More witchy brews – all done!

1. February 2013 PiaPå dansk

Finally got the last of the Dorsets coloured up with madder and weld. Some of the chunks had previously been dyed with other plants, but I wanted to see what happened if they had another dip – without any kind of plan or registration of which is what. Some dyed at 50 C, then a new batch in the same bath at 80 C for both plants.

Now to flick and then wait until I can card it. There’s a total of 1400 g so it’s going to take a while, since I also have that Suffolk fleece from the same source. I know I should practice using my handcarders, but argh!

And that’ll be all for a while, off to work on other stuff.

Færdig

Endelig har jeg fået plantefarvet al min Dorset uld, så skal det bare renses for planterester og kartes en gang. Der er i alt 1400 g, så det kommer til at tage tid. Jeg har også en Suffolk ham som jeg har pletfarvet med syrefarver, den skal have samme behandling før jeg kan spinde.

Jeg har brugt kraprod og hjemmedyrket vau, første bad ved 50 grader, blandet bejset og ikke, derefter mere blandet og før-farvet uld i samme bad og op på 80 grader

Ikke mere plantefarvning i denne omgang, nu er der fokus på andre projekter.

Hollyhock 3

23. January 2013 PiaPå dansk

This post will be a collection of my last experiments this time round. Nothing special, just to wrap it up as, well as being the only kind of documentation I seem motivated to do for my dyeing…

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I took the very acid jar, strained the flowers, crammed the jar with fleece undtil it was all soaked up, then I filled the jar until it was full and topped it up with the “no longer alkaline” liquid from the blue skein. Since that was already done from exhausts, there was not much juice left, but I wanted to see if I could create a “rainbow” jar or if it would all eventually intermingle to one shade. And this did indeed happen. On the last night the jar was still variegated in looks, red, purple, brown, but in the morning when I wanted to empty it, all purple. The biggest surprise came when I put half of it into ammonia. It didn’t change AT ALL!? No green. WTF? So despite having measured the water to pH 10, I held my breath and added another glug of ammonia. And got grey…. Leaves me wondering if the tin mordant makes the purple more stable?

Then I put the very sour flowers from above into a new jar and topped with rain water to see how much juice they had left. Start pH 3 just from the acid in the soaked flowers. Put it on stove shelf, they did indeed contain more dyestuff. pH 3 while hot. Added too much fleece so topped with rainwater, pH 4, very pale pink. Back on the shelf because I had trouble with the set below and wanted to heat test the fleece in dye, even a weak one, before adding the rest of the fleece to a new bath in the canner.

As I mentioned in connection with the pink skein, the heat in itself seems to alter the dye to purple despite the pH. When it was done, it ended up silver grey and it’s the first time I’ve seen a plant dyebath exhause completely. Absolutely clear water left when I took the fleece out! The flowers themselves were also done for, 1st image below is flowers after the last extraction.

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The Teaser jars: I emptied them after 3 days instead of weeks, as it looked like they were as dark as they could get and just beginning to alter their shade. Turns out, the fleece wasn’t really taking the dye. Whether due to my previously unresolved issues with Dorset or the cold method, hard to tell since no yarn was in there with it. I put it back.

Wait 10 days, still in the window, temps 15-20 C. Very dark liquid, fleece rinsing out nearly white. Mould on top of the rainwater jar, the vinegar jar keeping fine. Time for a quickie on the shelf. That helped, so while cold water does extract the dyestuff, I don’t seem able to make the wool take it at low temps. Also, the flowers didn’t exhaust, they were still dark as ever. (more water might be the solution to that)

They were so close in colour at the end, even though one was in pure vinegar, that I poured some ammonia directly onto the rainwater batch as it was sitting in the sink, then immediately hosed it with water. And, well, green again, even though there was tin in there. So I still have no clue what happened with the other batch refusing!

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I used a total of 150 g flowers for all experiments, 280 g yarn and 195 g fleece.

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~~Polled Dorset. Scoured, dyed at pH 7, ammonia pH 9, vinegar pH 2. Iron afters for all. Mordant tin/alum/CoT. Temperature: 60.~~ Well, that was my plan for the remaining fleece. But then I suddenly couldn’t be bothered. So there. I still have some undyed Dorset. And no drumcarder. Spacebags? Fir cones? (yes) Madder? (yes)

– Hollyhock 1
– Hollyhock 2
– Hollyhock 2½

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Stokroser 3

Et par små resteprojekter med stokroserne på tin-bejset dorset uld, noget af det farvet “lunkent” på brændeovnen, noget forsøgt koldt i vindueskarmen, men selvom det sidste trækker farve ud af blomsterne, så sætter det sig ikke på ulden.

Jeg kunne ikke få den grønne farve frem denne gang, ved ikke om det evt. er tinnet der holder på det blå-lilla.

Hollyhock 2

13. January 2013 PiaPå dansk

My experiments with Hollyhock flowers continue. This time a “solar” dye technique, using variations of indoor temperatures to mimick summer.

Rainwater, vinegar, pH 4. 35 g yarn, 10 g dry flowers. Left on top of fireplace 2 days. I shook it up once in a while when taking photos of the progress. Shelf temp. 60-65 C when fired up, 40-45 C on the top of stove (where I let it remain), 15 C in the morning.

