Hodgepodge

21. October 2013 PiaBooks & reading

october view — How the view from my office window distracts me from matters at hand.

What, no plant dyeing post this Monday? Well, yes, I do have a couple in my drafts, but they are rather dull and not very urgent, so I thought I’d find a time where I push the lot out at once “final natural dyeing week at the colour cottage 2013”, like. I do have a few more dye jobs waiting too, but as I’d mentioned, I needed a break, because I feel no urgency whatsoever.

No worries, in fact my entire first page of wordpress posts list are drafts! Surely I can find something else to talk about, right? Except they all pretty much require me to do things that I can show and tell. The knitting, the coughcough tapestries, the WIP paintings, the daily(?) postcards etc. etc. Lots of sketching/designing going on behind the curtains though.

yarn sample spinning — Yarn sketch showing how I do not intend to spin this fiber. 2×2 cable.

dried leaf — What happens to leaves encased in acrylic painting medium?

There is in fact some knitting. I’m almost, well sort of, back to the same place where I frogged my blue reversible sweater, now in a longer, slightly wider version with I hope a better looking raglan. And I’ve decided to first knit a hat in some old leftover yarns from my stash (needs busting anyway) before I commit some of my handspun, as I’ve never knit a hat before, so sizewise it’s a bit of a mystery. There’s something to be said for small items like this, though. You get it over and done with pretty quick compared to sweaters. Unfortunately I go through a lot of the latter and don’t really use accessories much. I may reconsider of course: The hat looks tiny on the needles. If I end up having to knit it three times, not much time is saved. Or I suppose it could become a Thing-finder pouch, to have something to show for it.

I “accidentally” ordered some more random library books instead of reading the ones on my shelf/ordering from my study list. I did have an ambition to order only one or two at a time, to take my time reading them and perhaps remember more of what they say. Problem is, sometimes they take almost a year, at other times I get 10 in a week. So I need to finish these and then try to be more systematic with my reading, so it doesn’t take away my crafting time because I have a deadline. Twice I can renew – sometimes. And only if nobody else is in line, so I sometimes have just 30 days for a whole pile. Fine for novels, I can do one per day, but the others I need to put down regularly.

Then I thought I did have some really exciting news to share with you, but right now I’m almost afraid to jinx and postpone it even more if I say it out loud. An exercise in patience for sure. Going on three weeks now… And I’m not even superstitious! I need to learn to not agonize over other people’s tardiness and supposed intentions. Do you master calm in the face of “bad” excuses? I seem to be getting better at seeing the logical side of it and not just fret, you could say I stand aside and watch myself do it for a bit. 😉 So while it still distracts me I seem to be getting over it faster, even when things happen in droves, as they are prone to do.

october garden belle de boskoop — I really should be making apple sauce before we have another frost.

Blandet landhandel

Denne mandag er der ingen plantefarveindlæg, dvs. jeg har et par stykker, men de er kedelige, så jeg regner med at udgive dem i en bunke. “Sidste farverunde i 2013-uge”. Jeg har nogen flere ting jeg vil farve med, men jeg trænger stadig til en pause kan jeg mærke.

Heldigvis har jeg jo masser af blog-kladder, en hel side fuld. Nå, ikke, de handler allesammen om noget der ikke er færdigt til at vise frem. Der sker en masse forsøg og skitser bag kulisserne, men mere om det senere. Lidt spinding, lidt collage og maling og forskelligt andet.

Strikket lidt har jeg også, så jeg kan blive færdig med min ret/vrang omvendetrøje som blev en anelse for smal og kort men for stor i ærmegabene. Nu næsten tilbage hvor jeg var nået til sidste år, og forhåbentlig også en lidt pænere raglankant, jeg fik eksperimenteret lidt for meget sidst. Det virkede i teorien som jeg ønskede, det var bare ikke særlig kønt! Og så forsøger jeg mig med en demo-hue i restegarn – er lidt spændt på den, for den ser godt nok bette ud på rundpinden. Måske det i virkeligheden er en tingfinderpung?

Jeg er “kommet til” at bestille flere tilfældige biblioteksbøger, så nu har jeg igen travlt med at læse faglitteratur på deadline, det holder virkelig ikke. Jeg må prøve at holde fokus og ikke bestille så meget og kun fra min officielle liste, så jeg bedre kan fordybe mig. Romaner sluger jeg hurtigt, men fakta kræver at man lægger det fra sig og fordøjer i ny og næ.

