Yet Another New Book

Well, I've finished sewing another top but don't have enough light for a picture yet. So you will have to make do with another book review. This one is on natural dyes:

The Modern Natural Dyer by Kristine Vejar is a beautifully photographed and laid out hardcover book covering many of the commonly available and reliable dyestuffs. The "modern" in the title refers to the revised amounts and safer procedures that are used now that we are more aware of the toxicity of some of the the historical recipes. Also dye extracts have been developed for a number of plant (and animal, in the case of cochineal) dyes that really simplify the process and expand the options for applying colours.

Kristine herself grew many of the dye plants that are photographed for the book's intriguing illustrations but she uses purchased dyestuffs for her examples. I was a little surprised actually at how much I liked the projects included. That's not at all what I usually buy a book for! They really help to demonstrate the many ways natural dyes can be used in a fun way. If you're the type who likes to make things easy, kits are available through her shop, A Verb For Keeping Warm in California and you can follow along as she is currently demonstrating everything in more detail on her blog.

Would that I could afford Alabama Chanin - even their simpler machine-sewn line:

I know yellow is not many people's favourite colour but how can you resist the glorious yellows produced by natural dyes? So cheerful.
 

Then I'm particularly enamoured with this sweater:

It has a really fun detail in the back! And the painted fabric as well as the variegated yarn in this top:

The book also includes helpful dye charts like this one:

Formulas are on the opposite page and there's one for cellulose fibres as well as protein ones. So pretty, no? Detailed techniques for indigo are in a separate section including some simple shibori and an amazingly gorgeous quilt.

OK, I will admit to being somewhat of a dye aficionado. But this book wins for both information and inspiration! It won't replace Jenny Dean's more comprehensive books in my heart but I think it's a great reference for the beginner to intermediate natural dyer with solid and useful procedures. Damselfly's four wings up!

 

I will leave you with a photo from Thom - the undeniable hint that spring is coming soon to Vancouver!

Jumping January

There's something about this time of the year that brings out the mad maker in me. I no sooner finished one knitting project when I started three more! That makes a total of four all going at the same time. Yikes! A little over the top - at least for me. I don't usually have more than two.

The Stripey Sweater is coming along. I'm using all of the "Dye For Me" yarns that I recently stuck in a number of natural dyes. The main colour is the madder dyed wool and there's seven paler contrast colours in the alpaca/tencel/bamboo. I had a problem at first with the one stripe of fair isle that I decided to throw in. The contrast wasn't great enough and I had almost forgotten how to knit stranded. My tension wasn't helped by the dense and non-stretch nature of the yarn:

You can see where the peach and yellow are too close in value. So I frogged and tried again:

The gray-green is better. But of course once I was much farther along I realised a better option! Too late. It will have to stand as is though I'm hoping the tension evens out somewhat after blocking. Debbie Double thinks it fits fine so far:

Now I'm cruising down the body which is the relatively easy part. And I found the perfect buttons! These are handmade ceramic in various harmonious colours and they've been in the stash for decades. Nice to find a home for them! Don't they match the stripes nicely? I just have to decide how many to use:

Guess I have to knit the buttonholes first, eh? Knitting on. More on the other projects when there's something to show!

And I have the results of the Lobaria lichen exhaust bath that we did last Thursday at our Spectrum Study Group:

There wasn't a huge amount of colour left in the pot so obviously my superwash wool and nylon sock yarn did a great job of sucking up the dye. This time the wool of course took the most and gave a honey gold. The silk habotai scarf is actually a soft pale gold and the tussah silk fibre just deepened a little. Not exciting but it's good to know that there was no dyestuff wasted.

Things are finally back in production in the studio. I've started sewing again. Yay! The first off the starting line is another version of Marcy Tilton's Cirque Dress, V9112. This one is a mishmash of a cotton print (quilting? home dec?) that's been in the stash for decades and, in a reprise of my first version, the hem "bubbles" and collar facing in a contrasting black rayon which has also been lurking for eons. I'd call this one a freebie, wouldn't you? The fabrics are quite lightweight so it's really more of a spring/summer garment but maybe I can get some wear out of it with a warm top and tights. We'll see. Anyway, it will be another item off the To Sew list and a Stash Reduction as well. There are still several more fabrics all cut out and ready to sew. Again, more when there's something to show.

Speaking of sewing, I'm planning to go this year to the Sewing & Stitchery Expo in Pulallup, WA, at the end of February. Our Canadian dollar is sadly in the basement but I've missed the last couple of years and it's only a four hour drive (not including the border crossing). I plan to mostly just look anyhow and soak up the creativity fumes. And then if the weather is more-or-less cooperative we can head further south for a few days. Or if not, come home. It'll be fun to run away for s short while anyway.

