Samples

I finished dyeing the samples last night, none of which came out exactly as I was visualizing. The beige turned out to be a peachy color of the sort Crayola used to call “flesh” (before remembering that dark brown and yellow-tinted people existed too). The dark brown turned out a dark purply-brown, not quite eggplant but close. The burnt orange turned out the orange of canned tomato soup, rather ugly if you ask me.

I wove up those samples (the last three are still on the loom) and took a good look. Astonishingly, the purply-brown eggplant color is my favorite – provides just enough contrast with the dark brown for the pattern to show, and on the yellowish brown stripes, tones down the yellowness a bit and looks like wood grain. The beige is okay – I think I’ll have to dye it a pale gold and try again – and the “burnt orange” was so atrocious that I terminated the experiment after only 1/2″, knowing already I didn’t like it.

Here’s a photo of the samples:

You can see how the white (and beige, lower left) weft really “pops out” at you, and shows the pattern clearly due to the strong difference in value. The orange (third from bottom on the right hand side) is more subtle. The black (4th and 6th from bottom on the right hand side) looks okay, but a bit stark. The pale yellow (5th from bottom) is garish, although the orange-gold (top) is very nice, and I will probably use it in a shawl.

The purple I will probably weave the jacket with is the top sample on the left-hand side.

I was going to dye the yarns for the jacket tonight, but since I have a job interview in the morning I figured it might be a good idea not to turn up with dye-stained fingers. (Yes, I could wear gloves. Dye always seems to get on me anyway.)