.

So I ordered another one. This one, a Duxtop, I did a bit more research, and reading the manual online, it had, starting at 140 degrees F, increments of 20 degrees up to 460 degrees F. I bought it last fall, and finally took it out of the box.

I thought, this will be great, set it and forget it. Yeah… no… I take my wetted, scoured wool yarn, and gently place it in the pot with the correct percentage WOF of Potassium Aluminum Sulfate, and set the temp to 180 degrees. I walk away. I didn’t feel like much was happening, so I put in my dye studio thermometer, and no matter how long I waited, the temperature never got above 140 degrees. Great, I’m figuring it is defective. I go back and reread the directions and there, in the fine print, it says, “…different cookware yields different temperatures, the temperature readout is only an estimate of the actual cooking temperature. It is accurate enough for daily cooking requirements. (No it is not…) The temperature in your pan may be different than the setting you have selected. Please test a few times to find the proper temperature setting for your particular cooking task and cookware…”

Sigh…

So pinned up to my wall is a note, that after some testing and constant pot watching, I’ve determined that to get the temp up to 190 degrees, I need to set the induction burner temp to 280 degrees, and once it reaches 190 degrees, drop the temp to 260 degrees where it will hold at 190 degrees for the hour I need to mordant the fiber.

Of course I’m bored and distracted the whole time, and my studio is one giant distraction. I get into trouble when I can’t focus on a task. I look up at the ceiling and what to I see? A pile of 6-8 ft. lengths of climbing rose runners we trimmed from the rose arbor back in 2021.

I know it was 2021, because I found a photo I took after we cut them. My daughter I remember, spent an entire Saturday breaking off all the thorns.

My intent at the time, was to use them for basketry; some of them were 3/8″ thick. Last summer, when I took a freeform basket class at Peters Valley, I took one of the lengths, and soaked it overnight in my pond, the only water body big enough, and brought it to class. The teacher began to play with it and we realized that these runners when dry are hollow, so they just bent in half, instead of curving into something I could use for a handle or a rim.

So I’m babysitting a pot, and staring at these runners in the ceiling, and I go off on a super unrelated tangent. I need to use them, or get rid of them. I’m sick of dusting plant materials in the ceiling.

I ended up cutting the rose runners into 24″ lengths. This idea popped into my head, influenced by a willow tray I made in a different class at Peters Valley last summer, that I could line up all the 24″ lengths and make a garden fence of sorts. I thought about weaving them, but I wanted space between the elements, and though I could use a leno technique, I just didn’t see how it was realistic to weave these into what I wanted.

So my next thought was some kind of knotting. Long story short, spending lots of time watching pots and thinking of all the possibilities, I ended up using a skein I had of Euroflax wet-spun linen, and suspending the first 24″ length from the frame over the door of my shower stall. From there, I added the lengths of linen, and did a couple square knots between each additional rose length. I found a bunch of knitting yarn bobs, and used them to support the long length of linen I cut. I soaked the rose runners in a large plastic basin on the floor of my shower as I worked.

It took a couple of days, but I’m really happy with my little fence.

When we converted the garage into the studio, I had a split ductless Heat and AC unit put into the block on the north side. It attaches to a compressor at the base of the foundation on the outside. It blows a continuous warm dry air, which has killed most of the plants in that particular area.

My landscape designer found an American Holly and told me that it would be happy in that location, and so last fall she planted it. I worry that the steady stream of dry air would affect the holly, it looked a little dry on the leaf tips that faced the compressor unit. And so, even though overnight, we got about 5 inches of snow with a quarter inch glaze of ice on top, I worked my way out to the side of the house, and placed my little fence behind the holly, which was looking a bit glazed from the ice.

I’m so very very proud of my little fence. I wish I had a willow patch. But I’ll settle for cutting more of the rose runners as they reach for the sky this coming year.

Meanwhile… I eat my meals at the puzzle table, otherwise I’ll mindlessly doom scroll on my phone. My mom loaned me a puzzle someone gave her, a brand I’d never heard of, Pickforu, which featured cats in stained glass. This was one of the most fun puzzles I’ve ever done, the colors are magnificent. (I’ve since ordered three more from Amazon…)

I grabbed a bunch of pictures of the poster, and thought about what I could do with those colors, and all that newly dyed yarn just hanging off the shelves in my overflowing studio.

