Woad & Japanese Indigo Procedures

Yes, I know it’s not the right time of year for dyeing with fresh woad but I did my talk on Backyard Dyes for my guild today and there were requests for the whole story on how to use woad. I’ll include the addendum as to how to alter the procedure for Japanese indigo as well. A Two-Fer! Instead of linking to an old post, I’m reprinting it all here with a new link in the sidebar. And I couldn’t resist the following photo which is the darkest blue we ever got with woad on wool.

Damselfly’s Detailed Woad Procedure

Just as a reminder we’re going from leaves straight off the living plants to dyeing fibres (yarn, cloth, what-have-you) all in one single day. It usually takes about 4 – 5 hours total, depending on how much gets dipped and/or how long the dye content holds out.

• Put large stainless dyepot filled about 1/3 full with water on to boil, maybe 6 litres in my pot.
• Harvest a large bucket of woad leaves (around 700g). I pull off the good mid-sized leaves from the rosette, not the new babies nor ancient bug-chomped ones.
• Wash leaves under cold water to remove any dirt or animal life. Slugs, sowbugs, earwigs etc. do not add to the colour!
• No need to chop the leaves. Whole is fine.
• Add vinegar or acetic acid to the water in the dyepot to get a pH of between 4 and 5. I do verify with pH test strips. Another step you can perhaps skip but it works for me.
• When it’s at a full boil, add the leaves to the pot. Stir and bring up to at least where you see bubbles coming up between the leaves and they are starting to turn from bright green to a more “cooked” tan-green. This should take only a minute or two.
• Immediately cool the pot. I put a couple of frozen 2-litre pop bottles of ice in the pot which is also standing in cold water in the sink. You want to lower to 50C as fast as possible (preferably under 15 minutes).
• Strain out the woad leaves (which can be saved for a more conventional mordant dyebath or composted) and squeeze to get all the juice.
• Add soda ash to the liquid to bring the pH up to between 9 and 10. For my pot it took about 15ml (3 tsps) to make the vat turn from sherry-coloured to greenish.
• Beat, whisk or pour from one bucket to another until the froth turns from green to blue and back to green again. This should take between 5 and 15 minutes. Of course it doesn’t always follow that sequence and there’s no need to go beyond 15 minutes max. Sometimes there is lots of froth and sometimes not so much. Give the pot a few minutes to let the froth subside. If it’s really bad you might have to scoop some off. Save for blue pigment for fabric paint or something.
• Check the temp and raise again to 50C if necessary. The vat should be murky blue-green with floating blue particles.
• Add thiourea dioxide to remove the oxygen and “reduce” the vat. For my pot it usually takes about 10ml (2 tsps). Don’t use more thiox than necessary or the vat will strip the blue out as fast as it puts it in. (Ask me how I know!) Stir in gently and leave to rest for 40 minutes to an hour.
• After that time the vat should have a purplish bloom or flower on the surface and be clear greenish-yellow underneath. If that’s not the case (still murky), add a teeny-tiny bit more thiox and let rest a little longer. If necessary warm it up to 50C again. If it’s already clear yellow-green but no metallic sheen don’t add more thiox. There’s probably just somewhat less indigo in this vat so the sheen doesn’t form.
• When the vat is fully reduced, gently introduce your wetted-out fibre, cloth or whatever without disturbing things as much as possible. Poke anything under that pops up. Allow to remain in the vat about 20 minutes.
• Remove fibre carefully without dripping back into the vat. Try to squeeze out under the surface with gloved hands. Place dyed fibre immediately into a bucket of water (either cold or warm if desired to prevent shocking wool). Swish around a little, squeeze out and hang fibre to oxidise for at least 10 minutes before redipping.
• Dips can be repeated as many times as wanted for deeper shades. The first dip can be splotchy and uneven but the second evens things out. Any more dips and it seems to start stripping colour instead so I usually don’t go past 2 or 3 at most. If you want, you could leave the last one in overnight. It won’t hurt.
• Finally, allow the fibre to oxidise for at least a couple of days before washing and rinsing to remove any unfixed dye.

