If it don't....it ain't....

Let’s take a detour and leave behind this colorful dimension of mordants and dyes.

Welcome to the quest that I have followed over the past few years in search of purity....a search that mixed with arrogance can turn into an obsession for perfection....

It all began in Mysore a while back.... with cashmere, stumbled over sandalwood, angora, lapis, wild silks of India, and other such fine things, propelled me to criss-cross the subcontinent on numerous occasions, and led me to Chidhiari a tiny village on the verge of the Rhotang Pass, where I found myself nose deep in a pool of natural colors........

The beginning is as good a place to start as any. Cashmere, my all-time favorite fiber, was also one of our first products. We worked hard for a few years on creating completely handspun (and handwoven of course), weft and warp fabrics, made of pure cashmere without the addition of any other fiber....The cashmere fiber is one of a kind. Short, full of twists and turns, it is soft, capricious and very active and all it wants to do is to free itself from the prison of the yarn, curl up and fall asleep on the surface of the fabric....The process is called pilling and to an untrained eye, and 'market driven expectation' (thanks again davi) is undesirable. Manufacturers go to great length to eliminate it, but in the process the original is so diluted that it is lost....I myself, in my own dark obsession for perfection, went to great pains to strongly encourage the spinners whom I work with to handspin a yarn that would not pill....It is impossible....If it don’t pill, it ain’t cashmere.

Second example, runs along similar lines, and to make a long story short.......If it don’t shed, it ain’t angora...

The world of natural materials offers many other examples of this phenomena,  but let's take a short cut and  arrive at the end of my quest, my daily world, the world of color....It is a beautiful place, filled with magical processes, a place where I finally feel at home, and am privileged to be a part of...But here too I see the darkness creeping in. Instead of humbly appreciating the brief moment of beauty expressed by natural dyes on my fibers, I want to fix them, and hold on to them forever.....

We have managed to produce carbon copies of true colors, just like the mills in Ludhiana and Srinagar have produced copies of true cashmere, we call them fixed dyes....But they are merely copies, life devoid imitations of true color, with no capacity of evolution and transformation, they are dead.

Hopefully the lessons from the past have sunk in and I can step back with wonder and appreciate the true nature of color and let that nature unfold before my eyes, instead of turning a copy, a cheap forgery, into an ideal....


.....if it don't fade, ah...you know the rest......

I wanted to do this before, never really found the chance, but this might be the perfect place to introduce an incomplete list of teachers who have helped me in this quest. First of all there is Rudolf Steiner, whose outlook on life, after years of waiting and long periods of separation has suddenly and unexpectedly woven itself into my work, next comes Sung Hyun Baek, from wherever he is now and whatever and under whatever name he teaches these days, showed me 30 years ago that alchemy and magic are possible even in today's world, then there is Sanjay who alerted me to the problem and set me off on the quest, Sri Kanth in Mysore who showed me my first sandalwood tree, Ric Peigler, in Texas whose love for wild silks is second to none, the numerous dealers of Jaipur who put up with hours of questioning and introduced me to coral, turquoise, lapis and other fine natural fixed colors, Rupindrath in Patan who opened all the doors to the Sacred Art of Nepali gilded bronzes and the magical studios of the craftsmen of Patan, Davi in Mexico whose nose for natural dyeing, and especially for handcrafts in general is so refined that it contributed to my 9 months of hibernation, during which time I tried to come to terms with this calling, and finally babydodo whose love and support have fueled this quest even at the points where it turned into an obsession.

Now we can leave this self-reflection for awhile and make our way back to a happier road paved with light, colors, crystals, metals and flowers. I vaguely hear the bells of a ceremony in the distance, but am still not certain.....

Speaking of angora and cashmere and other soft things, I just could not resist....Here is Eloise, our granddaughter again, she is our star...

Not to be Eclipsed

....This is a story of our solar-moon baths.....

It was about this time last year, when Dominique said to me: ......listen to this....I had a strange dream....the moon spoke to me and asked,....'what is all this fuss about the solar baths, don't you know that I work as hard and give better colors than the sun'......

.....Not being the type of people who take their dreams lightly, we pondered this for weeks......The moon was not happy and we knew it, but what were we to do?.....Carrying heavy buckets and jars, up and down the stairs to the roof, all night long, and hiding from the sun, just to please the moon, that would not work, there surely must be a balance...

