Tag: plants

Chestnut hulls

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

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!!!

≈ Leave a Comment

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!

Harvest

PiaFarm Life

I’ve been deadheading Dyer’s Chamomile all summer and drying the flowers – 430 g I have, which is about 1/4 of the original weight. Yes, I did dry 100 g separately, so I could weigh them after!

Today I while checking my apples I saw there were flowers again. So I picked another batch, probably the last. As well as a new batch of weld. I should have enough to play with this winter! I’ve dried all the weld from this summer, as I haven’t had time to play with it.

I also found, deep in the grass of my failed vegetable garden, some of the madder I planted last year. I think I’ll try to dig them up and relocate, but I don’t think I have the patience to wait 3-4 years for dyestuff. I can buy it not that expensively by the kilo, all dried and ready.

Other dry stuff to play with hiding in my drawer is black hollyhock, bark from Rhamnus frangula (Alder Buckthorn?), sumac bark, Cochineal and 100 g of Rathania root (Krameria triandra) and lots of onion peels.

Now all that waits is to see if I get any elderberries to experiment with. Since the privet lost its berries before they even grew (lots of flowers on it in spring). But right now they’re only just going from green to black, so I’ll have to watch out. I hope to be able to make some juice for hot winter drinks as well.

Otherwise I didn’t do much today apart from boiling a skein of sock yarn, that I needed to know how soft it is after dye and wash. Sigh. I just can’t hear the friggin pot simmer even when I’m in the same room. It’s all y’all’s fault ya know. If I didn’t sit here writing at you, I wouldn’t ruin a fortune in wool…. 😉

Cloths part 2

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

Time to open the rest of the packages from August 14th. The first package was opened on August 21st and now awaiting further experiments…

The sheet on the right was previously washed with soda, cooked with sumak leaves and was soaking in water with iron while rolled up with celandine. The pillow case similar although no tannin before but soaking in water with oak leaves while printing.

Discoveries so far:

  1. Oak leaves = nice clear prints
  2. yellow flowers = vague yellow blotches
  3. Sage leaves = absolutely nothing. Maybe a pale shade of yellow?
  4. Celandine leaves in a heap = again, turns brown when sitting too long
  5. Put cloth in bucket of whatever = only the outside layer takes any colour at all.
  6. My mystery cloth just lost whatever I put on it previously and didn’t take anything from the leaves it had been rolled up with.

None of these cotton rags were properly mordanted, which is the next process I’ll be trying to see what the difference is. Tannin and aluminium acetate, some with sea water and aluminium. Some with iron as well, before or after. But I probably won’t get to actually dyeing them until next summer. Rhubarb leaves will be on the menu as well.

Another set is brewing – hoping for prints from lupine leaves among other things.

Funny thing though, the celandine dyed sheet is brown – but when put into water again, the water turns yellow.

≈ Leave a Comment

Plantefarvning på stof

Tid til at åbne de sidste pakker jeg præparerede d. 14. august. Den første omtalte jeg d. 21. august, den er nu tør og afventer yderligere eksperimenter på et eller andet tidspunkt.

Der kom ikke sÃ¥ meget ud af det, svaleurt giver stadig brun ved langtidsfarvning og kun egebladene lavede print pÃ¥ stoffet. Det ene stykke stof mistede de print det havde inden og er nu næsten “rent”! Jeg ved ikke helt hvad det er lavet af, det er en slags kanvas og virker ikke syntetisk, mÃ¥ske hør?

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 😉

 

≈ Leave a Comment

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.