Og ellers har jeg gået et par uger og ventet på at fortælle en spændende nyhed, men den lader vente på sig. Selvom jeg er blevet bedre til at træde et skridt til siden, så lader jeg mig stadig gå lidt på når ting går i hårknude uden min indflydelse og jeg er i tvivl om den anden parts intentioner. Er du god til at sige pyt og fordrive tiden med noget andet imens?

Weld – reseda luteola – farvevau

14. October 2013 PiaPå dansk

I wasn’t actually sure if my weld plants would grow big enough the first year (my previous batch didn’t), nor whether I could use the leaves from the rosettes, or have to wait for stalks.

Turns out the first year leaves dye just fine. In fact, so well that most of the dyestuff from the first pot ended up on the synthetic tulle that I used to submerge the plant matter! I use a large canner for plants that need a controlled temperature, and it has a hotplate IN the water, so I figured I need to keep the plants away from it.

As you can see in the top and bottom photos, the plants thrive much better in my prepared, watered and weeded patch in the garden than the rough living in my overgrown abandoned veggie garden.

So anyway, the yarn afterwards looked really bleak compared to the tulle, so I ended up picking more leaves and just tossing them in on top. I just did 2 wool skeins with some cotton tests, then did another batch with a strainer over the hot plate instead for the rest of the wool. Much better.

Also a single copper skein, rhubarb, and some in blue pots, one of each type.

Weld likes chalky water and temps below 70 C. Solar dyeing on silk wasn’t that great a succes though, at least not with just the leaves in the jar and no artificial heating.

Big bag of dried weld from last year in my closet, so I may elaborate at some point during the winter, if not I guess it’ll grow back next summer.

Not my most exciting dye adventure to date, I hope to do more with weld in the future.

GUUUL!

Jeg var faktisk ikke klar over, om førsteårs rosetterne var noget at farve med, eller om man skulle vente på blomsterstilke, men det viste sig at gå glimrende. Dog satte det meste af farven sig på den tylpose jeg havde lavet for at holde planterne væk fra kogepladen inden i den henkogningsgryde jeg bruger til planter som ikke må overstige en vis temperatur.

Anden omgang gik lidt bedre og jeg fik checket både rabarber, kobber, jern, vaid og japansk indigo. Et par silkefed blev det også til, jeg viser kun det ene, for det solfarvede kan knap nok kaldes lysegult, snarere tonet hvid….

Oak leaves

7. October 2013 PiaPå dansk

Green leaves picked September 11th. Dried some, frozen some, to dye on silk, cotton and a sample strip wool only. The rest dyed immediately. Test also early summer leaves 2014 as well as brown self-dried.

4:1 fresh, 2:1 dry – oak galls 2% if colour not strong.

Those are my notes in short form. 😉 What that means is, I’ve dyed some wool 4:1 ratio, with and without premordant, and same with an iron afterbath. Then I did it again with oak galls in there too. You don’t quite see it in the photo below, but the dark skeins are actually a deep, chocolate brown, and the ones with iron minus oak galls are greenish.

The oak galls don’t appear to do much to the oak colour itself, it works with the iron. Don’t leave your yarn in there too long unless you are aiming for black!!! Half an hour the old books say. First dye for an hour, add iron, simmer another half.

Technically people use oak to get grey, a wonderful smoky/silver shade. I got all sorts of brown and grey shades, but not that one!

So I’ve saved a few leaves in the freezer as well as dried some to test later. Perhaps the grey is more easily obtained on cotton?

Then I had a stroke of genious if I may say so. Especially since I had not bothered to actually check what other people do, I just followed the book. What if I did NOT dye the yarn first, but plunked it into the iron/oakgall/leaf bath when it was squeaky clean?!

But I’m kinda glad I did follow instructions first, or I would never have gotten all those other shades. Of course now I’m wondering what happens if you just use iron and oak galls…..

Oh – and if you rinse and rinse and the water still comes out black as night – make sure you don’t have a piece of oak gall trapped in your fiber. 😉

Egeblade

De gamle bøger siger: egeblade vægt 4:1 friske, 2:1 tørrede. 2% galæble for at få mørkere farve.

Så det prøvede jeg. Man skal passe på ikke at lade det ligge i gryden for længe efter tilsat jern, med mindre man går efter sort, en halv time er vist passende.

