Telekia – tusindstråle

Came across a patch of flowers in the forest the other day that turns out to be a garden plant by the name of Telekia speciosa, heartleaf oxeye.

Normally I don’t blog on Saturdays, figuring I’ll give you people a rest from my blabbing, but I wanted to get this one out of the queue, so here you go.

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I decided to nick all the mature flowers, leaving the seeding ones as well as the buds of course. Thinking it looked mostly like a sunflower, before I had it identified, I decided to treat it as such according to “A Dyer’s Garden” by Rita Buchanan. Mordanted with tin in the hopes to get greenish, boiled and soaked the flowers for a long time, then same procedure with the wool. I had 600 g of flowers and ?? g of Dorset wool, among it the batch from my failed woad seed dyeing.

Fresh out of the kettle today, still wet. Not green, but pretty good, I think I need to go back to collect seeds:

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Stor tusindstråle

Rendte ind i en dusk Stor Tusindstråle midt i skoven den anden dag og besluttede at hugge en portion blomsterhoveder til at farve med. Og det må siges at være gået udmærket! Jeg håbede på en grønlig tone og bejsede med tin ifølge Rita Buchanans farveprøver for solsikke, men den gik ikke. Selve den langvarige simremetode for både blomster og uld tror jeg dog var en god ide for at få noget farvestof ud. Jeg brugte 600 g blomster og ?? g uld.

4 thoughts on “Telekia – tusindstråle

  1. THAT is GORGEOUS colour! Our tansy and solidago have just started blooming–time to get out and grab some 🙂 I adore the yellows they give up so easily.

    1. I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The dyebath didn’t look like anything at all after simmering, slightly better the day after but not fantastic. So to get this much colour is definitely a bonus. I didn’t take the flowers out before the wool btw, they had sunk to the bottom, so I just shoved in some fleece and turned up the heat again. I doubt they would have yielded anything to cold dyeing, though.

      1. you never know–i’ve done solidago and tansy by cold method ie in a pot in the sun, no external heat but what happens naturally–if it’s fresh enough and there’s enough plant to fiber ratio, it seems to work a dream.

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