Category: Acid Dyeing

Dyeing in 2014

PiaAcid Dyeing

plant dyed silk

A lot of readers come here while searching for posts on plant dyeing and some of you probably subscribed for that only. I realize that it’s been quiet on that front during the winter months, so I just wanted to make a service announcement that there will indeed be more posts about dyeing eventually. In fact I have several half done drafts I could begin with…

Soon I’ll be ordering seeds, this year I’m going to replace the coreopsis with orange cosmos to try out. There won’t be as many different plants as last year, rather new experiments with old ones. And I hope to be making things with my older dyed yarns to show. The first yarn I used felts really well but is very scratchy, so I’m looking for ideas for non-clothing. Baskets, bags, cushion covers, knit, crochet, woven, felted, pictures or pattern suggestions are welcome!

Some acid dyeing adventures are also likely to happen. I hope you’ll forgive me for skipping around between various topics, but that’s what real life is like here at the cottage.

I’ll try to make it easily accessible via the menu up top.

Farvning i 2014danish

Plantefarvningsindlæg har jo været lidt sparsomme her i vinter, men jeg kan se at de gamle stadig bliver læst ganske ofte, så jeg syntes lige jeg ville udsende en servicemeddelelse i den anledning. Der kommer helt sikkert mere farveri på programmet i år, ikke kun planter, men også pulverfarve.

Jeg bestiller snart frø og regner med at erstatte skønhedsøje med orange cosmos. Der bliver ikke så mange nye eller forskellige eksperimenter, jeg gentager heller ikke dem fra sidste år, men snarere nye eksperimenter med gamle kendinge.

Der skulle også være en chance for at få lavet lidt færdige ting med det plantefarvede garn, som jeg kan vise frem. Det garn jeg har brugt filter rigtig godt, men er ret krads, så hvis I har gode ideer til ting, frem for tøj, som man kan strikke, hækle, væve, filte, fx. tasker, puder, kurve osv, så del meget gerne billeder eller opskrifter! 🙂

Selvom jeg har opgivet at oversætte alle mine indlæg her på bloggen, vil jeg dog fortsætte med det når det gælder plantefarvningen, som minimum, evt. også andre garnrelaterede emner. Jeg håber I vil bære over med mig at jeg sådan springer i diverse emner hen over året, men det er sådan der ser ud her i farvehytten, både virtuelt og i virkeligheden.

Der er et særligt menupunkt i toppen til emnet, så jeg håber det er rimelig nemt at finde rundt.

Oddly enough, the old tea towel soaked up dye like a sponge

Getting it right

PiaAcid Dyeing

I mentioned in a previous post, that some of my dye samples for hexiflats turned out muddled and blended compared to what I had in mind. Especially these two:

wrong

So although I like them the way they are, I had another go, nuking the green for a minute in the microwave, THEN adding the “flowers”. You see, what I had in mind was 1. a lawn of dandelions and 2. rosehip bushes in bloom*. The dandelions are still not very obvious, but the other skein showed more promise. Little dots for flowers.

hex06

Voila! All knit up. Sorry about the cat hairs, our stupid barn cat managed to sleep on them even though I’d propped up the blocking mat vertically on top of 2 knitting baskets. She’ll try to lie on anything I’ve touched, even a hand sized notebook. Seriously disturbed creature. 😉

hex05

I also wanted to show the knitted skeins I made to test out the “cloud colourway”.

microskein02

hex07

I really like the first one, with a bit of effort you can actually see a blue sky with clouds?

hex08

And lastly, a picture of the other crazy hexagons I’ve been making lately, so different from when I started out making mini-skeins. I’m not sure I’ll be using all of these, but it’s a long way to 300 pieces, so things can change. I seem to like the yarn better than the fabric for some reason.

hex09

* I humbly apologize for the use of the words flower, bloom, dandelion and rose although I promised yesterday I would not.

