Poonies

[altivo]

No, not "ponies". (And get your mind out of the gutter, too.)

Poonies (or punis) are cotton prepared for spinning by carding it and then rolling it tightly into thin cigar shapes. I've been meaning for a while to experiment with dyeing some prior to spinning. I've seen some commercially dyed poonies and they look nice but the prices are just too high. So tonight I took a 100g bundle of Indian poonies and divided them into smaller groups, loosely tying each with pieces of yarn. Then I soaked them in a solution of warm water and sodium carbonate (washing soda.)

I used Procion MX fiber reactive dyes (bright yellow and navy blue) to prepare two small cups of stock solution (50 ml of warm water and about 3 ml of dye powder for each color.)

When the poonies were soaked through, I squeezed them out gently and set them aside while I prepared the first color bath by adding the yellow stock solution to 1.5l of warm water into which 10g of ordinary salt and 5g of the washing soda had been dissolved. The pale yellow stock solution blossomed into a brilliant orange yellow. I stood the poonies on end in this solution, sloshing them up and down gently then letting them rest for about 20 minutes with one end in the dye, and the other in the air, so that the dye only soaked up through about 2/3 of their length, leaving the top ends still natural colored.

When the yellow seemed intense enough, I rinsed them in running water until the water ran clear and squeezed them gently again.

Then I prepared the blue dye solution from the same proportions as the yellow, and repeated the process, but dipped the undyed ends into the blue dye. The end result after rinsing and washing out with mild detergent was poonies that varied in color from bright yellow at one end through green and then to sea blue with white flecks at the other end. This was more or less what I'd hoped for. Now if they dry out without being so matted that I can't spin them, I will be able to make cotton yarn in "bright beach" colors: yellow sun, green foliage, natural creamy sand and foam, and shades of blue for water and sky. I'll photograph the dyed poonies tomorrow when they've dried a bit. (Photo now available in next entry.)

Comments

[corelog.livejournal.com]

Sounds very pretty! :) I'll look forward to seeing the pictures later.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Still damp, but should be dry by tonight I hope.

[brokkentwolf.livejournal.com]

What are you going to make with your poonies? :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Final project to be decided after they are spun into a fine yarn. Both my guilds are on color study things this year, where I generally prefer to work with natural colors, so other than getting a range of hues that have some kind of harmony, I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do with it.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

Because ponies are much harder to spin?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, much more difficult, and I don't have anything large enough to spin them with.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Aww... No ponies? But I guess they wouldn't like spinning or dyeing that much.

Anyway, sounds very nice and colourful to me.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh, I dunno. As long as they get to keep eating while it happens, they don't seem to mind anything...

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Reading this entry (from the "When the poones were soaked" part onwards) substituting "ponies" for "poonies" made me smile. ^_^

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yellow, green, and blue ponies would certainly be a horse of another color. ;p

[schnee.livejournal.com]

...which by lemma doesn't exist. ^_~

[herefox.livejournal.com]

I'll be interested in hearing how this turns out. Oddly enough finding nicely dyed cotton in something other than pastel colors is difficult, which is why I picked up some to spin recently. Though that's an experiment that's not going at all well so far (I picked it up last night, promptly spun it too thin and it broke and decided that it was a project for another day *grin*)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Cotton requires an entirely different spinning technique from what we use for wool in most cases. Only the longest of cotton fibers (pima or sea island, for instance) can be spun on an unsupported drop spindle. A very light spindle would be best, like one of Jonathan Bosworth's "featherweight" designs.

Traditionally, cotton spinners have used a supported spindle or "tahkli" for the task. If you check Google for "tahkli" you'll find pictures and a description of the technique pretty quickly. You can construct a makeshift tahkli by attaching a heavy bead or a ball of clay to the bottom end of a double pointed knitting needle. Not as efficient as the real thing, but good enough to try the technique out...

Cotton can be spun on a flyer wheel if you have a high ratio and can reduce the takeup to nearly zero. I find that the double drive wheel seems to work best, though I can also do it on the Joy, which is a Scotch tension. Most handspun cotton through recent history has been spun on point spinners, such as the Indian charkha or a pointed spindle spinning wheel. These give a very high twist ratio while leaving the spinner in complete control of the takeup rate.