30 minutes – 3 hours – 24 hours

hhock09 — compared to first batch which have faded a bit while in the cupboard…

Same procedure, pH 6-7 (my strips are not super accurate) yielded pretty much the same shade, so I took the remains of the dyebath, put in ammonia until it was way up (11+, it takes only drops….), then dunked it for a minute. Thought I might as well compare it to the “boiled green”. There are some strands that had not as much dip as the rest, they turned blue. I left them as such, for science. 😉

Next, both exhausts mixed and upped to pH 8, 2 days on stove. As you change the pH the dyebath pretty much changes to the colour you’ll get on the yarn, how’s that for an indicator? I had fun adding ammonia to get green, then vinegar water to make it rosy again with the last bit of dyebath before I poured it out.

hhock17 — This skein is incredibly hard to photograph to the exact shade – as close as I got today in the snow.

flash photo – always a bit brighter that life…

As you can see however, once I took it out I didn’t quite get the steel blue (left jar below) or the baby blue of the strands on the previous skein, may have left it in there too long and it got too alkaline. A safer bet if you want sky blue may be to do a neutral 6-7 pH lavender then a dip in pH 8. Maybe it takes even less to turn it.

I think I’m going to have to try and get some dark red flowers and see if they give a more rosy warm shade. I thought the acid one would be, given the heather rosy tint I got on the first project with a vinegar afterdip – maybe afterdips are different, maybe if was the temperature? As you can see the dyebath starts out very pink, then to turn purple over time. Could be a completely cold dye procedure would be different yet again. Or maybe I need to push the acid lower than 4 if we have green on the opposite end, then blue, purple in the middle and ?

Join us next week in the quest for pink, 2 more jars in this series still cooking… I’m thinking that perhaps the lavender skein was closer to neutral pH, since it was identical to the neutral one, so I’ll have to conduct another test with the exhaust from the red jar below. Meaning, I need to mordant more yarn to get reliable comparisons, meaning y’all need to wait for a bit.

In the meantime, I’ve also mordanted the rest of my Dorset fleeces in tin/alum/CoT, about 650 g. So look out for “Hollyhock 3”. Or possibly 4.

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Stokroser 2

Nye eksperimenter, denne gang farvet ved stuetemperatur, dvs. jeg forsøgte at kopiere solfarvning ved at stille glassene på brændeovnen, det giver 40-45 grader om dagen og ca. 15 om natten. 2 døgn hver ved pH 3, 6 og 8. Den mellemste lignede grangiveligt den første, så den fik et meget basisk dyp til sidst og blev en flot grøn. Spørgsmålet er, om jeg har fejlmålt pH værdien på det første fed, og det måske var nærmere neutral, dette er jeg i gang med at teste….

Jeg har brugt regnvand, men nu hvor vi har fået frost er jeg nok nødt til at bruge vandhanen, selvom det evt. godt kan give et mere gråligt resultat at dømme fra første test.

Næste test er dels tinbejset, dels helt “koldt” bad uden ovn og, når jeg får dyrket nogen, mørkerøde blomster i stedet for sort-violette. Noget tyder dog på at det er pH værdien som er afgørende, så jeg er i gang med næste test i ren eddike.

Knitting progress

15. December 2012 PiaKnitting

Been making a bit of progress on various projects, some ups and downs such as making the waist decreases on my sweater at the red stripe only, to find out the yarn is so heavy that it’s actually more the brown stripe that is at my waist. But it’s got a comfortable amount of ease all the way up, so I’ll leave it, maybe block it a bit. Right now the sides are only loosely seamed with cotton to test it on, so it’s looking kinda lumpy. I’m knitting an inner collar of silk (Shetland is scratchy), then I’ll have to spin more yarn before I can continue to the sleeves. This was expected, I just didn’t realise what a quick knit this was on 6 mm.

The remaining sweater yarn is sitting on a quick improvised scarf I did for my mum with some leftover DROPS, nice warm silk and baby alpaca for her vulnerable neck (disc surgery). It blocked way longer than I anticipated, so it could have been wider (used up the yarn to within 20 cm), but I’m not going to redo, I have another scarf on the needles for her. Different yarn, same fiber combo. She needs them light and small as she’s not a very big person. (just under 5′)

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Strikkeri

Det gik hurtigt med at strikke min tykke sweaterkjole, måske lidt for hurtigt, for jeg fik lavet lidt for kraftigt sving på taljen og lidt for tidligt, garnet er tungt og elastisk, så det var svært at beregne den endelige længde på trøjen. Nå, men der er ikke noget der strammer, jeg lader det være, måske blokker lidt eller kigger på sammensyningen. Lige nu er den bare løseligt rimpet sammen med bomuldsgarn for at kunne prøve den. Jeg er i gang med at strikke inderhals af silke, så jeg ikke bliver kradset helt op, og så skal der spindes mere garn før der kan blive ærmer, men det vidste jeg godt.

Er også i gang med tørklædeproduktion til min lille mor, som skal have varmet sin opererede nakke med florlette silke/alpaca ting. Den grønne er bare improviseret med en rest, og blev noget længere end beregnet, så det kunne godt være blevet bredere, men det fungerer. Jeg brugte vitterlig alt garnet, så ingen rettelser der heller.

Sweater SAL 2

1. December 2012 PiaAcid Dyeing

I finally spun a skein of each colour for my long sweater, I still have to spin some moorit and purple, but at least I can begin test knitting. The grey skein is straight off the wheel and hasn’t been washed yet, so it looks a bit flat compared to the others.

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Sweater SAL del 2

Der sker da lidt, omend langsomt med Spindeforeningsprojektet. Der er nu spundet 200 g rødorange, 150 g sortbrun, 100 g moorit, 100 g lilla og 150 g grå. Jeg har til 200 g af hver, men jeg kan jo ligeså godt komme i gang med at strikke og så spinde efter behov/hen ad vejen. Det grå fed er helt frisk fra tvinning og ikke vasket, derfor ser det en anelse fladt ud, men der skulle fotograferes mens solen kiggede frem.

COLOUR COTTAGE

c/o Pia Juul

Tag: purple