Lastly, as a teaser, I just got several new books in the mail which I will want to discuss: knitting, dyeing and sewing. Next time!

On A Frosty New Years Eve

Hello again! I feel much better after a good night's sleep! And no more quaking.

OK. Where was I? I spent a little time in the dye studio - not eco-dyeing the last three scarves but dyeing some yarn instead. I played with some really elderly lichens that had been in the stash for yonks. I picked these Lobaria pulmonaria at least 20 years ago while visiting my sister in Haida Gwaii.

There's a whole lot of conflicting information now about harvesting slow-growing and often rare or endangered lichens that I was completely unaware of at the time. Even to the scientists they are still pretty much a mystery! I do remember that these were very plentiful where I collected them and I didn't take a lot, just 300 g or a quart-sized ziplock baggie. However I was made to feel quite guilty about it (whether rightly or wrongly) so I didn't use them in all this time. Recently I realised that they were just sitting there already picked and dried and since I couldn't put them back where I found them (I don't remember anymore where it was exactly anyway) I might as well actually use them for their original purpose.

In the big pot I poured hot water over the crushed lichens and left them overnight. The next day I brought the dyebath up to barely a simmer and cooked them for several hours. I had read that it was good to keep the dyestuff in with the fibre as you dyed it so I was wracking my brain on how to keep all the tiny clinging bits of lichen out of the yarn. In the sewing stash I found some nylon veiling and sewed a bag out of it. Instead of putting the lichens into it, I put the 4 skeins of Elann sock yarn in the bag and tied a knot in the top.

Then I popped this into the dyepot and simmered for another couple of hours.

It's in there somewhere! The nylon bag worked pretty well to keep all but the tiniest particles out of the yarn. A lot of those tiny bits came out when I rinsed the dyed yarn and any more remaining will likely pop off when I go to wind it into balls. The yarn had been previously mordanted in alum which isn't necessary for the lichen dye but at the time I wasn't sure what I was going to dye it with. The mordant might have a positive effect on the colourfastness or on the exact shade that I got but I don't know for sure. I think it's very pretty but not quite what I expected.

I had a tough time photographing the colour exactly but it's a lovely warm brown. And the yarn smells faintly of forest. Ummmm... Superwash wool/nylon sock yarn dyes extremely easily in my experience and the skeins are much more evenly dyed than I expected after being squished into the bag. Now there's still some colour left in the pot but I don't have anything I want to put in it. Definitely not the wool roving. I'd never get the lichen bits out! Oh well. If it ends up in the compost so be it. From now on I'm going to use my home-grown walnuts for brown dye! The lichens can stay in the trees.

Meanwhile I've begun a new knitting project and picked up an old one again. I also need to get back into the sewing. The piles of fabrics and patterns aren't getting any smaller! The quiet winter months are usually my most productive time and I'm really looking forward to digging in. 
 
Taking a minute here to say that I wish everyone a very Happy New Year! 2015 was a good year for me. Even though I became an official Little Old Lady, I'm feeling quite healthy. We had a great late summer vacation and hope for more fun times in our little old van again this year. I got a lot accomplished and finally managed to cross some major items off the to-do list. Things are going well and life is good. What more can one ask of 2016 except that it carry on in the same way? I would cross my fingers but that just makes it hard to knit!
 

 
 

A Marathon of Making

Whew! I’ve been on a rather insane kick of making stuff before we head off on our Annual Trek. Less than two weeks to go! So much to do. No lazy summer days for this damselfly.

In the studio I prepped a bunch of patterns and cut out 10 garments. And now I’m attempting to sew them in groups of like colours so I can save time changing threads in the serger and sewing machine. I have no idea whether or not I’ll be able to finish the pile (and cut out a couple more that I’d like to get done too!) in time. But I’m going to get as far as I can before I have to start packing and cleaning the house for our house sitters.

I’ve finished 3 pieces so far: tights (Marcy Tilton’s V9108 View D), Katherine Tilton’s top (B5925 View A), and my own TNTee. The fabric is a thin bamboo-rayon/lycra knit in pumpkin orange and medium gray. Here’s a rather bad photo of the first two worn together:

I was moving around too much for the low light situation so it’s a bit blurry. Looks like pajamas, doesn’t it? Feels like it too! Perhaps I won’t wear these pieces together out of the house. Heh. This is the first of the Battle of the Leggings Patterns and although the size M fit well at the top, I needed to take the leg seams in by morphing between the M at the crotch to the XS from the knee down to accommodate my chicken legs. Plus I added 2” to the waist height and subtracted 2” from the length. The waist sits where I like it but as you can see I probably could take another inch off the hems where they bag. And these tights are only mid-calf length on the pattern models! They are eleventy-feet tall, right? Either that or I’m even shorter than I thought.

