Finished weaving sample #6!

And here it is:

Here are some closer views of the sections:

Thoughts:

• I need either more striation or less.  Currently there’s striation in some places but not in others, which makes it look like a mistake or an uneven dye job.  I haven’t decided which I prefer; it will depend in part on what happens with my dye experiments.
• I need to add more gold and yellow-orange.  I thought I had lots, but it pollutes very easily with other colors.
• I should probably ditch the dark purple (just before brown) and replace it with a warm rust brown.  Will meditate on that tonight.
• It looks a little washed out, but that’s because of the effect of the white silk.  Once dyed, it should look far more intense.

Tomorrow morning I will cross-dye the sample, painting it with various color schemes, and see what happens.

Ann asked how I could cross-dye the fabric when silk and wool are both protein fibers.  The answer is that silk is the only natural fibers that “goes both ways”: you can dye it with fiber-reactive dyes and soda ash (a la cellulose fibers) AND you can dye it using acid dyes, in the normal protein-fiber manner.  So I am taking advantage of this to dye the silk using the cellulose method, which won’t dye the wool.

Off to dinner!  Tomorrow morning I will wet-finish the sample and begin playing with dyes.  I never did get a chance to do a small sample with fiber-reactive dyes, so I’m just going to gamble that the method I used earlier, with tencel/alpaca, will work with without harming the wool.