No. 4 When the going gets tough, the tough.... dye

As much as I love making hats, sometimes my creativity searches out a new, or sometimes well worn, path to get out of the normal pattern.  This time it was back to dyeing, the kind that allows for a lot of serendipity: ice dyeing.  
I have a stash of beautiful gossamer silk scarves that I either bought myself in Japan or had a friend bring back for me.  They form a constant presence in my mind thinking about how to best highlight their incredibly transparent, loosely woven structure.  I could almost say, I feel a responsibility to the weavers, whoever they were, to give their finely conceived and executed work the most exquisite coloration I can dream up.  The strange irony is that, after giving a lot of thought to how to make their beauty shine, I found out from a friend who reads Japanese that the scarves were not woven in Japan but in India. I laughed... but my commitment to create something surreally beautiful didn't change a bit.

​Here are all four stoles, presented together but dyed individually.
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 (third from left)
​This stole had the most stable weave structure.  That's why I picked it to actually try some shibori on it.   The picture was taken with "flash" which intensified the appearance of the loose silk strands trapped between layers of plain weave... see below.

"No flash" prevented light bouncing off the reflective silk strands.  It creates a different effect.  
​More color difference, less reflectivity.  See below.  Notice warpwise plain weave stripes

​The second stole has selvedge to selvedge loose strands between layers of plain weave.