....The answer never came, or so we thought....

In the last post I tried to illustrate the fact that solar mordants uptake the dye as well as yarns mordanted by any other method.....Here I would like to show how duration plays into the uptake of mordants and later into the uptake of dyes by these solar mordanted yarns via a quick hot bath.

The samples below illustrate uptake on selected inorganic and organic mordants. The yarns themselves have been mordanted, left to right for unmordanted, 1, 3, 7, 14 and 28 days....

Himalayan rhubarb 100% wof

Copper at 4%

Amla 100% wof

Tannic Acid 10%

Iron 4%

Pomegranate 100% wof

Now here are some examples of dye uptake on solar yarn, mordanted for different durations, in quick hot dye baths.  (Sorry for the fiber quality, when I was running these comparative dye uptake sample baths I did not pay any attention to the water temperature.)

Illustrated below you will find 25% alum, with left to right, 1, 3, 7, 14, 21, and 28 day exposure to solar mordant.


Madder, after an alcohol soak:

Logwood, after an alkaline soak:

So far we are getting best results, be it mordanting or dyeing at the 28 day mark, a full lunar cycle....but for the most part the 14 day mordant baths also give excellent results.....

....So yes solar works best, but in our experience, only if it dances to some some lunar rules.....

Thank you sweet moon......

Solar Rules

The first thing I did after arriving in Manali, was to open up my mordant experiment box. (The one I promised not to touch for a few years in my previous post.)

I ran over a 100 small baths in the last 15 days to confirm if my initial observations from last year were correct.

Today I am 100% convinced that they were. Solar is better. It is better for the fiber, better for mordanting, better for fastness and from what I see so far much better for the color.

The post from last year that started to deal with this subject is here Solar is better
If anyone is interested in a little more detail, please read the bold text that I inserted into the original post, do not bother with the original. It was an exercise in futility....

Here are a few of many examples of what solar mordanted yarns can do in quick hot dye baths.

All of these are metallic salts, the usual order is unmordanted yarn (the big baby skein) and alum, iron, copper, tin, chrome and zinc (the little baby skeins).

All the skeins have been light tested for a week or two, depending on the dye.

Iranian madder (fresh dye) :
Hope you guys can see how better the colors are on the new dye, than on the 6 month old batch pictured below.......ah...this world of dyeing is just full of wonder.....

Iranian madder (aged dye) :

Manjeet (Indian Madder) long alcohol soak:

Tesu (butea), fresh dye:

Daru haridra (berberis), new dye:

Lac, neutral ph:

Harsingar, new dye:

Lal chandan (Red sandal powder), quick lye soak:

Patang (Indian logwood), quick lye soak:

Rose petals, fresh dye:
I am intrigued by this dye, it has shown a potential for magic under different conditions....If the colors hold for two weeks I will work with it deeper and dedicate a post to it.

Patang (Indian logwood), quick alcohol soak: (the second from right is the closest that I have been able to get to black on angora).

Now that our fibers are happy will be doing lots of solar dyeing this year...........to be continued....

Filling the void.......

It was around August when I realized that while we were making good progress in our latest experiment, it would take at least nine and possibly twelve months to complete it, and not two or three as I naively estimated at the outset. Up till that point, besides spinning of yarn, we put most of our production work on hold, but the clock was ticking and fall and winter, generally our busiest seasons, were approaching. With a certain amount of disappointment we carefully packaged and labeled all the yarns and filed them away in large metal boxes, with the hope of reopening them in two or three years. At this point we are about 20% into this massive experiment, so there is still quite a bit of work left. The bright side of all this is that all the mordanting work has been completed, so when we do restart we will be working with well aged yarn.

At the same time it also became evident that while all of this experimental work was very useful and important, it was financially jeopardizing everything that we have accomplished over the last few years, and placing lots of stress on all the members of our outfit. At this point we had no choice and had to shut down the dyeing and go back to weaving and knitting of our undyed, handspun fibers. Of course we were hopelessly behind schedule and did not complete our shipment till mid December, losing four main months of the season. It was also too late for shows, of which we only had one (albeit extremely successful and more importantly encouraging) in Switzerland this year. Yet somehow at the end of the day our old clients carried us over with new orders and support, and etsy and ebay also kicked in, making up for my naivety, obsession and lack of planning. A warm hearted thank you to everyone!

