Category: Plant Dyeing

Fir cones 2

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

Last year I did a brief experiment with cones and a rather boring result.

I wanted to know, however, if mordanting the yarn would make a difference, so I mordanted the original skein from last year with alum.

Got plenty of cones, boiled them good with some potash and waited until it had cooled and the pH gone down again. In with yarn, heat, sit in a bucket for 2 days.

The yarn is very dark chocolate brown when you take it out, like the dyebath, and feels oddly soapy?! But as soon as you rinse it, this is what you get:

kogle5I then added a silk skein and left in there for a few days. Disappointing light beige, so heated it for a bit. This looked so promising that I actually added the wool one more time! Simmered and left for a day. Very nice brown! Only… the day after they were dry and kinda pink…

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While I was blooded and believed in brown I entered one of my failed cotton skeins (the ones I’ve promised to talk about later). It was almost white with a hint of yellow spots.

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Remains to be seen if they are lightfast etc.

Grankogler (rødgran)danish

Sidste år lavede jeg et kort eksperiment med grankogler, som blev ret skuffende. Men jeg ville alligevel se, om bejdse gjorde en forskel, så jeg bejdsede samme fed og farvede det en gang til!

Sjovt nok er garnet en flot, mørk chokoladebrun når man tager det op, men så snart vandet er trykket ud og man skyller det, så bliver det meget lysere.

For sjov skyld kom jeg sÃ¥ et lille fed silkegarn i bagefter. Det lÃ¥ først i spanden et par dage, det gav kun en meget lys beige, sÃ¥ jeg varmede det op igen, og det sÃ¥ mere lovende ud. Faktisk sÃ¥ lovende, at jeg puttede ulden i en gang til! Fin brun – som blev til rosa, da de var tørret. Meget sært.

Motley crew

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

I’ve been modifying and dyeing a few skeins here and there which I can’t be bothered posting separately.

Lady’s mantle with iron. Since the two hanks I did earlier were so similar, I thought I might as well modify one, I can’t remember why I didn’t do so immediately, but here it is.
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Watercolour solution, cold dyed. Tagetes and coreopsis. What I did after I was done testing was pop a hank of yarn into each jar with more iron, and it was so strong that they took up a dark colour instantly! No heat, just left them in there for a bit. Some rinsed out, but they’re still a lot different from my other yarns.
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Another batch of reeds, this time only alum mordanted, no CoT, and from the freezer to see if that ruined the plants. Complete succes, so having an abundance of this shade I overdyed some with woad.
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Blandet landhandeldanish

Lidt blandede fed, fra toppen er det Løvefod puttet i jernblanding, coreopsis og tagetes akvarelfarve tilsat jern og et forsøg med frosne tagrør og derefter vaid. Helt nederst alle dagens modeller linet op til fotosession.

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Today’s models lined up for photoshoot

Got the blues?

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

Harvested all my japanese indigo (Polygonum tinctorum), it was rather limp and old I think, took a bit to get the vats looking properly. But here’s the result, with various overdyed yellows as well. Both wool, silk and some of my failed cotton skeins, more about those later…

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Today is the last good weather for a while they say, so I really should get started on the woad!

Japansk indigodanish

Som før nævnt er jeg lidt sent ude med at få brugt mine blå planter pga alle de andre eksperimenter jeg har lavet i sommer.

Men nu fik jeg da høstet al min indigo og det lykkedes også til sidst at få lidt farve ud af den, selvom det ikke opførte sig helt som det plejer. Der er både uld, silke og et par af mine håbløse bomuldsfed, som jeg fortæller om en anden dag.

Random rants (with yarn)

PiaChit Chat

Still feeling a bit slow and tired here, I know it keeps cycling round like this, I just never cease to be baffled over it anyway. 😉 But I’ve managed to dye a little random hank of yarn now and again, all of which I’ll tell you about later, but for now I’ll just show them.