The top was adjusted at the shoulder, armhole and sleeve cap as I mentioned in the last post. Fits me perfectly! However some reviewers mentioned that the pockets in this style tend to bag oddly. Yes, they do! And there’s no way to solve that unless I put buttons or something to hold them up. I think it would show less in a print but it doesn’t really bother me that much. Just another funky thing to go with the twisted neckline and pocket hems.

The last garment I sewed (also in the gray bamboo) was my TNTee that I used to adjust this with so it fits exactly the same in those areas. I lengthened the body to just past crotch level and made 3/4-length sleeves. For the first time I tried Katherine Tilton’s single-layer wrap-around binding method for the neckline finish. It’s described in the Knits for Real People book and demonstrated on their T-Shirt Craftsy class. Mine came out a little looser than I’d like but acceptable. Sorry I haven’t photographed this simple long tee yet.

Sewing the bamboo/lycra was like herding cats! It’s soooo stretchy that it’s hard to get a seam that doesn’t ripple or pop especially on the cross-grain. I got better at handling it towards the end of the last of the 3 projects. It figures, eh? I still have a little of each left which will eventually become undies. But on to the next sewing project.

As well as the marathon sewing I hosted my Spectrum Study Group for another indigo dye day last week. Bonnie brought a beautiful indigo dye stock that she made for us:

Isn’t it pretty? This is the Michel Garcia 123 Vat, in this case 75g natural indigo/150g calcium hydroxide (aka calx or cal)/225g fructose. It’s an easy and forgiving vat and we dyed a bunch of things in it:

These are just a few of them. I also picked and processed my Japanese indigo from my garden:

Photo courtesy of Leslie.

In spite of all the trials and tribulations the poor indigo went through this year it still gave a pretty excellent blue:

These are my new batch of shibori hankies. I’ll show them better when they’ve been scoured properly. You can’t see the last one, a mokume moon, behind the shawl (which looks darker than it really is). The shawl was one that I had originally dyed in woad but since I had two of them, I thought this one could use more indigo. As did the rayon Amiga Sweater that I had dyed in Japanese indigo. It’s now several shades darker too.

The shawl and the sweater were dyed the next day in the 123 vat. All I did to revive it was to heat the vat to 50C/120F then add a heaping spoonful of fructose and wait for 20 minutes or so and it was ready to go. There was plenty of blue left, even after the mad dyeing from the day before, so I gave things at least 3 dips to darken them up. The advantages of this type of vat are many including the fact that it’s gentle enough for wool and silk. It’s my new favourite method and you can bet I’ll be making it again.

So what else? I finished the Periwinkle Cami but no photos yet. What can I say? It’s been raining a little on and off (yay!) and the squirrels are covering my deck and everything else in the vicinity (boo!) with bits of my walnuts. You can’t even walk out there without risk of getting beaned on the head by a flying walnut! Not particularly conducive to photo shoots. I had a wee problem with the bright periwinkle rayon yarn. When I washed the sweater to block it quite a lot of colour ran into the water. I thought I got most of the fugitive dye out but as it dried the colour pooled on the top of the gathers at the front and back yokes. So I washed it again, this time in Synthrapol which helps to free up the fugitive dye molecules. The variegation is still a little visible but much less than it was. Probably I should have simmered the whole thing in Synthrapol for at least 10 minutes and I may still do that next time it needs washing and see if it helps. Since it takes at least 2 days to dry each time, I deem it’s OK for now. I’ll try to get a photo for next time.

Also in knitting news, I’m at the point where I divide for the sleeves and body on my Blackberry Amiga Cardi using recycled handspun wool. It seems to be going well but I won’t know for sure for awhile yet. Next I need to consolidate all my knitting projects for travel very soon.

Time to go sew again! I need to crank out at least one garment a day to be done by my self-imposed deadline. I may wear out first! Not like I don’t have any clothes to take camping with me but it’s nice to have some new things. Carrying on…

Slowly Roasting

But I’m trying hard not to complain too bitterly about it. It’s not like I could shift that big blob of HOT that’s stuck just off the BC coast! It is what it is. It also was 32C (90F) yesterday and heading for that again today. At least my hot weather veggies are enjoying it – as long as I can keep them from drying out too much. I picked my first cucumber of the season, the beans are flowering and the spaghetti squashes are bigger than softballs. The dye garden isn’t doing too badly either. So far I have a Ziploc full of nicely dried dyer’s chamomile. The Sauce Hollandaise variety looks like every other daisy-type flower you’ve ever seen:

 

Their little faces are about an inch or so across. After I picked them they dried very quickly to crisp little buttons:

(Luckily you can’t see the dried aphids!) I picked a bunch more last evening so hopefully now I’ll have enough for at least one test dyebath. As soon as I around to getting some yarn mordanted, that is.

