Tag: colour

Mini skeins

PiaAcid Dyeing

It’s become very popular to knit or crochet blankets, amigurumi and other small or assembled items with small skeins of handspun or handpainted sock yarn as well as leftovers of commercial yarns. Especially the hexipuffs have been all the rage for quite a while! (I realize blankets as such have probably never been out of fashion, but so many cool patterns are emerging)

I normally don’t follow fashion much, but thought I’d join this madness and use it to my advantage: I’ll simply make my colour experiment swatches in the amount of mini skeins when I spin and dye, so that I actually have something useful and not just a piece of coloured string. And they make good travel knitting. I’m not making puffs, but rather like the hexagon shape, so that’s what I’m doing right now.

I’ve made a couple of niddy noddies from bits and pieces lying around the place, so that I don’t have to drag out my (also homemade) swift every time I want to wind a small skein.  Dowels, spheres from a hobby shop (leftover from spindle making), a broom handle and a thingy from an old wine rack. Voila presto! I never got round to glueing on the spheres because I wanted to make sure I had the correct circumference. And the rubber band colours help me keep track of counting anyway…

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Mini garn

Jeg er begyndt at lave mine farve/spindeprøver i mængder der passer sÃ¥dan ca. med et par hexipuffer o.lign. sÃ¥dan at jeg rent faktisk kan bruge dem til noget bagefter. Det er sikkert ogsÃ¥ udmærket til rejsestrikning forestiller jeg mig? Jeg synes det er en fin mÃ¥de at fÃ¥ afprøvet alle mulige kombinationer, sÃ¥ det har jeg tænkt mig at gøre fremover i stedet for altid at spinde 50-100 g af hver slags garn og sÃ¥ ikke rigtig fÃ¥ det brugt. Jeg gider nok ikke rigtig lave puffer, men sekskanter synes jeg egentlig er flot, næsten cirkler. 😉

Mit haspetræ har jeg strikket sammen af dele fra en gammel vinreol og et par trækugler fra Panduro… De er ikke limet pÃ¥ endnu fordi jeg ville være sikker pÃ¥ omkredsen (garnet strækker sig jo nÃ¥r man vinder det pÃ¥), deraf elastikkerne. Og sÃ¥ fandt jeg ud af, at farverne hjalp mig med at tælle omgange og ja, sÃ¥ kom jeg ikke længere!

On mould and rot

PiaPlant Dyeing

Last year I had a bucket full of beautiful, golden dye, I’m not sure which plant I’d used (thinking celandine), but it was strong and sunny and the cotton pillowcases I dunked in there soon looked very cheerful as well. Then, hungering to see just how much dye they could take, I left the bucket a few more days. When I came back, it had all turned brown and there was mould starting to grow on top, it was slimy and smelly and  not sunny at all.

Sometimes you don’t have to leave it out for weeks, just sayin.

So I’ve been thinking, would it be cheating to add a slosh of preservative like what I use for jam? And would it even work in a container that’s not sealed?

So I decided to use a leaf dyeing experiment to try out the concept at least. One with jam preservative, one with vinegar. And well, I’m going to throw in a pot of Celandine too, they need some purging anyway. I can just make it before it gets cold I think.

There are pros an cons of course – since the rot can probably give you both surprises as well as a variety of colour that you wouldn’t normally get. But if that’s not what you want…

With the birch leaves I got exactly the same colour on the yarn, but the bucket without preservative got smelly and mouldy, the other lasted fine for a week in my greenhouse. So, some yellow dyes are ruined, some keep their colour.

Celandine results will be updated later!

I also added preservative to the jars of silk soaking up Dyer’s chamomile dye. No mould or funny smell at all even after weeks. They were in tightly closed mason jars.

So far it looks like the vinegar does as well as the preservative. About a month before both buckets of cloths got a bit mouldy on top, that was after I’d looked several times and taken the cloths out, not putting the lid back on properly.

Cloths part 1

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

Well, part 3 really. Since I already showed off some cloths from last year and blabbed about the new project in another post.

So, I made notes. I did not number those notes and match them with my buckets however…. lahdeedahh. Some I remember from description, but…

I was going to leave them all there FOREVER, but in less than a week some had taken on A LOT of colour in the fabric itself, the print part I couldn’t see of course. What to do? Open or leave them?! ARGH!

Ok, so I opened ONE. Seven days in. Hot weather (finally). And did recognize it after opening, so the registration is back on track.

This cloth had previously been soaked in red wine with a horse shoe on top. Then bundled with tansy, daylilies, something sunflower like and sage. Cold water bucket. I also poured in some exhaust from the tansy test halfway through, I think that’s what’s giving the olive green with the iron and also being the outer layers of the package. There goes my theory about tansy not reacting with iron!