Pictured below you will find some fruits of those efforts... So please visit and take a look: Fromsilkroad on Etsy. They are all very fine pieces and some are quite dyeable as well...

First of all, our yarns, our foundation so to speak, there are only a few of them left on Etsy but we do have lots of white hanspun angora in our studio. The knitting yarn is all three-ply and ranges from lace to medium. I also have single and two-ply weft and warp weaving yarn, but please keep in mind that it is more delicate than the commercial spun yarns, and for most weavers will be harder to work with. If anyone is interested please email me to fromsilkroad@gmail.com.

Here are some of the woven articles. Mainly handspun angoras, which are absolutely gorgeous and can compete with any pashmina shawl. ( I don't think the pictures due them justice.) There are also a few pieces of handspun cashmere left, and some mill spun cashmere. Due to the fact that we always sell out of our hanspun cashmere,  and at times experience back-orders and sourcing problems for the Ladakhi fibers (my personal favorite), last year we have decided to include a few mill-spun pieces.

And finally our knitted products, which have turned out to be so popular....but there are still a few left on Etsy and we will be making many more this year, hopefully dyed this time.....

I am happy to say that after a trying year we are still standing, and feel that we have learned something last year and will approach this year's production with more focus and reverence. I am coming back to the Kullu Valley in a few days to open up the studio after the winter break. April might get a bit boring from the blogging perspective, since at first we will be mordanting the large quantity of handspun yarn that has accumulated during the course of last year and this winter. But who knows, interesting things might come up so please stay tuned for natural fibers, spinning, weaving, knitting and finally production dyeing...I promise...

There should also be a few interlaced postings on other artisans as well, when I get around to them....

Dominique will be joining us in May. She has spent the last few months in the states with Alex, Rachael, Tristan and our little granddaughter Eloise...what a cutie!

For some strange reason this picture reminds me of Luke, the princess and Yoda....

Mordants, Modifiers, Temperature, Duration and Three Baths - Part 1 - Hot Baths

Comments in bold were written when I revisited this subject after about 10 months....


I have decided to comment on the final quality of all the mordanted yarn in this post, (which was originally intended for hot baths only)....


The pictures only present the hot baths but I have pictures of all of the them and some of the yarn (though I am using it up quickly for the dye uptake experimentation) and if anyone would like to see them please email me...


Please consider these bold comments as my final observations on this experiment, (at least for the time being)...


Again, I would like to stress one point....We were experimenting with delicate, very fine, angora-merino, handspun singles....They are considerably more responsive to all factors then regular machine spun yarns. 


It is my recent work with metallic salt samples and the color yellow that has led me to revisit and try to share the conclusions of this experiment with others.....When I jotted down my thoughts originally on the hot baths, I only had the hot bath results on hand, and all the observations were based on the comparison between hot baths only....


Now I can compare the three baths from the perspective of 10 months of aging and this gives me a clearer idea of the impact of temperature, duration and substances on our woolen fibers...


I have noticed in my postings that I have tendency to get caught up in little details, in this update my observations will be brief. If anyone wants more detailed info about a specific example (and there are over 250 of them) or the multitude of cross-comparisons that this experiment offers please write to me privately.


For first time readers and repeat readers, I would recommend just to scroll down through this post and read the bold text only. It offers the essence of what I have noticed. Originally I wanted to describe every step of this experiment, but that turned out to be impossible...

Three months ago we asked ourselves a question. 'What is the relation of mordanting substances, modifiers, temperature, duration and types of mordanting baths to the resulting fiber quality?'

In order to throw some light on this we ran an experiment with18 different mordanting substances, mordanted in three types of baths hot, vat and solar, with different exposure times.

Some of the answers we obtained were predictable, others confirmed our previous observations, but as always there were a few new insights, some quite surprising.....

Hope that some of you will enjoy this series of posts, and possibly discover some things that we missed in our own observations. If you do, please share them with us.

