Category: Plant Dyeing

Another harvest

PiaChit Chat

Mid November, and yes, there are still a few things out there to forage.

I trimmed some wild rose bushes that were reaching over the riding ring fence, so while I was at it I picked the fruits off. I got this idea from Rima (you have to scroll down a bit) that I wanted to try – didn’t pick all that many as it was a bit awkward cutting with my left hand, but enough to give it a go I hope. Scratchy work too without gloves, but I can’t feel what I’m doing if I wear them, the downside being that you feel rather too much when you don’t 😉 I also put some of them in a stew that evening because I’d forgotten to buy mushrooms, but frankly I got impatient with scooping the seeds out, so I’m unsure if they actually added to the taste. Will try with bigger ones next year if this turns out like it’s supposed to – I’m wondering if it won’t all just mold. I’ve done it with fruit, sugar and rum, but never just sugar.

after cutting - but not quite done jar of sugar and rosehips

I also picked a tiny batch of woad to get more colour onto the fleece I dyed a couple of weeks ago, it still works fine, if not as strong as in summer. Some of the locks were so pale they were almost grey, but now at least they’re more like faded jeans.

Got the reddest of the apples off the lawn, made G peel them and yes, managed to get my winter supply of apple sauce done (I like it on oatmeal instead of sugar – and I have a great recipe for marzipan/apple sauce buns too). Only had two vanilla pods, but it turned out fine. I put the jars in the oven afterwards, the canning procedure means it can last for years just in a cool cupboard. I don’t use pretty photogenic jars, I just recycle whatever we buy. My kitchen is far from pretty either, more like shabby 70’s homemade. But you can cook in it and I have a new drumcarder!

canned apple sauce woad dyed fleece

The kale is of course fine in the cold, I use it both in salads and warm, sometimes I make pesto. Hopefully the caterpillars are done nibbling their portion? New recipes are welcome if you have any favourites.

Dug up the last potatoes, well, G did, and while there are not a lot I think it was a fine harvest from 9 plants, and a good size too. 3-4 kg at least.

endnov06

I’ve been pressing leaves to use in collages, they got squished a bit more than I planned, paper thin and brittle, but at least they are bone dry. I hope they regain some colour if I cover them in acrylic medium, much like varnishing rocks does.

And now I think I can safely say that we’re moving into winter soon… There’s blue on the temperature curve for next week!

vejret2

Sen høstdanish

Her lige inden efterÃ¥ret slutter, er der stadig et par ting at hente i naturen. Hyben – som jeg vil prøve at rÃ¥sylte til saft ved at lade dem stÃ¥ i et glas nogen mÃ¥neder. Jeg tænker mug, men læste om det et sted; og da jeg alligevel skulle befri min ridebane for vildtvoksende rosengrene sÃ¥ blev det sÃ¥dan.

Jeg fandt også en lillebitte smule vaid til min råuld, ikke helt så god mere, men virkede dog godt nok til at give mere end gråt.

Æblemos af nedfaldæbler, manden fik lov at skrælle. Jeg kommer godt med ægte vanilje i, det smager super på havregrød. Eller i familiens marcipanboller, som jeg ikke kan spise fordi de ikke bliver gode med glutenfri mel.

Gravet kartofler op har han ogsÃ¥, næsten en hel murerspand af bare 9 nedlagte kartofler, og pænt store ogsÃ¥, det er da ok udbytte. GrønkÃ¥len trives jo i kulden – nogen opskrifter I har lyst til at dele? Bruger det bÃ¥de i salater, som pesto eller varmt.

Og så har jeg presset blade til collager, de blev lidt fladere end jeg ønskede, papirtynde og skrøbelige, men i det mindste knastørre så de ikke rådner. Jeg håber farverne liver lidt op igen når de får en gang malemedium på toppen.

interesting new growth in the horse paddock

Late dye harvest

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

Eager to try drum carding my Dorset fleeces (with a bit of Suffolk mixed in, they had not been separated) I decided last weekend to make a final raid on the dye garden to make it more fun than just white (I do still have a bag of white from last year of what I think is Suffolk). I know I said I was done, but I got two more fleeces, didn’t I. Same sheep – this time I only kept the best bit, perhaps a third of what I was given rather than 2 thirds. I haven’t weighed it though.

lateharvest3

And it turned out both the weld and the woad were still fine to use, green and fresh. I had dried some bundles of tansy hanging them from the stable ceiling – and left them there, so they are now covered in “dust” – mold spores. I decided to boil one bundle anyway and put some fleece in. Giving out colour just fine, but I’m chucking the other three bundles.

