I was making myself a nice cabbage dish the other day and couldn't bring myself to throw out the pot of bright purple water. So, instead I added some thread. Perfectly logical. Anyway, here's the results of the test run. Above is are the three samples {wool, nice spun silk, cheap silk} dyed with purple cabbage using a cream of tartar mordant and a bit of vinegar on the rinse. I like that all three of the pinks come from the same batch. The cheap silk made the brightest pink. Also, since purple cabbage makes a nice litmus test (literally) you can see the clothespins with their nice basic wood (pink) and apparently something acidic going on with the metal (green). You can use your excess cabbage to make litmus strips and test all the things for fun! Science! Yay!
I liked the result and then got to thinging "Now what am I going to do with this?" Obviously I needed another color, so I found another skein of the cheap silk and let it stew in the left-over coffee from yesterday. After drying I got a really nice yellow out of it. So there you have it - random project complete. I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. The colors on these threads will be more delicate, so I won't make anything that must be washed frequently or with gusto.
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