Let's start with hot mordanting baths. We ran these in the 80°C to 90°C range, trying our best to keep it at 80°C. We used 5 durations: 5 min., 15 min, 30 min., 1 h. and 2 h. Our skeins were 10 g. each, and made of handspun angora/merino singles.

We use a grading system of (1) to (10), where (1) represents the unmordanted yarn and (10) completely destroyed unusable yarn. The best score that a mordanted yarn could get is (2).

Here are the results on 18 mordants, modifiers and assistants. Please excuse some of the spelling errors on the cards.

1. Alum 25%

Solar yarn is by far the best...Looks as if it was never mordanted....It has bloomed, the other two yarns have shriveled. It is also much softer and could easily take a higher concentration of alum.  The hand of the 25% alum is perfect. 45C is a little better than 80C, but both are in a different class altogether when compared to solar.


The difference is huge, and cannot be overstated, the only way that I can convey it is to say that somehow life has been added to the solar fibers and taken away from the other two.


Most of my dye uptake experiments have confirmed that it gives stronger, faster colors than the hot mordants.

No wonder alum is such a popular mordant. There was very little damage to the fibers, even at this high concentration. 5, 15 and 30 min. baths all got (2), the 1h and 2h got (3), because the fibers became progressively harder after 30 minutes, but are still very usable.....This pattern, of a 30 min. limit, will stay with us through the majority of these examples. 

2. Iron 4%

Iron is the first mordant in the list whose change in coloration indicates the rate of uptake. So it threw some light on the other questions that I have been considering while running this experiment on fiber quality...The first of these is mordant uptake in the different baths and durations...In a nutshell, the 45C, vat style method, is generally worthless (and from now on I will stop commenting on it). While the hot and solar both show very good uptake results, through the reddish blush on the yarn, the vat style bath gives us a dirty white at best....


Even thought iron is harsher than alum the differences in fiber quality remains the same as with alum and solar trumps again.


The hot mordanted yarns gave me slightly stronger color  (the difference is minimal and negligible) than the solar ones....Since the fiber quality gap between the two methods is so huge, I can easily double or possibly even triple the amount of this mordant in the solar baths, and still get a better fiber.


(As a side note, all of my fibers from last year at higher iron concentrations are holding up well). Presently I feel that the method of iron application (and specifically the temperature) might have more to do with the fiber damage than the concentration of the mordant. (All of this has to be tested of course).

Iron is the first of our mordants that leaves a color trace of its absorption, but there will be many others. First of all very little damage at this rather high concentration of 4%. The idea of using iron at even higher concentrations is more and more appealing to me. Even though the 1h and 2h yarns were slightly harder, all of them got a (2) rating, with the exception of 2h which showed a bit of shrinkage as well (3). It is worth pointing out that each color (absorption) is progressively deeper. Though the 1h and 2h almost look the same.

We also noted uneven coloration in the 5 and 15 min. batches. This is all our doing, we did not move the wool around enough. This is very important esp. in the case of hot baths of short duration, but as it will become evident later, in case of any bath, whatever the duration

3. Copper 4%

The hot baths look mutilated in comparison to the solar. The hand and fiber quality in general is similar to iron, both not quite as soft as alum.


The biggest surprise here is that solar baths show better uptake than the hot ones. In this case I am basing myself on the color of the mordanted yarns.


(On the same note, I added this observation later: with certain mordants such as copper, iron and the organics, the color intensity is a good indicator of mordant uptake. Solar copper yarns, and organics for that matter, gave me better color results, in actual dye baths, than the hot mordanted yarns.)

The effect of duration on absorption makes itself even more evident with copper. In this case each batch is considerably deeper than the previous one. But our angora does not take to copper well in a hot bath. As can be seen in the picture the fibers are progressively more damaged. 5 and 15 min are still soft, but 30 min becomes hard and 1h and 2h are very hard and quite destroyed. 1h and 2h show strong discoloration, this is again a good reminder to move those fibers gently around in that bath. Please note the shrinkage and fiber damage.This was one of our worst hot baths. The final scores 5 min and 15 min (2), 30 min (3), 1h (8) and 2h (9).

4. Tin 8%

The solar baths are still better than the hot ones, but the divide between the two is lesser than observed in the previous examples.