The last batch went in with some onion skins that were sitting on the kitchen counter anyway and a few cochineal sprinkles on one side, which oddly enough didn’t do much besides turn the water red.

lateharvest1

I used rather a lot of fleece in the woad vat, so apart from the green that didn’t turn out too interesting. But I can always dye the yarn again, or, if we don’t have any frost, go look for more plants in a few weeks.

Earlier this year I handcarded the part of the fleeces that I had acid dyed, and it took me FOREVER. My test bat on the drum carder last week took no time at all, no effort, no tired hands – so I’m very optimistic I can get spinnable fiber relatively easy. I’ll first card each shade on its own to straighten it out a bit, then I may blend.

lateharvest2

Sen farvehøstdanish

Jeg har jo længe gerne ville karte alle mine gratishamme, som jeg har plantefarvet gennem de sidste par år i bundter, både fordi de fylder ret meget og fordi det er en stor opgave når de er så fyldt med fnidder og knuder. Og så sagde jeg ja til to hamme mere i år, dog blev de sorteret med ret kræsen hånd.

Det sidste uld ville jeg ogsÃ¥ lige have farvet, sÃ¥ det er lidt sjovere at arbejde med, sÃ¥ en tur i haven og hente bÃ¥de vaid og vau, som stÃ¥r fine, friske og grønne endnu. Jeg havde hængt bundter af rejnfan under staldloftet til tørring – og derefter ladet dem hænge sÃ¥ de nu i det fugtige vejr er blevet helt dækket af et fint lag støv, eller rettere mugsporer. Jeg proppede det ende bundt i en gryde, og det farver fint, men de andre ryger ud. Og en bunke uld røg i en gryde med gÃ¥rsdagens løgskaller.

Jeg fik proppet lige lidt rigeligt i gryden med vaid, sÃ¥ bortset fra de grønne nuancer blev det lidt kedeligt – men enten kan jeg jo overfarve garnet eller ogsÃ¥ venter jeg med at karte den bunke og ser om det evt. holder frostfrit en mÃ¥neds tid endnu og mÃ¥ske jeg kan finde flere planter? Ellers har jeg faktisk en spandfuld blÃ¥ farve stÃ¥ende fra sidst.

Tidligere på året håndkartede jeg jo den del af hammene som jeg havde pulverfarvet, og det tog en evighed. Men det testbat jeg kartede på maskine sidste uge gik som en leg, så håber på jeg kan få de her kødfår i hæderlig stand rimelig nemt og hurtigt. Jeg tror jeg først karter hver nuance for sig og så kan jeg blande i anden omgang.

Weld – reseda luteola – farvevau

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

weldI 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.

weld2

weld3

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.

vau2013

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

weld4Weld 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 bÃ¥de rabarber, kobber, jern, vaid og japansk indigo. Et par silkefed blev det ogsÃ¥ til, jeg viser kun det ene, for det solfarvede kan knap nok kaldes lysegult, snarere tonet hvid….

Oak leaves

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

oak

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.

oak01

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?

cotton
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?!

oak04

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. 😉

Egebladedanish

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 pÃ¥ de “grÃ¥” nuancer jeg fik. MÃ¥ske de flotte sølvgrÃ¥ jeg har set, har været pÃ¥ bomuld? Indtil det faldt mig ind at IKKE gøre som i bogen, nemlig farve i blade først, og sÃ¥ putte jern i til sidst. Og det virkede. Men jeg er da ret glad for, at jeg ikke checkede hvordan andre gør, for sÃ¥ havde jeg jo aldrig fÃ¥et 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.

oak on silk
Silk

 

Rhubarb mordant part 2

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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.

rhubarb

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.

rhubarb2

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.