Tag: iron

Nettles 2013

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nettle4

Having been taunted by the lovely greens on other peoples’ yarns, I decided to do this at least once, even though I’ve always thought it would just give a pale yellow.

I first used the method described by Jenny Dean, where you chop up the plant tops, pour boiling water on them, steep for a day, then boil as usual. I recommend using sturdy garden gloves while chopping, unless you need a new pair of rubber gloves anyway. (I don’t know why this came as a surprise, as I frequently draw blood when making salads. What does baffle me however is the fact that my left thumb is still the same size and shape!)

I started off with 350 g of plant to 25 g of yarn, because that’s what I’d picked. Dean’s recipe says 1:1, but MotherOwl suggested at least 8:1 which was good advice. Anyway, simmering/boiling the yarn didn’t give me much of interest. So I decided to keep it under 60° C and that made the green much more vibrant. So I ended up doing an unmordanted skein for a paler colour, one to modify with iron and one cotton, as it apparently can give dark green with iron. It did, but then rinsed out to a dark grey-brown. Could be the tannin mordant, could be that Jenny Dean doesn’t rinse her yarn, but since iron makes it brittle, I always do.

nettle1

For some reason, the alum mordanted skein doesn’t show correctly with the others, so here’s one of it on its own which I think is more true.

nettle2

Brændenælder

Jeg havde egentlig diskvalificeret nælder som farveplante, fordi jeg forestillede mig at den bare giver en fesen lysegul. Men der er nogen som fremviser grøn, så jeg måtte alligevel prøve. Jenny Dean skriver bl.a. at det med jern giver mørkegrøn på bomuld.

Først brugte jeg Deans metode hvor man hakker bladene, hælder kogende vand på og lader stå til dagen efter, hvorefter man koger, farver osv. som “normalt”. Jeg anbefaler at bruge havehandsker når man hakker, med mindre man alligevel trænger til nye gummihandsker. Jeg ved ikke hvorfor det overraskede mig, for jeg har ofte blod i mine salater. Til gengæld er det forbløffende at min venstre tommelfinger stadig har sin oprindelige facon!

Den normale metode med kogning gav en kedelig khakigrøn, så jeg besluttede at forsøge med en lavere temperatur og bruge bladene med det samme – så et kort bad på 60° og så et par stykker i jernbad bagefter. Og det blev en hel del bedre! Bomuldsfeddet blev dog gråt efter skyl, måske pga bejsning med garvesyre, måske fordi Dean ikke vasker sit garn bagefter, men eftersom jern mørner garnet foretrækker jeg at gøre det.

Efter råd fra Uglemor brugte jeg omkring 10:1 plante:garn istedet for det gængse forhold 1:1, og det må siges at være vejen frem. Ellers er jeg ret sikker på, at garnet rent faktisk var blevet fesengult!

Chestnut hulls

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Not having access to walnuts – because I don’t know of any source – and no acorns or elder catkins because there just aren’t any this year – I thought what the hey, I’ll try throwing some green chestnuts in a jar. There aren’t many of those this year either, the paths are usually carpeted this time of year where we walk the dog, but I grabbed a pocketfull.

First I just put them in water, which went yellow and mouldy. So inspired by Dre (again), I added some ammonia. Boom, instant dark brown. Left it a week or three, I’m not counting.

Next up – will it do anything to yarn?! Should it be mordanted or not? I chose unmordanted for starters. Thinking I could go get another pocketfull in case there was a remote chance it’s working…

I added the liquid and the chestnuts to a larger pot of water and simmered with two 35 g skeins at very low temps – because the first one looked so promising at first dip. I would have just left them in there to dye cold, but the pH was 11, so that’s not a good method for wool.

 

SO – as we can give full marks for colour on this, what would happen once the colour IS extracted with ammonia (or rather, since the smell is really too much, would pot ash work?), if I then added something to lower the pH again before adding yarn? We need to find out, yeah?

This is what the skeins all look like if they are not rinsed after leaving the dye pot. I’m letting this one sit for a while, then I’ll wet it again. I got the pH down to 7 and added the yarn, left at about 50 C for an hour, steeped overnight.

And here they are together, left to right: first bath rinsed, first bath rinsed and dipped in horseshoe bucket, 2nd bath no rinse and still wet. As you can see, the brown bleeds right out as soon as you put the yarn in clear water, giving a dusty pink. One might try dipping that in vinegar to see if it changes…

I think I need to take the dog for a walk real soon and save the rest of those shells, the few that I can find. What to try: Hot extraction – longterm cold dyeing? How to prevent the dark brown from bleeding. pH testing. Anything else?

ETA Sept. 30th: I rinsed the brown skein, dyed in a neutral pH in cold rain water today. No change. Then I dipped one end in the clean dishwater that was sitting there anyway – no change. So it looks like the brown doesn’t run off if the dyebath is neutral. It’s going to be very interesting to test different pH values with this!!!

