{"id":198,"date":"2008-08-18T16:39:04","date_gmt":"2008-08-18T21:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stringpage.com\/blog\/?p=198"},"modified":"2008-08-18T16:39:04","modified_gmt":"2008-08-18T21:39:04","slug":"silk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/?p=198","title":{"rendered":"Silk"},"content":{"rendered":"

First I decided that I wasn’t going to mess with acid dyes on silk anymore because I was having such problems. But I like using acid dyes more than fiber reactive dyes, and I’m getting excellent results on wool, so I thought I’d try one more time.<\/p>\n

\"Dyed<\/p>\n

I’m getting good color depth, finally, (even in a bad photo) with the addition of way more citric acid than anyone would expect, plus some sodium hexametaphosphate (a water softener). I live in central Pennsylvania; the stuff that comes out of my tap has more in common with liquid limestone than it does distilled water.<\/p>\n

What you can’t<\/i> see in the photos is that those still<\/i> aren’t rinsing clear in cold water. I know you can’t get a clear hot water rinse with certain acid dyes, especially on silk, but everything has to rinse clear in cold water or I can’t sell it. And that’s after many rinses.<\/p>\n

Grrrrrr.<\/p>\n

I got a very good strike – the fiber took up just about all of the dye, leaving a nearly-clear dyebath. But as soon as I put the yarn in a cool rinse, it lost a lot of the dye that had apparently bonded. The rinse water was far darker than the dyebath! I’m not using water softener in the rinse – that’s the next thing to try. I’d like this to work without major efforts on my part. <\/p>\n

I know it’s not the silk itself. It takes fiber reactive dye readily, so it isn’t gummy, or starched, or anything like that.<\/p>\n

My dyeing methods work just fine on wool, even without the water softener (and with a hot rinse). <\/p>\n

I think it must be the water, and silk must be more sensitive to hard water than wool. I have to make stock solutions with distilled water or all kinds of nasty things happen (learned the hard way. Cherry red congeals, while sun yellow precipitates in strings. Ick!). But I can’t practically use distilled water for everything including rinses. Cross your fingers for me that water softener in the rinse water helps, and if you have any suggestions please<\/i> leave me a comment.<\/p>\n

Having gotten hooked on spinning the silk cap, I also threw a couple more in the oven with the last of a couple of stock bottles splashed on. <\/p>\n

\"Dyed<\/p>\n

These are for me, but they’re fun to dye so I might do up a few for sale. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First I decided that I wasn’t going to mess with acid dyes on silk anymore because I was having such problems. But I like using acid dyes more than fiber reactive dyes, and I’m getting excellent results on wool, so I thought I’d try one more time. I’m getting good color depth, finally, (even in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-color"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}