Serendipity

Serendipity: the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. This describes my latest dying adventure. I needed some silk for a weaving project. An initial search of my stash didn't produce anything that struck my fancy. I checked out out a couple of vendors online and again nothing jumped out at me. So I decided to dye my own fiber.
I weighed out four ounces from the pound of Tussah that was in my stash. I had in mind a red orange but with more red than yellow in it. But when I weighed out my dye powder, my scale decided that it wasn't going to weigh accurately for me. By the time I realized that I had more yellow than made sense for the color I had in mind, it was pretty well mixed in with the red powder. (Note to self: Weigh your powder out individually so you can put the extra back in the bottle.) I mixed the weighed powder with 12 ounces of hot water. It was a pretty color but not as red as I thought I wanted. So I added a little more red powder. I emptied my red bottle, and still it looked a little orange. Oh well, let's go for it.
I had soaked my silk roving in water in preparation for following my favorite method of dying small quantities of fiber. I learned this cold pour method from "The Twisted Sisters Sock Book" by Lynne Vogel. I divided the roving into four pieces and followed the same procedure for all four. I laid plastic wrap on my newspaper covered counter and placed the fiber on the plastic wrap. I then took the squeeze bottle that contained my dye mixture and poured the dye onto my silk. I wanted a pretty heavy saturation so I tried to not leave much in the way of white showing. I sprayed the fiber with full strength vinegar and turned it over. I applied more dye on the back side and then wrapped the fiber in the plastic wrap and placed it in a colander that was in my dye pot. The large dye pot had about an inch of water in it. It also had three rocks that I use to keep the colander above the water level. Once all four packets of fiber were in the colander, I turned on the heat. I brought the water up to where it was just barely simmering - letting off steam but no bubbles. I set the timer and let the fiber steam for twenty minutes. The heat was turned off and everything sat in the pan overnight. The next day, I rinsed the silk and lay it out to dry.
And the color. Here is where the serendipity comes in. I didn't get the color that I had in mind; but the color I got is beautiful. I call it Orange Sherbet. It will make some beautiful yarn for some project but not for the weaving project that started the whole thing.
Ironically as I was working with the dye and looking at the color that I obtained, I realized that I needed a much more neutral color for my weaving project than either the color I had in mind or the color I obtained. So back to the stash. I am now spinning some beautiful gray/silver colorways from Carol Weymar (www.thesilkworker.com). The yarn from it will work perfectly for my weaving project. More on that project later.