My next knitting project is a hopefully quick summer sweater, completely see-through just to cover my goosebumps when the evening wind gets a bit nippy. I’ve had the yarn lying around for years, there’s really just enough for a t-shirt on normal size needles, but I hope for sleeves. As usual I’m making it up as I go along, I have no idea how the yarn will behave, so the “quick” could end up as frogging x 20.

isager1

Sekskanterdanish

Jeg eksperimenterer videre med mine microgarnnøgler til det magiske sekskanttæppe. 😉

Der var et par bundter sidst, som ikke helt blev som jeg planlagde, farverne rendte sammen og blev lidt mudrede inden de nåede at fiksere. Så jeg prøvede igen, malede grønt på først, en tur i mikroovnen, male “blomsterpletter” og så en tur i varmen igen. Det ene nøgle blev ok, det andet blev ca. ligesom det foregående.

Jeg fik også strikket mine sky-bundter, jeg synes det første blev ret godt!?

Jeg kan af en eller anden grund bedre lide garnet end det strikkede stof, så jeg ved ikke helt om alle stumperne bliver brugt i tæppet. På den anden side er der jo lang vej til 300, så meget kan ændre sig. Jeg forsøger at huske på at det er processen, at slappe af og lege og ikke planlægge eller designe noget.

Der er kattehår på mine billeder – vores tåbelige gamle staldkat lykkedes med at sove på sekskanterne, selvom jeg havde stablet udspændingsmåtten lodret på toppen af en bunke strikkekurve. Hun har en sær trang til at ligge på alt jeg har rørt ved, om det så er en A6 huskeblok.

Mit næste projekt skulle gerne være en meget hurtig sommertrøje på store pinde. Garnet har jeg haft liggende i 3 år, der er egentlig kun nok til en t-shirt, men nu ser jeg om ikke den kan blive langærmet. Den bliver gennemsigtig, men den skal kun lige danne lidt barriere når vinden bliver en smule køligere en sommeraften, jeg sidder let og får gåsehud selvom temperaturen egentlig er ok. Det er frit fra leveren som sædvanlig, så det med “hurtig” kan nemt ende med 20 omstrikninger….. Isager bomuld/hør, og jeg aner ikke hvordan det opfører sig før og efter vask og i brug osv.

No tour

PiaAcid Dyeing

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.

hex04
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…

microskein01

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…

microskein02
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.

lacescarf

I’ve been dyeing cotton yarn and worked a bit with madder – more about that in a later post.

maddertowel

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.

red indigo silk2 silk1 blue purple

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.

loomsupplies

Bits and bobs

PiaAcid Dyeing

Not much going on here, but I did pop some of the solid hexagons I’ve knitted into a dyepot for a bit more pow. Should have diluted it a tad more, as some of them came out black! Of course being superwash, they grew to gigantic proportions when wet, so I tossed them in a bag and into the dryer. Wanna see what happens when you do that?

hex02

I’d meant to tie-dye or paint some of them but felt too distracted. Instead I did a couple of micro skeins with mixed leftovers. There goes “subtle” for the blanket colourscheme! And I have a couple of other ideas to try out…

hex03

Otherwise I’ve managed to finish the sleeves on my two “endless” sweaters, meaning they are in fact DONE. And since it’s never ending sweater summer, I may actually get to wear them… The orange is a cotton/alpaca blend on 4 mm and the blue is Wollmeise lace-yarn on 3mm. And no, the fronts don’t meet up and aren’t supposed to.

orange3

wollmeise02

Goldilocks

PiaAcid Dyeing

I’m working away carding and spinning the fleece I dyed in honey jars last summer, making good progress I think. For most of the yarns I’ve taken several similar chunks and blended to get even more depth in the finished yarn, but this one intrigues me so much I want to leave it alone even if it’s just a small amount.

I have no idea how I got this colour, it’s made with the “pour several leftovers into the same jar” method. I just hope I like it as yarn as well!

gold1

And then there’s a batch that looks almost like a fox pelt, which I also rather like after it’s been fluffed:

foxy