Hollyhock 2

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.

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30 minutes – 3 hours – 24 hours

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2 days
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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. 😉

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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.

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

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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.

Berries take 2

No privet berries this year, and not a lot of elderberries either, so I thought I’d boil the ones I had for drinking and add some to a couple of jars, sugar, yes, no idea what that’ll do. It’s said that alkaline gives green, vinegar gives red and salt gives blue, now, did I really want to “waste” 3 whole skeins? Nah – we makes smaller ones I think.

As it turned out, my juicer-steamer thing got too full, so I cooked 500 g. of clusters in a pot and strained for the dye, no sugar.

They say silk dyes well with berries (they as in a book I read), but I did not have any mordanted silk ready. Also to try is tin mordant mentioned in a book. That is, if these are any good.

I’ve been told that cold dyeing with berries works better, as usual it’s not proper cold since the liquid has been heated to extract the juice, but the really cold method will have to be when I actually have an abundance in berries.

pH of the jars today are: Juice: 3, vinegar: 1, pot ash: 10, salt: 7 (just to try a different pH, and yes, I know I haven’t tried 3). I’ll leave them for about a week, that’s what I did with the beetroot.

I didn’t think straight to use rain water, like I normally do, our tap water is hard but neutral in pH.

Since I don’t have any yarnpix yet, here’s one of my little helper making mini skeins. Well, he’s involved in the process, anyway. With my “lovely” tablecloth for dyeing on the dinner table 😉

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Hyldebær

Jeg kunne ikke lige nære mig for at prøve bær igen, bare på nogen små fed, da jeg havde læst at det går bedre med kold-farvning. Dvs. jeg har ikke fået så mange bær i år, så det blev bare fra en enkelt portion i saftkogeren. En anden gang vil jeg prøve at bare smide det hele i en spand nogen uger.

Små fed med hhv eddike, potaske og salt i skal stå en uges tid og glo. Det fungerede fint med rødbede, bare garnet ikke skal stå midt i solen bagefter.

Glemte at bruge regnvand, sådan kan det gå når man har for mange jern i ilden og en killing at trampe på.

Eftersom jeg ikke har garnbilleder endnu, har jeg et af min lille hjælper som laver minifed. Og min fine røde garnfarvevoksdug til spisebordet. 😀

On mould and rot

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.