There’s not nearly as much of the dried grandiflora coreopsis:

That is all I’ve got so far. There’s only 2 young plants so I’m not surprised at the lack of volume. Collection is ongoing. 

What’s next? I’ve been avoiding the studio as too hot even with the big swamp cooler/fan on. I’ve managed to cut out 2 dresses though not even begun to sew them yet. There’s the Mizono dress/jumper/tunic/bubble-thingy, V1410:

You can see it better in the line drawing:

The 2 views are the same dress but it has buttons underneath so you can adjust the drape to tunic length. I cut a size 12 (again, not remotely my pattern measurements!) and also re-drew the shoulders and armscyes to fit me better. I raised the neckline quite a bit too. You can see it gapping badly on the model! I figure I can cut it down if it’s too high but not add to it if I cut too low. I cut some self bias binding for the armholes and neckline instead of just turning under a hem and cut some big square patch pockets. (Because I love pockets!) Lastly I shortened it at the lower lengthen/shorten line by 2”. It’s still going to be pretty long on my 5’3-1/2” (and shrinking) body but I didn’t want to lose too much of the bubbled side seams. The fabric is a black slightly-crinkled rayon with lovely drape. I’ve had it in the stash for ages and it has changed its mind about what it wanted to become at least 5 or 6 times. Ha-ha! It’s committed now!

The second dress I cut out is Marcy Tilton’s Vintage French House Dress V8813:

Here’s the line drawing, View A:

Mine is going to look very much like the photo because I’m using a red-orange stretch linen blend. This fabric tried to change its mind about what it wanted to be a couple of times but I didn’t allow it since I actually bought it specifically for this pattern! Heh. I cut a Medium and raised the neckline an inch. Again I can cut it down if I think it would look better as drafted but I’d rather have the extra fabric there in case. I think I might have to adjust the gathers in front down a little to compensate for my low bust, though I’ll judge that when I get there. Other sewists don’t seem to have messed with the gather height at all though I may also use a different technique to gather them than the instructions say.

Interestingly the Mizono dress is only 2 large pattern pieces but it still took more than 2.5 metres of my 56” wide fabric. (Like the way I slip from metric to imperial in the same sentence? I’m bi-measuremental!) The Tilton dress has her usual odd pattern pieces but this time not asymmetrical ones. I cut the pocket facings out vertically with the stretch running up-and-down thinking that that would stabilise them a little. They are rather voluminous! And Marcy does that with her knit version View C. I’m hoping to finish this dress in time to wear it to a family wedding next week.

Which brings me to a dress that my DIL bought from a thrift shop that fits her perfectly except for where it flares right under the arms. I thought it would be a quick repair but the odd way the lining has been stitched in as necessitated lots of unpicking and possible hand-stitching. I’ve been putting it off but since she’s planning to wear it to the same wedding, I’d best get my rear in gear. Today.

In other news, we took down the display at the Roundhouse Community Centre yesterday. Thom happily got his guitar back and he serenaded us while we packed up the rest of the items. We have re-submitted the cigar box guitar to the Crafts Council of BC for a show in Crafthouse in November. We’ll find out in a couple of weeks if Thom has to give up his guitar for awhile again! Meanwhile, he’s enjoying playing it again while he can. Who knew it would be so popular? On the way home from the Roundhouse yesterday (uphill in 30C heat) we stopped at a shady bench at City Hall to cool for a few minutes and a guy walking by asked about the guitar. Thom let him try it for a bit. (Upside down! It’s a lefty!) He wanted Thom to show him how to build one! LOL!!! Sure thing, bub. Five minutes, tops. Right? Ummm…no. Do your research. Take a class. Put in the time to learn. Just like I’m going to casually teach a total random stranger how to spin and knit a sweater? Just like that.

Anyway, to all my Canadian buddies, hope you and yours have a Happy Canada Day tomorrow! True North strong and free! (Free of Harper would be good too, but I’m not holding my breath.)

Blue Fingernails

My two day indigo dyeing marathon went really well. The first day I set up a vat both for practise and to do my own stuff first so I could be available to fetch and carry for my Spectrum Study Group yesterday. I dyed and over-dyed wool yarns, cotton yarn, cotton hankies, a silk/wool scarf and an antique linen damask tablecloth (complete with stains and holes). Nearly a kilo worth of stuff though not everything got a full coverage of dye.