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I’ve never actually tested whether uninterrupted quiet, a stressfree environment etc. would break the cycle if it went on long enough, life keeps interfering. I’m working hard on avoiding the guilt trips that others try to send me on, but there are still “duties” as well as “things that just need to get done”.

And of course taking every 3-4 weeks out of the calendar for migraine, nausea, severe pains and my thinking patterns completely distorted. Oh, dear perimenopause how we do not love you. And then the catching up of everything afterwards. One of the reasons I managed to get a lot done this summer is the one time I had a whopping 6 week break, yay! I’m still waiting for the progesterone cream and agnus castus drops to really really kick in noticably enough for me to continue. I’m thinking of looking into some kind of detox of “heavy metals” (no, I don’t mean Def Leppard) and such, but I know that won’t necessarily make me feel better in the short run…

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So during the meanwhile, my brain feels as chirpy as ever, throwing a multitude of project suggestions my way daily, happily rattling on about yarn and paints and studio designing and on and on and on. It’s been a while since I updated my idea book, I better get up to speed and organize it, perhaps try the bullet journal system? (I already do/did something similar, but not that organized – and now of course I’ve already made up some additions/improvements for it…) I’m very happy that this IS HAPPENING to me, that my appetite for creating doesn’t go away almost ever, no matter how bad I feel. All I have to do is decide on a project waiting, pick it up and go. What’s missing in this equation of course is the physical drive to match the internal.

I’m also determined to learn to do one thing at a time, even if it means finishing some of the tedious practical tasks that go before or after the creating. I feel it’s essential to not getting sucked into the stress vortex again. Every time I feel well I can sense myself picking up speed automatically, it’s like a fast horse, if you just let it go, you may pass the point of control where no brakes apply, so you need to keep contact on the bit, rein in just a little bit regularly to remind it that someone is on top or you’ll crash. I’ve tried it – both metaphorically and with an actual horse, so I’m not making this up. 😉

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It’s funny though how the monkey mind works. When I was in the shower earlier, I thought this post was going to be sligtly different, but dressing, letting the horses out to grass, walking the dog (ah, another sunny warm day after 3 rainystormy ones!) and back here something else comes out of my keyboard. G says I ought to have a taperecorder taped to my arm 24/7. But then, when do I actually listen to it to cull out the useful bits? No, I guess important stuff will float by again sometime. Or not. Perhaps it will flow to someone more prepared in the moment, LOL.

I’ve been pondering the subject of thought patterns as habits and how much that influences us. I may go more into detail at a later date, but it’s been an interesting journey. Not just reprogramming and weeding out of thought forms but also reliving briefly things long forgotten, react to them perhaps for the first time ever and then letting go. I don’t get to choose them, they just emerge and I try to go with the flow rather than fight them, which is also relatively new to me. “Ok, so today I’m bawling my eyes out over something that happened when I was 7, and it feels like I’m going to feel this forever but I know that I’ll probably not.”

Changing thought habits is a really tough job, and I’m not working on it all the time. It’s one of those things that run in a spiral, you go on and on and nothing much appears to happen, until suddenly you find that you’ve circled around and actually ended up at the same spot, but a step higher. And looking down on the previous contact point you see an amazing difference. Pretty cool is what I think. It’s when we believe we should be able to make instant transitions once we make a logical decision, that everything seems to lock up. It’s also one of the best ways to become exhausted!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw]

And now my headache says to give it a break. I guess I’m either cycling round again or my new meditation cd is doing some weird sh*t. Only time will tell. I guess I’ll go sweep the floor and sort the dog nest rumpled sofa covers. Naps don’t help with this thing unfortunately. I may have one anyway, I tend to forget when I’m busy.

Whaddaya know, I wrote all this on Tuesday and then got interrupted by, tada! a gallstone attack, before I could take proper pix. I’ve been having a bit of pain all summer (or longer? I don’t recall) like a belt under my ribs but I didn’t think it was anything serious. Going in for a scan this morning, that means no coffee, no breakfast!

