The dye pot turned very purple because of the alum I used to mordant the wool...
After rinsing and washing, the result is the fuchsia color my instructions promised with the addition of alum. it's currently hanging to dry!
i used the left over dye bath to dye a second skein of wool. (it's actually a wool/alpaca blend for this one). i added some cream of tartar to balance the pH to get more of a reddish color. it worked very well. because the dye was somewhat diluted, it came out more of a hot pink color - though the dye itself is a very nice red. here's a picture of it in the dye bath...
and here it is hanging to dry. interestingly, the wool/alpaca blend held on to the color far better than my 100% wool has. almost no color ran out when i rinsed and washed it. you can see that the hanging skein is about the same color as it was when it was sitting in the dye bath too. (the white ties on the skein are from the cone of cotton that i used for my first scarf dyed in the beet dye - although they went through the exact same process as the rest of the skein, you can tell that they didn't hang on to any of the dye at all)
and finally... here are the two skeins next to each other. both dyed with the same cochineal. just a difference in the additives. i used alum to mordant both of them, and added cream of tartar to the dye bath for the skein on the left. both are currently hanging to dry!
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