I’m going to give you the full scoop here. Personally I love it when people share information on what works for them! The lye/thiox – properly referred to as sodium hydroxide and thiourea dioxide – vat is a pretty simple one to make. Just 3 ingredients but they have to balance just right. Interestingly I did some research and compared 7 or 8 different recipes and though most of them were pretty similar, one or two were quite different in their specified amounts. Note that in some countries you can’t get thiourea dioxide (aka spectralite) but instead have sodium hydrosulphite (aka sodium dithionite) instead. Just follow the same recipe but substitute hydros at twice the volume of thiox. Naturally in the end I threaded my own path through the conflicting information.

First I wetted out 25g (about 8 tsps.) of natural indigo:

It smells wonderfully barnyard-ish! I used half and half Earthues and Maiwa’s Pitchi Reddy indigo. (The label is mine. A huge tin was shared among a whole group of dyers.) I’m not sure if either of these products are still available though Maiwa does have good quality natural indigo “from a farm in South India”, so probably the same stuff. The adorable Pitchi Reddy himself is featured in their documentary “Indigo: A World of Blue” which is a wonderful introduction to the subject. (Forgive me if I sound like I’m advertising but they are local and fair trade and I’ve been a customer for just about forever.) But I digress.

I wetted out the indigo powder in a small beaker (which I sadly broke today when putting it away). Then in a quart canning jar partially filled with hot water I carefully mixed in 2 tsps of lye. When that was dissolved I added the indigo, washing out the beaker with hot water into the jar until the beaker was clean and the jar was full. Lastly I sprinkled in 2 tsps of thiox and stirred gently. On went the lid and I popped the jar into a bucket of hot water to keep the temperature around 50C (120F) or a little warmer:

Then I waited for about 15 minutes until the indigo stock turned greenish. Next I got the vat ready. I filled the tall bucket with hot water (not sure of the volume, I’ll have to measure it sometime) and added a little sprinkle of lye and a tsp of thiox to prep the vat for the introduction of the indigo stock. The fish tank heater keeps the vat at the optimum temperature of 50C (120F). We haven’t kept fish in decades so this heater has been used more in indigo vats! When the stock was ready I lowered the jar into the vat and let the stock out into the water carefully so as not to introduce air bubbles. Then I covered it all up with a couple of towels and left it for a little while to do its magic.

And it worked:

You can’t really see it but under that blue surface is a nice yellowish-green dye vat. It has iridescent coppery bits floating on top. From this vat I got this pile of goodies:

Plus the tablecloth which I didn’t put in the tray. Some things got 1 dip and some things got as many as 4 or 5. The brown yarn (walnut dyed) was only dipped partially in. The dark skein on top of it was dyed over gray. Very successful, I’d say. Plus I was able to keep the vat warm overnight so we could reuse it with fresh indigo stock the next day.

So yesterday we set up two vats: one re-using the vat above but with fresh indigo stock made exactly as before and one ferrous vat (ferrous sulphate, aka iron mordant, and calcium hydroxide, aka hydrated lime). I’d never made this type before but the instructions are here on Maiwa’s website. However do NOT start with “almost-boiling” water because if it’s too hot it will kill the indigo. Ask me how I know! We had to add more indigo before it would work properly. Better at around 60C (140F) or not much higher than that I think. Or you could try dissolving the iron and calx in hotter water and then add to the slightly cooler vat. After the initial start it can cool down to room temperature without losing strength. It can take awhile for this type of vat to get going so don’t be in a hurry for results right away. This one took about an hour or so to really get going. It might even take overnight.

We added some clean rocks to the bottom of the bucket to keep our fibres off the sediment. The ferrous vat looks odd:

The iron makes it not suitable for wool but this vat will last for a long time and won’t “die” like the lye/thiox vat. Believe it or not we got good colours from this one. They matched the other vat even though it didn’t look like it should. Apparently you can whisk air into it when you’re done and pour it on the compost pile.

Everyone worked hard dipping:

We immediately rinse in a bucket of fresh water before hanging things up to oxidise. Here’s the clothesline at one point:

Meanwhile I got time to unfurl my shibori pieces. My wool/silk twill gauze scarf came out lovely:

I’m very pleased. And here’s the 4 shibori hankies:

I learned a lot during our Shibori Study and found that there are some designs that aren’t really hard to accomplish. I just have to finish them!

In other news I promised an update on my garden. It’s not quite the tragedy that I first thought. Some things are starting to grow back. It helps that the weather has been very nice! But the peas are worse off than I thought and I’m not going to get any more rhubarb. It turned out that we are located in a small pocket that got the brunt of the hail storm and so suffered the worst! No wonder the news said there was no damage. Hah! I beg to differ. It just wasn’t very widespread. Only about a square kilometre that really got dumped on. The Eye of the Storm. Alas.