Basically tin holds up well at 80C. I am quite surprised by this result.


The hand is similar to iron and copper.


After a few tests with dyes. Tin was the only exception where the hot bath mordant gave me a clearly better result than the solar, esp. with yellows. 


Of all the mordants and modifiers that I have tested, this is only one for which I would recommend the hot method. Personally I am still not sure if I will ever use it for dyeing, but if I do I will experiment with a higher solar concentration before I use the hot method approach.

Tin which manifested such negative impact on our local wool works very well with angora and merino blend. This is what we noticed before but were happy to reconfirm t in this experiment. The overall results and fiber quality are similar to alum. 1h and 2h show a little hardness and fiber damage, they get a (3). The rest gets a (2)

5. Chrome 4%

Again, hot baths are mutilated as compared to solar....I am starting to believe that what I considered a surprise in case of copper is actually a rule....Solar baths offer much better mordant uptake.

We are aware of the issues surrounding these toxic mordants, but decided to include them for two reasons. The first is to find out whether they are necessary (and have been too hastily set aside), or can be replaced by other mordants. The second is, what is developing to be my personal fascination with older dyeing texts. I wanted to experiment with tin and chrome and others in order to better understand the writers of these older texts. We are very careful, with the mordant bath and rinse water and recycle it all.

Chrome was a pleasant surprise and gave identical results to alum and tin. One point of note with chrome is the progressive color change which is evident up to 30 min and stops there.

6. Zinc 4%

Similar to, but slightly better fibers than chrome. 

In general chrome, zinc and tin damage our fibers slightly more than copper and iron, and chrome is probably the worst culprit.

Here is a basic list of the effect of solar metallic salts on the fiber structure of our angora/wool blend....Alum is best, followed by iron, copper, tin, zinc and chrome...Differences are gradual and all solar yarn is in acceptable condition, and generally much, much better than the hot and vat yarn.

Zinc behaved well in all baths. Same results as alum and tin. 

7. Tannic acid 10%

The results on all acidic baths, were good. Very little fiber damage. Much less than most metallic salts, with the exception of the solar alum.


All three baths are decent, solar is best from the point of view of fiber quality.

Tannic acid is another mordant expressing very limited fiber damage. All the batches were soft, with slight hardness at 1h and 2h. All got a (2) with the exception of 2h which got a (3). Progressive color change up to 1h, where it seems to level off.

8. Oxalic acid 10%

The discoloration, described below, only happened in the hot bath. The solar bath left excellent fibers.


With oxalic acid and few other substances listed directly below, we stepped away from traditional mordants 

and looked into the action on fibers of substances which are generally used as assistants or modifiers.

This is another chemical which showed significant fiber damage, esp. at 1h and most definitely at 2h. Granted, 10% was way too high and in the future we will bring this down to the 2%-4% range. 

The 5min, 15min and 30min baths were all soft and received a (2) rating. Things changed drastically at 1h, and continued to deteriorate in the 2h batch. Those two received a (8) and (9) rating respectively. As opposed to other coloring mordants where the color concentration changed gradually, the change with oxalic was sudden and started after 30 minute exposure. From that point it progressively got worse. I interpret the sudden change as a physical effect on the fiber structure, a burn or something along those lines. If any one has other thoughts on this I would be interested in hearing them. Since this happened only in the hot baths, this acidic ph threshold is closely related to temperature.

9.  Citric acid 10%

Excellent fiber quality on all three baths, but solar is still best.

This one was lovely and behaved ideally at all durations (2), with slight hardening at 2h (3). Probably our best acidic modifier.

10. Cream of tartar 10%

Excellent fiber quality on all three baths, and, at a risk of sounding like a robot, solar is still best.

Very good results, similar to citric with slightly stronger fiber stiffness at 1h and 2h. All received (2), with exception of 1h and 2h, a (3).

11. Sodium carbonate 4%

As expected, there is more damage to fibers with basic modifiers than with the acidic baths. 


And again (sorry for repeating this so often, but the facts don't lie) the quality of the solar fibers is much higher than that of hot mordanted fibers.

Again, good results. 5min, 15min, 30min, received a (2), slight fiber stiffness at 1h and 2h (3). All yarns still very usable.

