The Long Road of Failures Begins

There's no time like the present and I only have 6 months to make this entire blanket. After arriving home from the residency on Friday, I waited until Monday and started working on my project. The first steps in making a cyanotype encoded blanket are lots and lots of planning. First I had to buy yarn, of course. Then I had to make swatches in order to obtain the gauge.

The gauge for each of my swatches

$210 of yarn...and counting

 I did some cyanotype testing, which involved adjusting a photo with the right curves adjustment that took us the good part of a year to pin down. I printed the negative and tried it out on some sample paper.

It looked perfect after the test, so that was easy peasy. What could possibly get in the way now? I chose to use a spray bottle in order to get an even spread on the knitting. I think any kind of painting on knitting would be almost impossible to achieve an even coat. What happened? It was ominous that when I sprayed the stuff onto the swatch, it just beaded up like water on a duck and started running down off the knitting. That was not what I expected. I finally got some of it to absorb, but then it seemed like the blue stuff just washed right off in the water.

Failure number 1

Failure number 2

The same negative was used to create the above swatches. As you can see, disaster occurred. I chose the specific yarn because I thought it might be a problem if it soaked too deeply into the fibers, I wanted it to sit on the surface, but after the result I think I need absorbency. After some contemplation, I am going to try a different yarn. I think a cotton yarn would solve the soaking issue, but the spray bottle still might be a problem for the application. If spraying seems to be a problem after I use cotton yarn, I will try just dipping the yarn into a dray of the liquid. It will use up a lot and will be much more expensive, but what can I do. If that's what it takes, then that's what it takes.

So failures happened, but plans exist for improvement.