Oh well. Now I have zombie plants! Yes, I’m coping with humour. What else can you do?

More Dye Garden Thoughts

There are three obvious ways to get botanical dyestuff for your dye projects:

1. Buy your dyes from suppliers, either as dried flowers, leaves, roots, etc. or as extracts.
2. Pick plants from roadside verges and waste places.
3. Grow them on your own land.

I live in the city and it’s illegal to pick things in parks or along the roadside. There are a few waste places where you could get away with it of course but I don’t live near them and the plants available are mostly the weeds that are common to our area: Himalayan blackberry, Scotch broom, English ivy, dandelions, and lots of other things that give the usual beige, tan and yellow. Plus I already have my own blackberries and ivy!

We are truly lucky to live within walking distance of Maiwa Handprints which is a fabulous resource for all things dye and surface design related. So I do buy some dyes such as cochineal bugs, “true” indigo, cutch and osage orange extracts, and more madder since I can’t grow enough myself. Other than that my garden suffices for my natural dye needs which aren’t huge. I only dye a couple of pounds of fibres, yarn or fabric in a year anyway. I haven’t even used everything I’ve dyed in the last several years yet! It all takes time. LOTS of time.

I’m also lucky to have a large enough city lot to be able to grow things on it. However, even if you have only a little plot or a planter box you could still grow enough for a dyebath or two if you wanted. I realise not everybody likes gardening as much as I do but it’s a skill like any other. You will improve with experience. I’m not sure I envy those with acreages though – I think I’d go a little nuts with the size and scope of the possibilities! Right now I have just enough garden to keep me (and Thom) pleasantly occupied. I’m definitely not a farmer though I have huge appreciation for those who grow things for us. It’s not an easy job.

OK, on to other things. In knitting news, I ended up going to my LYS (Three Bags Full) to get a longer 3mm Addi circular needle. This time I got a 32” Rocket, which has the sharper tip of the Addi Lace needle but the nickel plating of the Addi Turbo. LOVE! Makes me wonder why they even bothered with the brass Lace needles when they’ve had so much trouble with the finish on them. Personally I’ve had to take 2 pairs back because of flaws that I couldn’t live with. At least Addi honours their lifetime guarantee and it’s easy enough just to take the needles back to the store you bought them from and exchange. 3Bags has been great about this. Tiny shop; great service.

So why did I get a longer needle? I usually use a 24” circular for everything. If I need a different length I use my Addi Lace Clicks – except that they don’t go smaller than 3.5mm. I needed a 3mm, too small for Clicks, and the stitches on my Mia Tunic were very cramped on 24” and getting even more so as I knit. Since this garment is only really costing me the price of a new needle, I didn’t hesitate. My knitting is much happier now:

It’s quite a few inches longer than this now. I’m past the short rows and the little gather bit at the back and into the seed stitch tail. I’m quite enjoying the knit because it’s mostly mindless. Unlike other knitters I love acres of stockinette! I can read or watch TV at the same time. That’s always an incentive for me to work on something more often. If I have to concentrate or watch what I’m doing then I don’t find time to do it as much.

Which brings me to my current second knitting project, the Colour Change Scarf. Yes, I know I have no need whatsoever for another scarf. Plus I really prefer triangle or crescent shawlettes instead. However, this one tickled my interest with the colour progressions and the lace grid pattern. And I need a more portable knitting project to counter the definite non-portability of the Mia. Unfortunately, it takes constant watching my stitches to knit it! The lace pattern is easy-peasy, only 2 simple rows easily memorised. But there are no resting rows, just constant decreases and double-yarn overs and knit-knit-knit-purl. I had trouble with the Addi Lace Click needles I was using too. The superfine merino yarn caught on the connector too much so it was a chore to slide stitches forward. Not fun knitting. Which means I will avoid it. And that won’t get the thing done anytime soon.

I tried several different needle options instead. Regular Addi Lace 24” circular: still nearly as much catch when sliding stitches plus the cable is annoyingly longer for an 8” wide scarf. Vintage Aero aluminum long 9” dpns: felt nice to knit on but too heavy for comfort. The needles are not hollow but solid cast aluminum. Equally ancient Aero aluminum 16” circular: horrible stiff cable and lumpy join causing the usual catching issues. Last try – Clover Takumi bamboo 7” dpns: much lighter than aluminum dpns but the tips aren’t quite as pointy. Good points are really helpful with this fine splitty doubled yarn and lots of decreases. Anyway I ran out of options so with rubber point protectors on the ends to stop stitches from sliding off, they will have to do. Not buying any more needles! Carrying on. Slowly.