12. Sodium bicarbonate 4%

Much more damage to fibers than carbonate. 


Solar yarn shows fullness and a certain bloom, white the fibers of the other two baths have thinned out, as if eaten away. Same observation applies to sodium carbonate.

The bicarbonate behaved slightly better than the carbonate, but the difference was minimal. All got (2), with exception of 2h which received a (3).

This is it for modifiers and assistants. In retrospective I wish we tested a few others, and will probably do so in the near future.

13. Pomegranate skin 100%

Great fiber quality in all organic baths, comparable to solar alum. 


...Again, just as you are expecting solar is best.....

With pomegranate skin we enter a new world. A strange place that is hard to define. This one and the next five substances can be described as dyes, or organic mordants, or bases for over-dyeing, and they are all of that.

Out of all the substances we tested this is the group that showed the most interesting variations with temperature and duration. I hope this becomes evident during the next few blog posts.

Very little negative effect on the fibers. They are all very soft (2), with exception of 2h which shows slight stiffness (3). There is a progressive change in color, hence absorption throughout the 5 exposure stages.

14. Ravenchini 100%

I discovered this dye last year and absolutely love it...


Fiber quality is significantly better on solar than on the hot baths.


The brightness of the solar colors is overhelming...


...This brings me back to what I said about the alum baths, there is something inherently sad about the hot bath fibers when they are compared to their solar counterparts....


...When I look at this difference, I cannot help asking myself : are we throwing a lobster into a hot water bath, when we treat protein fibers in this manner ?


I will stop my comments here for two reasons, expressed in three points :


1. The same story weaves itself into the other organic mordants....


2. Solar is better.....


3. I am not yet convinced about the usefulness of organic mordants. I can see using some of them as dyes, but can usually get a similar or better palate with copper and iron and ph manipulation.....


...Actually, this was the low point of the whole experiment....


I started it out of concern for my handspun fibers and for cashmere spun by any method....There were really no expectations as to obtaining specific results, and never would I imagine myself a solar purist, which this experiment has turned me into.

In retrospective, deep inside, I had one hope, and that is that the beauty of organic mordanting would reveal itself to me.....It has not, so far it eludes me, just like the color black on wool.....(Would it not be funny if these two were closely related?)....


...But having just said that, and knowing how my crazy mind works, I have a feeling we will revisit the world of organic mordanting soon.....They offer great fiber quality, on par with alum, so I really need to look at them closer....


...but first......the enticing world of solar dyeing beckons.....

Since our rhubarb plants did not make it this year, we set out to find rhubarb in dried form. We were able to obtain two species of herbs which are supposed to be rhubarb this is the first one of them. I am posting this one with a bit of hesitation, since there was lots of confusion as to the Latin name. Equipped with my reference texts, I will do more research on this one in September. For the time being please accept is as rhubarb, with a grain of salt and an open mind.

Very little negative effect on the fibers. They are all very soft (2), with exception of 1h and 2h which show slight stiffness (3). Just as with pomegranate and most of the organic mordants there is a progressive change in color, hence absorption throughout the 5 exposure stages. I suspect this pattern will continue with most dyeing plants.

15. Amlavetas 100%

This is the other plant, which is supposed to be a species of rhubarb. I am not at all convinced, but will research it further in September. Please refer to my comments above in  #14. In any case the colors are nice, hope they hold...

Fiber quality was the same as with the rhubarb above, In general very good. Color concentration or absorption peaked at 30 minutes.

16. Myrobalan 100%

In general not bad, but the fibers were a little harder than with the previous organic mordants. The uneven color with serve as a good reminder to turn those yarns well during mordanting and dyeing. Conspicuously, there is very little color difference between 15min and 2h. All got (2), but 1h and 2h received a (3) and (4) respectively.

17. Aamla, Indian gooseberry, Phyllanthus emblica

One of the most important Indian organic mordants, behaved quite well throughout and showed progressive color changes with each exposure duration. All batches received a (2), with 2h getting only a (3). Still they are all quite usable.

18. Walnut bark

Good progressive color change, peaking at about 1h. Same results as for amla above.


There are quite a few organic mordants missing from this list. We will look into them in later tests...

This is it for hot baths. I hope to describe the vat and solar/moon baths in later posts.