So, how did I achieve the first skein in a bright yellow colour? Young plants? Not using a lot of dyestuff?
I know they were a bit old this year, but the 2011 was photographed on June 28th and I don’t know if it had been just dyed or if it was a larger photosession (I see other yarns on the same day in my photo folder – no notes). And some old books state that you pick fully developed plants and then dry them before dyeing. Others say fresh and green. That’s usually May/early June here.
The other difference being, this year I solar dyed the yarn. Very greenish this time (in fact the same but a bit lighter as the Lady’s Mantle), whereas more in the brown direction last year.
Whether I’ll use this plant again or not, depends on the lightfastness test – I’m busy making strips to test for the next 2 months. Since so many plants give yellow, I’m actually more interested in developing the greens, so iron and copper could be interesting. The old books use chrome, but that’s no longer available here.
Incidentally, if you like a good beige, go for the spore thingies in early spring. According to said books.
PÃ¥ dansk
Jeg har testet padderok de sidste 3 år, første år har jeg ingen noter fra, så jeg gætter på at jeg måske har brugt meget friske, unge skud til den lysegule farve. Ulden fra 2012 er brungrumset, og årets garn, som er solfarvet 4 dage med ret gamle planter, er så blevet grønligt; det er faktisk samme farve som garnet med Løvefod, blot en tand lysere.
Jeg er gået i gang med at lave test for lysægthed, den vil bestemme om jeg vil farve med denne plante igen en anden gang.
First test dye with this flower, I began with this type, Tagetes tenuifolia “lemon gem”:
43 g of flowers to 25 g of alum/CoT mordanted yarn.
After 2 minutes in the lukewarm dye pot – do I see solar dyeing potential or what?!
I’m going to try the other variety I have on its own too, same procedure, to see if they are different, or if I can just toss it all in one pot. I’m also going to see if I can dry them and use later.
Første forsøg plukker jeg hver slags tagetes for sig og farver et enkelt fed for at se hvordan det ser ud. Flere tests følger! Jeg tror de vil egne sig godt til solfarvning, se blot grydebilledet, hvor garnfeddet har ligget 2 minutter i det lune farvebad!
One pot mostly flowers, one pot mostly leaves. Each “cooked” for a couple of hours, strained, wool added.
Very concentrated dyebaths, the leaves a toffee-tea colour, the flowers more towards yellow.
Wool with alum/CoT mordant.
I seem to think I’ve read that this plant gives grey/green, but until I’ve tested for lightfastness I’m not going to experiment with iron and other things. The hank is from the flower pot and the ball is from the leaf pot. No difference, really.
PÃ¥ dansk
Kogte to gryder, en med mest blomster, en med blade. Uld med alun/vinsten bejse dagen efter. Farvebadene var meget koncentrerede og mørkebrune. En anelse farveforskel, men garnfeddene er stort set ens.
Som regel, når jeg prøver en ny plante som ikke er en sikker vinder, så farver jeg først 1 fed inden jeg begynder at eksperimentere med jern og alt muligt andet. Tror nok jeg har læst et sted at løvefod kan give grå-grønlige nuancer? Det må tiden vise, tror jeg lystester disse først. Mit mål er fremover at primært arbejde med farveægte planter og til specifikke formål, bortset fra småtest af nye ting.
Since I’ve been doing a bit with the garden this year, I’ve decided to document it to remember, especially the dye flowers.
This time I’ve edited a teeny bit, unlike my last garden photo session. And I had a “helper” who thought it was a great service that I’d lie down on the lawn to relax together.
I’m not doing Tour de Fleece, in fact I haven’t been spinning at all lately. I do have a few yarny things going on though. Working on little things, a bit at a time, since my good days are still spent in the garden mostly, and then I have days where I can barely keep my eyes open. Hexagons are excellent projects for such days, takes no time to knit up 3 g/ 7 m of yarn, but you still feel like you’ve made something.
The Sunday batch
Dyed a few more micro skeins for the hexiflats and knit up the ones I showed on Sunday. Some of the solids I didn’t like because I used too much dye, so I’ll reknit combining them with other colours and scraps. Even if it’s a random, messy blanket I do want to like each piece that I put into it! I’ve figured that for starters I’ll need something like 250, but then I’ve only done the sum in my head and I really suck at that. It’s going to be roundish/hexagonish in shape or something along those lines.
I couldn’t find my dye notes, so I just played around (again), aiming for a summer flowers vs. beach ball look. Ok, I made that up after I saw the skeins… I also did a few “ok, if 4 sections look like this on a 1 meter skein when knit up, what do 4 sections on a half meter skein look like knit up?” Perhaps I’ll even document the result for later use. Some of them were supposed to be more defined, but the colours bled and blended. Oh well…
And then I had leftover blue, so I thought I’d start a sky/cloud series for later use in various combinations. All sorts of possible scenarios there, morning skies, winter skyes, rainy skies, storm, sunset…
There’s cobalt, ultramarine and teal in this collection, but microcamera can’t see the difference.
I also restarted knitting the lace scarf for my mum – and since I need the leftover yarn for something else I really should get it done, so I know HOW much I’ll have left. I cast on in December, then husband had vacation and could not stop talking while I was counting and I simply didn’t get back to it…. I don’t really wear this type of thing myself, but she’s much more ladylike.
I’ve been dyeing cotton yarn and worked a bit with madder – more about that in a later post.
I also do have some spinning planned, but some blending needs to be done first. This is an old project, and I know I need to make certain yarns together, I just don’t know what they’re for.
I just borrowed Spin Art by Jacey Boggs, lovely book, pretty photos and very simple, clear instructions for making the basic art yarn techniques, in fact you feel like you’re quite able just reading it! So inspired by that as well as the Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs by Sarah Anderson which I received some time ago, that may well be my next project once I get this one done. I’d love to make some projects with really textured yarn blended in I think.
And last but not least, I’m making a couple of tapestry looms a bit larger than the small sample frame I did. I seem to be coming up with too many ideas that contain blue and I don’t HAVE any blue yarn just now, not plant dyed, nor commercial (Which is odd since I love blue. And green. And, well, all the others of course). It’s a good thing tapestries take something like forever to make, because I can’t afford yarn to make that many! I keep falling in love with different colour combos and getting ideas for using them. Yes, I should paint more, much faster. Water colour sketches would be great, but that means I’ll have to buy watercolours!!! LOL It just never ends, does it.