Don’t think I mentioned that Thom is now sharing my cold. Argh. Took him over a week to catch it from me! I tried to spare him, honest! (Perhaps coughing on him in the middle of the night wasn’t a good thing.) I’m getting better slowly but he’s kind of in the worst of it right now. Unfortunately we need some groceries so for once we’ll be driving in the car to get them. How unusual! The advantage is that we can pick up more things at the supermarket than we can carry including the heavy stuff like laundry detergent. Stocking up. You know, for the Zombie Apocalypse or whatever. Moving right along.

The Dye Garden

A commenter recently asked about what I plant in my dye garden. I didn’t forget but this is not going to be quite as elaborate a post as I originally planned. However, since it’s only spring and nothing has been happening in the dyepots recently, this will be but a first instalment. Dyeing with plants is an ongoing experiment anyhow.

So here’s what the dye garden looks like currently:

It’s a long narrow bed dug out of the city boulevard (local term for the space between the side of our property and the street, aka “verge” in British terms). There is no sidewalk on our block though people walk along here on the grass, usually with a dog or several. Our city is very encouraging about planting and caring for common property like this so it’s not a naughty thing to do. Thom mows the grass/moss and carefully digs out the buttercups and dandelions. For all the city cares I could dig the whole thing up and plant potatoes on it! I won’t though. It’s tough enough keeping the dogs out of my garden as it is.

So first up we have rhubarb. Besides eating the stalks, the leaves make a mordant that works best with animal fibres. They contain oxalic acid which is a poison so you must be reasonably cautious when using it. It’s not toxic once the fibre is rinsed though. The leaves have some colour of their own so it will affect the shade you get when dyeing over it. The roots are also a strong warm yellow dye used with a mordant. You can harvest them when you dig up the crowns to divide them every few years. Note that this is not the only rhubarb plant in my garden. We have 3 or 4 more near the veggie patch.

Then there are the coreopsis (tickseed) of which I have 3 varieties. Dyer’s coreopsis is the workhorse, even though it’s an annual and I have to replant every year. I can easily save the seeds so I don’t have to buy any. The flowers with alum mordant and various after-dips give me yellow, gold, orange and rust and they contain a lot of dye for their weight. They’re tedious to pick but they dry easily to save for later. The whole plant has colour so if you want you can chop them up for a dyepot at the end of the season. These little guys are still babies.

The perennial coreopsis are new to my garden. This one is the threadleaf variety, recently transplanted from my mother-in-law’s garden:

I plan to try the flowers and the leaves for eco-dyeing along with the second perennial variety, grandiflora:

I planted these from seeds last year and so far I haven’t had any flowers to try. We’ll see if they’re worth the space in my garden!

Next we have the baby Japanese indigos:

I planted a lot of these this year because I’m not growing woad right now, which is my other source for blue. Because my garden is so small I don’t get enough plants to dry the leaves and compost them for proper indigo so I use them fresh instead. (Instruction links are on my new Tutorials page at the top of this blog.) It doesn’t give me quite as dark shades as a normal indigo vat might but I can get a nice medium blue and also overdye for other colours.

Next we have my one last-year’s woad which I’m leaving to flower for fresh seeds:

The flowers are so pretty and the bees like them a lot. Behind the woad you can see my expanding patch of dyer’s chamomile (aka golden marguerite). It’s an aromatic plant that stays somewhat green all winter here. Sadly this variety is “Sauce Hollandaise” which has white flowers instead of yellow and so isn’t very good for dye. I’ll probably move it somewhere else in the garden eventually.

Behind that are marigolds, which I also grow in other parts of my garden wherever there is space. Marigold flowers with alum mordant and various after-dips give yellow and gold colours and the leaves can give brassy olive shades. I pick the flowers when they are partially spent and freeze them because they don’t dry well for me. I also think they give better colour fresh or frozen than when they are dried. Marigolds are easy to grow or purchase from nurseries and the seeds are very easy to save. Here they are bothered by slugs and snails which can totally decimate a plant if it’s not protected with slug bait. We try to use an organic type.

Beyond the marigolds are more Japanese indigo which I won’t pick so as to let them flower as early as possible. I learned that trick a few years ago and now I get mature seeds before frost kills the plants. As I’ve mentioned before, these seeds are only viable for a short time so saving seed each year is a must. They’re very hard to come by. I usually have extra though so if anyone wants some, contact me. It’s getting pretty late for this year unfortunately.

In between the marigolds and the second patch of indigo is a space where I will plant some baby weld. This needs a second year to mature and is the best source for a colourfast clear yellow with alum. I don’t actually need any weld because I have bagsful of the dried stuff but I do need to refresh my seeds.