I went around and pulled everything I thought could work in a color layout for a scarf run. I could use more scarves in my collection of things to sell at the guild sale, give as gifts, give as donations, etc. I figure I’ll put on a 12 yard warp. Maybe get 5 scarves?

The yarns that were skeined for dyeing had to be wound into cakes of course, which required hours of baby sitting the electric cake winder. I have one from Boye, it really is not a good product, but it is what I have and there aren’t a lot of reasonably priced alternatives out there. So I babysat for hours today, transferring the skeins to the electric cake winder.

And while I sat and monitored the action of winder, I knitted. I’m working on the second sock, which I started after my trip to Japan, 2023?

By the end of the day, or quitting time which is when I get attacked by all the animals for dinner, I had started the heel flap for the second sock.

I only have a couple more skeins to transfer to cakes, and I can start doing a yarn wrap. Really looking forward to this next adventure. And yeah, I still have to monitor the pots and mordant the silk and the cellulose fabrics. At least those won’t felt…

Stay tuned…

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered…

Last Sunday, I picked up my son, newly back from a deployment in Syria, and off we drove to Maryland for the day. It is about a 3 1/2-hour trip, and I was thrilled to have the company. He is such an interesting person to converse with, his knowledge of history, what led to what, and where we are now, is fascinating. Great conversation, perspective, and knowledge.

We got to my mom’s to deliver the quilt, and deliver it we did. First, she inspected the label I had made and attached to the back.

Then the unveiling… Of course she cried. I cried.

My son helped me hang it…

I got a great picture of my mom and my son. Mom will be 94 in May, each day is a gift.

She was so appreciative, but I think I was more appreciative for the gift of a project that kept me going, marking time through a difficult year. We talked this morning and she tells me that it is the first thing she sees when she wakes up, and she stares at it all day finding something new she hadn’t seen before.

Meanwhile, there was that flood thing… No progress on the restoration because…

I got this great idea… I have these spectacular perennial native plant gardens, newly planted last spring, and I can’t see them well from any area in my house. Long story… I woke up in the middle of the night last week to a voice in my head yelling at me to just change the window…

So this is the den currently. I am getting rid of the TV and credenza, and will move the piano in there, the cello, my recorders, and turn it into a music room. And I want to be able to look outside and see my gardens.

I have contracted Pella to replace the east wall pair of double hungs with a window wall with two casements. But the window won’t be ready for installation for 8 weeks. Sigh…

I moved my bar table and stool in there to have my breakfast and look out the current window.

Of course I’m trying to eat my breakfast and enjoy the view, and Mulder decides that he wants to see too. So much for my view…

It will all be lovely, and just in time for spring. Right now there is about 6 inches of snow on the ground, so I’m looking forward to seeing what that looks like tomorrow morning.

This is January. This is my month for dyeing. Once I got my rhythm, I can wind about 14-15 ounces of mixed cellulose skeins, scour them, move them into an overnight soda ash soak, rinse the dyed skeins from the previous day and hang to dry, and move the skeins from the soda ash from the previous day into a new dyebath, all in less than two hours. It is my morning routine. I’ve probably done 8-10 dyebaths. MX Fiber Reactive dyes from ProChemical. They had new colors for 2025, what could I do but try them…

This one is called Swamp…

And of course, I finished the twill sampler I had moved to my floor loom, and grabbed the next Structo. This one is a four-shaft overshot sampler, from Robyn Spady.

I pulled the warp forward, and transferred it onto my small floor loom.

