The Reno Fiber guild has had a long tradition of a chocolate feast on their last meeting of the season. This is our second year of combining the feast with an indigo vat. We also had a couple of acid dye pots, a cochineal pot, and some kakishibui (fermented persimmon dye). This year it was gently raining most of the day in Reno which didn't seem to deter the group one little bit because we were under cover. Our hosts, (Gayle and her husband Jim) provided the garages for the dye fest.
Jen had prepared the indigo vat in advance. Last year she used the fructose vat recipe. This year we read about using henna as the reducing agent and Jen purchased some and used it. Wow - what deep blues were coming out of the pot; it seemed to go on and on before it was exhausted and had to be renewed before it was pulled back in to service. We are thinking that the henna is the secret ingredient. You can learn more about this from the Maiwa handout and can order henna from Botanical Colors who also gives instructions about using it with indigo.
Since we had been studying Japanese Textiles this year, people brought scarves and pieces of fabric to clamp and resist in various ways. Some of these went into the acid dye pots (Sabraset Dye) and some got dipped in indigo. People fooled around with the kakishibui and wished for a bit of sun to darken their work. The sun peeked out briefly - enough for us to see that it really did darken the fabric dipped in the kakishibui. We purchased enough for one liter of dye from the North American supplier and worried there might not be enough for everyone to try. But it really went a long way.
It was a lovely day and at the end, plenty of handspun yarns had been dyed, scarves were unbound and admired and we all wound up wondering how we were going to possibly get rid of the leftover chocolate.
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