Lastly, there is the madder, my only source for reds:

I should have dug them up last fall and divided the crowns but I didn’t. It takes time to grow good-sized roots so I only can get a single madder pot once every two or three years out of a 6-foot patch. I would love to have enough so I could dig 1/3 of the plants up every year but sadly lack the room. These are not pretty plants and are scratchy and sprawling. The upper plant parts have some colour in them as well so conceivably you could harvest the tops before they die back in fall but I’ve never tried it.

So there you have it! Other dye plants on my property include walnut, blackberry, Oregon grape, smoke bush (Cotinus coggygyria), and black-eyed susans. I get browns and tans from the walnut husks and greys from the blackberry shoots but the rest are just more yellows so I don’t really bother with them. I’m sure there’s lots more plants I could grow for colour but I’ve got a pretty nice palette going in the space that I’ve got. Anything else that you think I should consider?

Liftoff Is Eminent

One more sleep! We’re nearly as ready as we’ll ever be. But first I have to show you the very cool yarns I dyed. Remember the skeins of superwash wool/nylon sock yarn that I dyed first in gardenia yellow, then dipped in my home-grown Japanese indigo? I wanted yet another colour on it so I put a few of the walnuts that the squirrels have been chopping off my tree into a bucket, filled it with water, popped on a lid and left it in the sun for several days. It started to ferment slightly and get a little bubbly. It also got a bit mouldy but not too bad. Yesterday I dumped it, mould and all, into a small-ish dyepot and brought it up to a near-boil for about an hour. It actually doesn’t smell bad at all. Just kind of spicy and earthy – sort of like the way it smells when I rake the walnut leaves in the fall. Then I stuck the darkest end of the yellow and green skeins into the pot, leaving the walnuts in, and kept them there on a simmer for only about half an hour. I was quite surprised at how deep the colour got!

Here’s the sequence - first there was gardenia yellow:

Next there was Japanese indigo blue on top:

And last there was dark walnut brown on the ends:

Now I’m really liking this colour combination much better! Interestingly this sock yarn has had no mordant applied, only substantive dyes. It still bleeds a little when washed but hasn’t gotten much lighter in colour and I’m sure it’ll stop leaking after a few more rinses. I wonder if the dyes underneath the walnut brown helped it to become darker than it normally does or if it was just because of the strongly concentrated bath. I’ve never gotten such a dark shade before from my English (aka Persian) walnuts. Of course superwash wool/nylon dyes really easily and deeply anyway. So satisfying.

Flushed with this success I hunted up another skein of sock yarn, this one from a different source and already in skein form. I had to add a little more water to the dyepot because there wasn’t much left at this point since I never pre-soaked my skeins first so instead the wool absorbed a lot more of the dyebath than usual. This second skein (115g) was also not mordanted first. I tucked it down into the walnut husks which were now starting to soften enough to break up into bits but leaving the walnut shells intact. It’s the outer green hulls that carry the dye of course. (I’m looking at my pant leg here with a tan stain where I knelt on a walnut in the grass by accident! These grey cotton knit pants have been machine washed and dried twice since then with no change in the stain. Seems pretty permanent as a dyestuff, no?)

Of course I couldn’t leave well enough alone when I decided that I really wanted quite a variegated skein so I went out to the dye garden and picked a handful of annual coreopsis flowers. These I poked down into the lighter parts of the skein hoping to give the browns a little warmer cast. Don’t know how colourfast they’ll be without a mordant but my fingernails are stained and it doesn’t wash off! (I sound very colourful, don’t I?) Eventually I turned off the stove and just left the pot to cool overnight.

I thought the walnut gunk was going to be a bit of a pain to wash off the yarn. This was after it sat overnight. Doesn’t that look rather disgusting?

Yes, there’s a whole skein of yarn in that goo somewhere. Usually I carefully sieve out the plant matter before dyeing in the liquid but I wanted a more speckled and blotchy yarn and hopefully a deeper colour from direct contact with the dyestuff.

I think it was pretty successful! It’s a lovely golden brown and somewhat variegated all over. Just the way I wanted it. It still smells a little of walnut husks. Luckily not unpleasant really. This will probably become socks for Thom since he quite likes the colours – and the odour! But not anytime soon. I already have my travel knitting selected.

Well, the van is partially packed. The rest of the gear is waiting for tomorrow. I’m still watering my veggie garden. Off to see if I can find something left in this house to eat for dinner. I have enough milk and half an apple left for our oatmeal tomorrow. Pickings are a little slim but there’s still a few more items that need eating up.

Next post will be from Who Knows Where!