Galæblerne gjorde ikke rigtig noget ved selve farven, de virker først sammen med jern, her var der en tydelig forskel på de “grå” nuancer jeg fik. Måske de flotte sølvgrå jeg har set, har været på bomuld? Indtil det faldt mig ind at IKKE gøre som i bogen, nemlig farve i blade først, og så putte jern i til sidst. Og det virkede. Men jeg er da ret glad for, at jeg ikke checkede hvordan andre gør, for så havde jeg jo aldrig fået alle de fine brune!

Jeg farvede både ubejdset (det er det, de fleste bruger) samt alun- og kobberbejdset, her var også klar forskel, så man kan let skabe sig en gradueret skala til brug ved flerfarvearbejde.

Cheating?

4. October 2013 PiaChit Chat

I was going to talk about spinning today. And possibly knitting. But I’ve just been too knackered to do either…. Here’s (some of) my wip collection! Not telling how long they’ve been in there….

Do daily photos count as postcards? Go check out my new blog if you’re bored. It’s just for laughs, something I can also do when I’m tired and foggybrained but refuse to give up. (yes, yes, I know what I said last Thursday but if I’m having fun it’s ok, right?) And, well, I did say I was going to do more Photoshopping in the future! I’ve been doing a bit of an experiment – how often do readers look at my menu? Answer according to wp stats is: Virtually never! 😀 (it also says nobody clicked the music video in my last post. Next time perhaps I’ll embed it. On autoplay. See how many subscribers I turn away or something *EG*)

If that’s not enough, here’s some cuteness for you, last Saturday I was babysitting. Meet Peanut the poddle puppy:

Monday, we’ll talk about oak leaves. I already dun that post, so I can go take a nap. 😉

Actually I’m ok today, I just thought I’d like to write ahead a bit and you know, hang out someplace away from a keyboard and actually do stuff. Perhaps.

Er det snyd?

…hvis man uploader daglige fotos istedet for at lave rigtige postkort? Jeg har lavet en ny blog for sjov, til når jeg trænger til at fedte med et eller andet men ikke orker snakke eller tænke. Og så har jeg testet, hvor mange der kigger i min menu, sandsynligvis ingen. 😉

Jeg ville have snakket om at spinde og strikke i dag, men jeg har været for træt til nogen af delene, så det bliver en anden gang. Masser af projekter i kø, men man skal jo kunne holde øjnene åbne til den slags.

Og så har jeg babysittet en pudelhvalp, hvis I trænger til noget sødt.

Rhubarb mordant part 2

30. September 2013 PiaPå dansk

I have long last concluded my first test of using rhubarb leaves as mordant instead of chemical ones. (even though they are in fact toxic, they are natural. Or, as MotherOwl points out below, even though they are natural, they are in fact toxic!)

And I have to say, it’s not really worth the effort. Not only does it not help the wool take up the dye any more than an unmordanted skein, in fact sometimes I could hardly see the difference. It also doesn’t add to lightfastness, both of which are the whole point of mordanting in the first place.

I tried both wool and cotton and none had better results than the other for me.

Top to bottom and left to right: Alum + rhubarb simmer not boil, boiled rhubarb + iron, boiled rhubarb, rhubarb + madder, rhubarb + weld, rhubarb + french marigold.

The alum mordanted, rhubarb dyed skein was also a handsome yellow in itself for sure, although it has faded a bit in just a month even without light. Without mordant they are a varying shade of beige depending on how hard you heat the dyebath. The madder is also quite alright, although not any kind of red exactly.

It did have one redeeming feature though: I really liked the shade I got from overdyeing with woad. From historical textiles we can see that some yellows fade away, leaving a once green section of fabric blue, but I’m not really expecting anything I make to live for 600 years. I’ll be forgotten and the line will die out when I do. It’s a patchy dye job because the vat had too little water and too much yarn, so I believe the darkest strands are the “truest” had it been done properly.

Check also under comments in my first post for additional info.

Rabarberbejdse

Ikke den helt store gevinst efter min mening, hvilket vi også debatterede under foregående indlæg. Garnet bliver ikke lysægte eller optager farve i samme grad som med alun, de gule farver kan knap nok ses ovenpå selve rabarberfarven som bliver mørk beige hvis man koger den. Det brunlige garn på billedet er krap, og den er vel ok, den grønne er overfarvet med vaid, og blev ret god, bortset fra jeg havde for lidt vand i gryden, så den er lidt skjoldet.

COLOUR COTTAGE

c/o Pia Juul

Category: På dansk