LAVENDER.
Feathers for lavender must be white, or nearly so, if you desire a good clear shade. All light colors can be used by first bleaching with permanganate of potash, or if only dirty white feathers, wash and rinse them thoroughly. Prepare bath of luke warm water and a small handful of starch, rub feathers around between the hands to expand the fibres; then add to bath a few drops of diluted violet. Enter your feathers and let remain about one minute in bath, keeping them meanwhile in motion; take out your feathers and add to bath a drop of diluted safranine; re-enter and raise temperature of bath a few degrees by addition of hot water; let your feathers remain about half a minute in bath; if wanted darker, add a few drops of diluted violet, and if lighter, less; after which take out your feathers and dry them in the usual way, being careful to use clean starch for drying. To use starch that had previously been used to dry light colors that contained acid, would most likely result in spotting your color, as the application of acid to any portion of the delicate color would turn it a greenish blue. If your color be found too dark for sample, you can either wash in a solution of soap water, or else pass feathers through a bath of a teaspoonful of oxalic acid to a gallon of luke warm water, after which rinse off well and put through fresh bath as per recipe.