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Kastanjeskaller

Da jeg ingen agern eller ellekogler kan finde i år og ikke kender nogen med valnøddetræer, tænkte jeg, at den grønne skal omkring kastanjer måske kunne gøre det samme som valnødderne? Der er heller ikke mange af dem i år, normalt skvatter vi rundt i dem på skovstierne hvor vi lufter hund, men nogen er der dog, så jeg tog en lommefuld med hjem og puttede i et glas.

Først kom jeg bare vand i, det blev det gult og muggent af efter et par uger. Så tilsatte jeg salmiakspiritus og bingo blev det mørkebrunt. Men kan det også sætte sig på garnet?! Og eftersom base ikke er godt for uld, kan man efter at have hentet farven ud af skallerne, tilsætte syre, så pH værdien bliver neutral inden man putter garn i? Det må prøves, fortsættelse følger!

Jeg hældte indholdet i en gryde vand med to små fed ubejset garn og simrede noget tid. Tanken var at ikke spilde noget af mit bejsede garn, men evt. prøve en portion mere hvis der skete noget interessant. Det ene fed fik et jerndyp bagefter i hesteskospanden. Et tredje fed blev derefter farvet og lå i blød, efter at have skiftet pH værdien tilbage til 7, det er ikke blevet skyllet bagefter, da farven så render af, så jeg tester lige om det gør en forskel at det får lov at sidde lidt.

Edit 30. september. Det brune garn BEHOLDER sin farve både skyllet i regnvand og i hårdt vandhanevand!

Solar silk

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My first venture into solar dyeing, this grey, cold, miserable summer, was a couple of jars with silk and dye from Dyer’s Chamomile.

We did get one week of warm and sunny, but I didn’t actually think of moving my jars into the greenhouse until afternoon on the last day… Pretty typical of me.

After about a month I pulled it out, since nothing much seemed to be happening. (forgot to register, sorry)

I didn’t get any orange from the Tinctoria this time, but not necessarily due to temperature, but rather the fact that I was using 1/1 dyestuff to fiber this time as opposed to 3/1 last time. Bit of a shame since I wanted the orange shade as part of the silk project. So I fixed it by adding a handful of frosen coreopsis to some of the silk and a pot of hot water.

There wasn’t much difference in colour in the copper mordanted silk compared to the alum mordanted, so since I needed olive for my spinning project I dunked it in my horse shoe bucket. Voila presto!

Unfortunately I ran into another problem with the silk. I’d used two different batches, and the bit that I’d been gifted in a swap was really, really odd even as I soaked it before dyeing. Didn’t get wet properly, didn’t “float” and smelled odd. Did I pay attention? Nooooo… So what happend to that portion was, after it’s all dry and ready, the silk was completely brittle and rough to the touch. I can tear the fibres into short, short bits and it just feels unpleasant even after a wash. Not going to spin it. At first I thought it was the iron, but when half the coreopsis dyed silk ended up the same and the other half didn’t I guess it has to be the silk itself.

So I had to take some more of the yellow, that was supposed to stay yellow, and dunk that in iron to get the greenish tint, and then I gave up and acid dyed a new piece for orange. Easy to spot in the crowd I think, but probably won’t be noticed once they’re blended.

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Koldfarvet silke

Ikke helt SOLfarvet, eftersom vi ikke har haft så meget af den, i hvert fald ikke sommertemperatur, men dog farvet uden opvarmning af fibrene. De stod i glas ca. en måned, men der skete ikke rigtig den store udvikling de sidste par uger. Farvebadet er gåseurt, det ene glas med kobberbejset silke.

Jeg fik ikke orange denne gang, formentlig pga mindre plantemasse pr. fiber, ca. 1/1. Kobberglasset var en ret mørk gul, men ikke den grønlige farve jeg skulle bruge, så den kom lige et dyp i min hesteskospand og så blev det ellers oliven på nul komma fem. Orange fik jeg ved at lige opvarme en håndfuld nedfrosset skønhedsøje – coreopsis tinctoria og putte noget af det gule silke i.

Desværre viste den ene portion silke sig at være mere end underlig, så både den grønne og det meste af den orange er fuldstændig sprø og ru. Jeg kan trække fibrene over i korte, korte stykker helt uden at anstrenge mig. Silken var også anderledes allerede da jeg havde det i blød før farvningen, men jeg havde ikke regnet med det ville gå så galt.

Så jeg var nødt til at tage lidt af det gule og dyppe i jern igen, og for at have nok til mit projekt syrefarvede jeg så lige en portion orange. Jeg håber den ikke skiller sig ligeså meget ud når de bliver blandet.