Tien Chiu

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February 12, 2017 by Tien Chiu

Huge piles of yarn!

In between threading up my loom, I have been contending with large heaps of yarn. The first pile is this box that appeared on my doorstep a few days ago:

black silk yarn
black silk yarn

That’s about 30 pounds of black silk yarn – 30/2 and 20/2 weight. I bought some white silk yarn from Eurestex and asked them to dye and cone it for me. Alas, the dyers had a large minimum order, so I had to order a large lot of it. Fortunately it wasn’t that expensive, and I was able to find others to split the cost. About half of it is winging its way to others – I’m keeping the rest to use in my next few shawl warps.

The second pile of yarn is for dye samples. As you may recall, I’m making a large number of dye samples using Procion MX dyes on cotton – 1500 samples, to be exact. I’m using 10-gram skeins of 20/2 cotton, purchased from Testfabrics, for my samples. Each combination of three primary colors requires 250 skeins, so I’ve been doing a LOT of prep work. Each skein is tied in only one place, so I add a second skein tie. Then I put a label on a piece of flagging tape that indicates the color and concentration of the first dyebath, and tie the tape around the skein. For the other two dyebaths, I’m adding a second labeled piece of flagging tape, like this:

labeled dye sample skeins
labeled dye sample skeins

Putting together individual skeins doesn’t take long, but multiplying by 1500 skeins? That is a Herculean task.

Here are the first 500-odd skeins:

dye sample skeins
dye sample skeins
more dye sample skeins
more dye sample skeins

Fortunately, I’m not alone in tackling this mountain of skeins. My fiber buddy Kaye is helping out (she is of course getting a set of samples for herself). And I have two very able and enthusiastic studio assistants:

two helpful studio assistants
two helpful studio assistants

Fortunately they are mostly offering moral support. Just imagine the mess if they were truly interested!

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Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing Tagged With: dye samples

Previous post: New commission!
Next post: Spring is here!

Comments

  1. annasheldon says

    February 12, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    Can’t wait to follow your progress. This is a job ONLY for an experienced planner.

  2. Julia says

    February 13, 2017 at 3:08 pm

    Things always go so much more smoothly with fine, furry studio assistants such as yours. Wowsa, that’s A LOTTA yarn.

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