When and whether anybody is going to do something about it remains to be seen…

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The last day

PiaChit Chat

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September is for some the last summer month, but if you look at nature it’s autumn. The air is different, night temperatures drop if not also in daytime, grain harvest is usually done unless it rains too much, berries ripen and flowers wither or make an effort at a second round, not quite as showy as the first.

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The kale has survived the onslaught of tiny critters I think, my weld is looking miserable and the batch I cooked up yesterday did not give very much colour compared to the small samples I did earlier. So yes, you can drag your feet too long. I haven’t gotten round to my blues either, but the temps are supposed to stay mellow, so I’m still hoping.

I’m thinking whether I want to make myself a hat this year and which fiber to use.

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My back is getting back to normal after last weekend’s ordeal, just a bit of tension in my neck, still. Now of course it’s time to haul in the firewood before it gets wet again…. We get a pile delivered every feb-march, stack it to dry outside and then keep it in the shed over winter. (mind you, if we stay in this house I believe the foundation size for said shed, the original farmhouse from the 1840’s, would make a quite ok studio size for me and not too far to go to work in)

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I’ve been making fresh yarn sample cards for hanging in the open but not sun for xx months, perhaps a year? And getting the solar samples paired with non-faded yarn, numbered and all sorts of organized, it took me DAYS, and I’m so proud of myself for persevering. Just have to crochet little squares to go in the wash for sampling detergent effects and then I’ll put it all in a binder. 3 years of natural dye experiments.

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Next year I’ll do just a few new plant experiments if I can remember which ones have come to mind over the last few months, otherwise I’ll focus on getting as many shades as I can from just a few, lightfast plants and not bother with the fugitive ones.

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The rest of my week has been spent nursing the small brown pony who came down with an abscess in his hind hoof. Treatment for such is hot soapy baths to draw the infection out and clean the wound once it’s popped open. He was quite cooperative about standing with his foot in a bucket as long as treats were forthcoming.

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Some fade, others just keel over…

Den sidste sommerdagdanish

Selvom september kan give nogen fine, lune dage, så er det alligevel for mig den første efterårsmåned. Luften er anderledes, det føles anderledes indeni, jeg begynder at længes efter at lave vintermad, overveje garnvalg til den hue jeg vil strikke, blomsterne er enten visnet ned eller giver det en sidste krampetrækning med 2. generation lidt mindre farvebomber.

Jeg er endelig nået til at høste min farvevau(-reseda), men desværre er det vist lidt sent, den gryde jeg satte over i går har godt nok ikke meget farve i sig i forhold til tidligere på sæsonen, ja blot for en måned siden. De lover heldigvis lunt vejr, så jeg håber stadig lidt på at jeg kan nå at gøre noget ved mine blå planter, vaid og japansk indigo.

Jeg har brugt ugen pÃ¥ at være rigtig disciplineret og lavet garnkort til min mappe med farveeksempler, solblegede sammen med originale, nummerering af alle fed gennem 3 Ã¥r osv. Hver plante fÃ¥r sin egen side i et ringbind med noter og halløj! Jeg er ellers ikke til den slags administrativt arbejde, sÃ¥ jeg er meget stolt af mig selv. 😉

Min ryg er ved at være i orden efter halmweekenden, blot lidt nakkespændinger tilbage. Nu er vi sÃ¥ kommet til brændestablen, som skal i skuret inden det begynder at øse ned i ugevis, sÃ¥ det trækker fugt til sig igen. Det foregÃ¥r med trillebør 50 m frem og tilbage gennem en smal port, ikke noget med at bare læsse det i traileren og dumpe det foran døren! Brændeskuret er det oprindelige bondehus fra 1840’erne og ved at falde fra hinanden. Jeg gÃ¥r og tænker pÃ¥, hvis vi bliver boende her, at fundamentet vel egentlig har en ok størrelse til et lille atelier….

Og ellers har jeg bare gået og ordnet varme fodbade til den lille brune bisse, som ragede en hovbyld til sig på det ene bagben. Heldigvis var han yderst medgørlig, bare der blev puttet noget i den anden ende samtidig.

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