I learned that you don’t get clear plant prints when submerging the cloth in fluid. So next thing would be add flowers to damp cloth and then not to use more water. I should probably go read my book….

In the mean time I’ve been cooking the rest of my cottons in tannins and aluminium acetate. So they should be ready for further experimentation. Next up if I come across old bedsheets etc. will be seawater and milk, and I’ve got some dried sumac bark from last year. I’ve also aquired some texts on dyeing with clay and rust among other things, can’t wait to dive into them. Bring on winter, see if I care! (Yeah, I said that last year too and spent the entire winter being sick = no crafting, but I’m not planning on a repeat). Silk fabrics, cellulose fiber yarns – lots to try! As well as trying out the procedure on wools for comparison with ordinary mordants. There’s no end to the experiments, somebody find me a huge grant?! 😀

Funny how boiled oak leaves left to steep for a few days, look and smell JUST like black tea. So I wonder if that’s the smell of tannic acid? I didn’t have a sip though 😉

 

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Plantefarvning på stof

Kort fortalt, jeg tester alle mulige måder at få plantefarve til at hæfte på bomuld. Garvesyre fra rødvin, egeblade, bark, aluminiumsulfat, havvand, mælk, jernopløsning. Første test var 4 forskellige spande med blomster og salvie rullet ind i lagner og puttet i spande i drivhuset.

Efter en uge hev jeg første bundt op og har bl.a. lært at man ikke fÃ¥r tydelige print af blomsterne ved at have stoffet liggende i væske, der skal man nok sarte med fugtigt stof og sÃ¥ snøre blomsterne ind og lade være. Jeg kunne ogsÃ¥ studere lidt først, men det er typisk mig at bare prøve noget. Jeg burde nok tage og fÃ¥ læst min bog om emnet! Jeg har ogsÃ¥ fÃ¥et fat i nogen e-bøger om at farve med ler, rust og andet sjovt. Vinteren kan bare komme an og gerne med en del mindre sygdom end den sidste, hvor jeg sagde det samme og sÃ¥ blev det bare til nul spinding! 🙁

Jeg skal ogsÃ¥ have spundet nogen forskellige plantefibre og teste med dem, mÃ¥ske silkestof? Nogen som vil donere noget kedeligt hvidt bomuldsgarn? 😉

Kogte egeblade som har trukket et par dage lugter fuldstændig som og ligner sort the. Gad vide om det simpelthen er garvesyre der lugter sÃ¥dan? Jeg smagte dog ikke pÃ¥ det….

Jeg lader stoffet tørre mellem hver behandling, jeg håber det sætter sig og ikke bliver vasket ud i næste omgang, men de kloge påstår jo at det kan lade sig gøre på den måde.

Sunday swatch

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

The coming week I think I feel like spinning, although I still have sleeve syndrome. So be it. I hope I get the time in between all my appointments!

This is just one of project palettes that I’m contemplating. Plant dyed silk in the middle, merino for the rest.

Ugens spindeprojekt

Hvis ellers jeg har tid og ork mellem alle mine aftaler. Så må vi se, om jeg får gjort noget ved mine ærmer eller ej.

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Pia’s Playground

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

-or “Where’s my Igor?”

I’m no good at it so far, I haven’t done my research yet, but I just had to try, didn’t I…..

Various cottons and one mystery cloth washed in soda, some soaked in red wine for tannin (YES, it had gone bad, ok?), some cooked with sumak, some with horse shoes, some a bit of both. I also had one treated with milk but forgot to label them, so I dunno which one that is.

Everything will be sitting in the greenhouse in various buckets now for weeks or months depending on my patience. Some with plant matter on the outside, others just in Alum/CoT water, or iron or everything. I did take notes….

Basically I’m just going to keep adding layers until they look interesting. The worst that can happen is nothing. Plant material: what caught my eye in the garden that day.

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Plantetryk på stof

Jeg har ikke helt fået studeret emnet nok, det er svært at få plantefarve til at fæste på bomuld, især direkte som tryk fra blade mm.

Men jeg mÃ¥tte alligevel iværksætte et par vanvittige eksperimenter…

Stoffet er vasket i soda, noget af det har fÃ¥et garvesyre fra rødvin eller hjortetakblade/bark, noget har været dyppet i jernvand eller stænket med det, ligget i blød med hestesko, sÃ¥dan lidt efter tilfældighedernes princip. Jeg er helt sikker pÃ¥ jeg ogsÃ¥ har haft et stykke i mælk (skulle binde protein i stoffet, sÃ¥ det tager mere farve), men glemte at sætte labels pÃ¥ sidste Ã¥r. SÃ¥ nu ved jeg ikke hvilket stykke det er….

Nu får det hele lov at ligge i spande i drivhuset nogen uger eller måneder, alt efter hvor god jeg er til at styre min nysgerrighed. Det værste der kan ske er jo ingenting!

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