Like other short fibers, cotton is usually spun using a "point of contact" or "modified long draw" method, in which you actually want the twist to run up into the fiber supply a little, so that fibers are trapped even as you draft them and cannot pull apart. Much more twist has to be added before the yarn is stable, and you can pull it out as it is twisting to even the thickness. Cotton usually needs about ten times as many twists per inch as wool before it is locked in place and won't pull apart. You can find photos and videos on the web that show the basic technique, which is difficult to describe in words alone.

When I first tried to spin cotton, I had the same results you did. I gave up and put it aside because I couldn't imagine how it was possible at all. I returned to it a few months later and by much persistence managed to catch on. It really is a "leap of faith" because much of what you do would be entirely wrong for wool and would produce poor, lumpy results. The wool techniques just don't work with cotton, though, because the fibers are short and have no scales. They don't interlock with each other, and the twist is what holds them together.

[herefox.livejournal.com]

I am using a very, very light spindle...the problem is that it's so light that it immediately wants to spin backwards if I take my eyes off of it for even two seconds! So I've been parking and drafting again...I just don't have a real feel for the staple length yet, especially aftern having been playing with fairly long fibers in my last two spinning projects so I keep drafting just a little too far and things fall apart again. I'll get it eventually.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've never really practiced with a tahkli, but even there a true park and draft doesn't work very well. The problem is that cotton needs active twist as you draft in order to grip the short fibers immediately. To park and draft, I would guess that you need to overtwist a length of yarn, and use that as a sort of storage spring to feed twist into the new fibers you are drafting. I should acquire a real tahkli and experiment a bit just so I can explain it better.

Light spindles do tend to reverse easily, but to spin cotton with its high need for twist, I suspect you can keep it going forward by starting it at a really high rpm. Do you start your spindle by hand or use another method such as running it up your thigh? I generally use the latter technique, which gives a really high spin at the outset and lets the spindle keep spinning much longer without reversing or stopping. To get away with this, you need a longer lead of finished yarn above the hook to act as a shock absorber in the short period between starting the spindle and starting to actually draft fibers. It gets overtwisted, then feeds the excess twist back into the newly drafted fibers. I hope that's a clear explanation... ;p

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Ooh, ombré yarn Or whatever it's called when there's more than one colour. I like your fibre posts - they're really educational, especially to someone who should not, for the good of humanity, be trusted with needle or spindle in their hands.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Bah. I'm sure you could be trusted with a crochet hook, since they are pretty blunt. ;p So are spindles, for that matter. The sharp pointed ones are only found on a particular kind of spinning wheel that isn't often used any more.

Usually we call yarn that varies in color over its length a "variegated" yarn now. Other terms include "painted" or "printed" yarns, which are references to particular techniques used to produce the color sequence. I haven't seen the word "ombre" (shadowed?) used for this in a long time, though it was once used on the label of commercial yarns with varying shades of one hue.

[silver-kiden.livejournal.com]

wow, that actually all made sense to me. and i actually know what the salt is for! i know more about cloth making that i thought >..> you know, once you get more practice in with spinning the poonies, those would make good colors for towels, especially beach towels.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hee. A beach towel takes a LOT of yarn to make. I have plenty of cotton spinning experience now, and spinning these up shouldn't be too bad. I haven't decided what to make of the final result. It could make a couple of kitchen towels, and these colors would look nice there, but I'm thinking about something lacy instead, like a decorative scarf or mantilla. If I did the dyeing properly (in spite of my slap-dash let it happen as it will approach) the colors will be durable through washing and exposure to sunlight. Bleach will fade them though, including the chlorine found in swimming pools.

I accidentally spilled some dye powder on my left hand while measuring. Just a sprinkle, but my fingers were wet with the sodium carbonate solution so the dye set immediately. Scrubbing with soap and water did nothing to remove it, and I was resigned to having a couple of blue speckled fingers for a week or so. But this morning I thought to try hydrogen peroxide. The 3% solution used to disinfect cuts and scrapes did the job very nicely when combined with a scrub brush. Just a couple of specks on my nails remain...

[silver-kiden.livejournal.com]

two by two, hands of blue.../firefly reference
well, whatever you decide to make, just make sure to put up pictures so we know how it went. please? perhaps a hat ^^ :p