I love this. I adore pattern samplers, I can sit down and in about a half hour, run through the draft, all five design areas, switch my tie-up from Rose fashion to Star fashion, and do it all again. This one should be on the loom for awhile, as I think there was about 6 yards of 20/2 cotton on those Structo spools…

As we head into the great unknown politically, and as so many have lost their homes to natural disasters, the world is looking a bit bleak right now. I try to stay focused on what is in my control, mourning the loss of giants in the textile world, Claire Shaeffer, and Jannie Taylor, and closer to home, the moms of two of my close friends, and one of my own, one of my oldest friends, we raised our kids together. She is gone, at peace I hope, and life will be a little dimmer without all of them. All I can do is put one foot in front of the other, wake up each morning and find gratitude in the day ahead. Yes, I’ll have to do a lot of shoveling tomorrow morning, but snow is pretty and healing, and I have northern dogs who think this is just the best! I want to be like them, roll around in the snow with abandon, and eat large gulps of fresh clean snow. Rest easy Judy, I will miss you terribly…

Severe Weather Alert…

The little stop sign with the exclamation point in the lower right hand corner of my Firefox Internet screen on my computer has been staring at me all day, with dire warnings of the impending nor’easter on its way up the coast. I’m checking the predictions, sort of, every once in awhile, largely because we have tickets to the Baltimore Consort at the Cloisters in northern Manhattan tomorrow afternoon, when the storm is suppose to hit, but I’m not paying too much attention, because weather patterns are unpredictable around here, they make better headlines than true predictions. At the moment, there is a 3-6″ prediction of snow for our area, which by Jersey standards is pretty nothing, if it turns out to be more like 3″. An hour south of us, there is a prediction of 6-12″. But the winds are suppose to be fierce, so weather patterns can shift a few miles and come in faster or slower, and the whole prediction ends up causing a lot of eye rolling and unnecessary panic. Nevertheless, I sent my son out to pick up a couple of things at the grocery store, that we desperately needed, like half and half, because you can’t have coffee in this house without half and half, and he came back to report that the grocery store was mobbed, and shelves are being cleaned off like there was a severe famine on its way up the coast.

So, I decided to spend the day, keeping an eye loosely on the radar, in my pajamas, in front of my computer, researching colors for next spring. Sounded like a good antidote to stupid headlines and dreary bleak weather. I have a couple of favorite sites, Design-Options, and Pantone, both have information about colors for the upcoming seasons, and I get an idea of the general direction of the trends. Not that it is that important, but I’m always curious, and sometimes I get inspired by a particular palette. I found a very cool You Tube Video on the Pantone site, and I watched it about 8 times, sitting with my little fan of Color-aid papers, getting a feel for the combinations. If you watch the video, which talks about how the colors are forecasted, make sure the sound on your computer is on, the adjectives the narrator uses are important, but comical at times, like the Thesaurus was brought out and dusted off. There were some great phrases like “subtly sumptuous”, “halcyon days”, tapestries of experience”, “adaptive attitude”, and “symbiosis of hues”. I particularly liked, “inventive integrity” and “soul searching and sustainability…”

I have a large block of Color-aid papers, there are 314 colors in all, and I lopped off the top one inch of each paper and put them on a screw post, so I would have an easy reference for playing around, while maintaining the paper order. Each of the papers in the full set has a code on the back that helps identify the color. So I watched the video, and pulled palettes that I thought I’d enjoy dyeing, I’ll spend more time this weekend tweaking and narrowing down, but I had a good start. Also, ProChem, where I buy my MX Fiber Reactive dyes, has a PDF on their website that gives the Pantone colors for Spring of 2010, with directions for how to dye each color. How handy is that!

And I spent the day just playing with color. I outlined the eight palettes as I interpreted them from the Pantone site, comparing them to the Spring 2010 colors from Design-Options, and I cut little Color-aid chips, and played around with arrangements.

This is the sort of thing I would do twice a year for Handwoven Magazine when I use to do the articles for them on Color and Fabric Forecasting. I’ve heard during my travels, how many mourn the loss of the column, but the reality is, the column was costly to produce and you the reader can easily with a handy computer and your own block of Color-aid papers, do your own search and experiment. Google “Colors Spring 2010” and see what you get…

Now that I have a bunch of potential palettes in front of me, I started looking at space dyed skeins I had laying around the studio, to get a feel for narrower palettes and more monochromatic possibilities, and largely this was just fun to see the palettes next to yarn. The skeins are from Cherry Tree Hill and they are a funky novelty knitting yarn. I think these were from the batch of novelties I picked up last summer at the Midwest Conference.

I may be housebound this weekend, but I have a bunch of white warps, and a cabinet full of dyes, and I can crank up the wood stove to keep the room temp about 70 degrees for curing, and I can have a colorful weekend in spite of the frightful weather outside!