Last blooms and perfect weather.
August garden
Tag: colour
Plant watercolours
Heidi told me about making water colours from plant dye, so I just had to give it a go even though I don’t really have the time or energy right now for another project.
I still need to work on getting a more concentrated solution, the day I did this I had to go out, so I couldn’t let it sit on the stove to steam for hours. There’s also a matter of how long it’ll keep, my first jars were too tall for the fridge, then I managed to not have time to test the liquid for days. Then it got cold and rainy and not good for picking flowers… you get the idea.
So I’ve just been doing some washes, layering the solutions to see how dark they would go, adding iron and copper as well as soda ash and vinegar to modify. Nothing happened in fact, it may need to be heated – again, no time. And then I noted several days after, that my swatches had changed colour. So there is a possibility for modification, but a high rate of unpredictability or a steep learning curve in knowing what you’ll get eventually.
I started out with coreopsis and tagetes, meant to do a batch with weld also. But, well. The tagetes turned out very greenish yellow and the coreopsis nearly brown, so I’ll have to do perhaps birch for a warm yellow (or Dyer’s chamomile, which I only have in a dried variety by now)
Then there’s coffee and tea, tea with iron. I’m thinking mainly backgrounds for illustrations, to start off on something not white.
I tried getting direct prints from the flowers by “hammering” them into the paper, but just got brown smudges. The colour is not waterproof after drying, so wetting these papers again for eco printing would probably wash most of it away.
I’ll investigate some more, at some point, for now I hand over the torch in case somebody else has the urge or would like to share their knowledge. I used 10% alum in proportion to weight of the liquid.
Plante-akvarel
Et meget kort og forhastet forsøg pÃ¥ at lave akvarelfarve fra planter. Det fungerer – men er lidt upÃ¥lideligt mht farveændringer via kobber, syre, base, jern osv, da farverne først skiftede pÃ¥ papiret flere dage efter jeg havde malet det pÃ¥. (og allerede smidt varianterne ud). MÃ¥ske det virker bedre at opvarme hver enkelt variant eller lave dem mens det oprindelige bad er varmt.
I virkeligheden havde jeg hverken tid eller ork, skulle i byen den dag jeg kogte blomsterne, så jeg kunne ikke lade dem stå på blusset og dampe mere ind, vejret blev skidt til blomsterplukning og jeg har bare for meget at se til.. Men hvis nogen skulle få lyst og måske endda dele deres erfaringer, så er bolden hermed givet op. Der er brugt 10% alun i forhold til væskens vægt.
Jeg brugte tagetes og skønhedsøje, egentlig ville jeg også prøve vau og birk, men det er det så ikke blevet til endnu.
Getting it right
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:
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.
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. 😉
I also wanted to show the knitted skeins I made to test out the “cloud colourway”.
I really like the first one, with a bit of effort you can actually see a blue sky with clouds?
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.
* 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.
Sekskanter
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 nÃ¥ede at fiksere. SÃ¥ jeg prøvede igen, malede grønt pÃ¥ først, en tur i mikroovnen, male “blomsterpletter” og sÃ¥ en tur i varmen igen. Det ene nøgle blev ok, det andet blev ca. ligesom det foregÃ¥ende.
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 kattehÃ¥r pÃ¥ mine billeder – vores tÃ¥belige gamle staldkat lykkedes med at sove pÃ¥ sekskanterne, selvom jeg havde stablet udspændingsmÃ¥tten lodret pÃ¥ toppen af en bunke strikkekurve. Hun har en sær trang til at ligge pÃ¥ alt jeg har rørt ved, om det sÃ¥ er en A6 huskeblok.
Mit næste projekt skulle gerne være en meget hurtig sommertrøje pÃ¥ store pinde. Garnet har jeg haft liggende i 3 Ã¥r, 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 nÃ¥r vinden bliver en smule køligere en sommeraften, jeg sidder let og fÃ¥r gÃ¥sehud selvom temperaturen egentlig er ok. Det er frit fra leveren som sædvanlig, sÃ¥ 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.
Tagetes 1
First test dye with this flower, I began with this type, Tagetes tenuifolia “lemon gem”:
43 g of flowers to 25 g of alum/CoT mordanted yarn.
After 2 minutes in the lukewarm dye pot – do I see solar dyeing potential or what?!
I’m going to try the other variety I have on its own too, same procedure, to see if they are different, or if I can just toss it all in one pot. I’m also going to see if I can dry them and use later.
Appelsintagetes
Første forsøg plukker jeg hver slags tagetes for sig og farver et enkelt fed for at se hvordan det ser ud. Flere tests følger! Jeg tror de vil egne sig godt til solfarvning, se blot grydebilledet, hvor garnfeddet har ligget 2 minutter i det lune farvebad!
Jeg har her brugt 43 g blomster og 25 g garn.
More pointing and shooting
Since I’ve been doing a bit with the garden this year, I’ve decided to document it to remember, especially the dye flowers.
This time I’ve edited a teeny bit, unlike my last garden photo session. And I had a “helper” who thought it was a great service that I’d lie down on the lawn to relax together.