Damselfly’s Japanese Indigo Procedure

This is exactly the same as for woad except:

• Leave out the vinegar. I’m not sure if it’s necessary here but I haven’t done a more scientific experiment to prove my theory.
• Begin with a pot of cool water, add the leaves and bring to a bare simmer, stir just until the leaves are “cooked”.
• Carry on with the rest of the steps. The bubbles should show blue fairly quickly but continue to aerate for 5 minutes or so.
• There’s somewhat more indigo than with woad. That lovely purple metallic sheen should definitely form on the surface.

So there ya go!

Squirreling Away

I finally got around to harvesting the rest of the woad crop. I didn’t really have anything I wanted to dye right away so I took it to the extraction stage and got a lovely dark blue. There wasn’t much colour in the froth on the top but there was sure a lot of frothy foam! I left it to settle out for an hour or so and it was still sitting there undiminished so I took a spoon and scooped it out into a small pail. Now that it was clear I poured the rest into three 2-quart canning jars plus a 1-quart jar. It didn’t quite reach the top of the smaller jar so I just topped it up with a little plain water. I even remembered to label the jars!

No idea what the pH is or whether this will keep very long but so far so good! To use it all I have to do is dump it in the dyepot add a wee bit more soda ash (to counteract any fermentation), warm it up to 50C and reduce it with thiox. This is the first time I’ve tried to save the woad for later use so we’ll see how it goes. It would have just been composted anyhow so nothing ventured nothing gained.

While I was waiting for the woad leaves to cool I used the time to snip up the meagre handful of 2-year-old madder roots I managed to get from my big galvanised pots. It’s easiest to cut when it’s still fresh – later on it’s like sawing lumber. I decided that since I have more garden space now dedicated to dye plants it can go in the actual ground. Besides it hasn’t done very well over the last couple of years so I thought it could use a change of soil. I added some lime and bone meal to help perk it up and it will get compost in the spring with the rest of the garden. So now there are 6 hopefully healthy roots in the corner where they can go as crazy as they like. And a weensy pile of madder root drying in my basement, maybe enough for a small skein or two:

I love the smell of madder root. It’s kind of earthy and quite distinct. Better than woad anyhow! Smells even better when it’s cooking but I’ll save that for another time.

Today is a lovely and mostly-sunny fall day but I’ve got a nasty migraine. The light is too bright! I’m knitting on Princess Pink’s Not-Pink Cardi instead. Nearly done but don’t know if it will be blocked in time to give it to her tomorrow afternoon.

September Woad Day & A Holiday

My! It’s been a week since I blogged last. I’ve been a busy damselfly! First it was Woad Day on Thursday with half of my Spectrum Study Group. The 4 of us picked my woad leaves, keeping the Chinese woad separate. We got about 2/3s the amount of Chinese woad than the regular kind. We could have picked more of the regular leaves but I didn’t want to exceed the size that my pot could handle. We used my usual recipe for both, adjusting the proportions to suit the smaller Chinese woad pot.

There was so much blue right away in the Chinese woad! It was amazing how strong it was. The colour was closer to indigo than regular woad usually achieves. Here’s a very pleased Masami hanging up her woad-dyed things alongside the others:

You can see how different all the blues are! My wool on the right is dyed in the Chinese woad. Some things also got hints of a purple which later oxidised to grayish. I believe that’s the indirubin colourant that is also in the woad along with indigo. It’s what gives it such unique shades. (As a side note, there is some evidence that this chemical is useful in cancer treatment, particularly for leukemia.) I hope to grow more Chinese indigo next year when I have a chance to start the plants earlier. We’ll see how well it overwinters because I’d like to get at least one plant to seed. Not at the same time as the regular woad though so they don’t cross-pollinate.

Because I’ve been feeling so much better, we were invited to go with T-Man’s brother and sis-in-law to share their campsite at Manning Park for the long weekend. I was so excited to go somewhere finally! Saturday was shirtsleeves warm and mostly sunny but Sunday and Monday were plagued with intermittent rain. It was so cold that at one point I had on 5 layers including 3 fleecies and my Gortex rain jacket. Not to mention 2 pairs of socks plus sweatpants with nylon/lycra capris underneath. And I was still freezing. We had lots of fun though, see?

We saw a pileated woodpecker (think Woody Woodpecker), cheeky Clark’s nutcrackers and whiskey jacks, a mule deer doe and her fawn, and a flock of very tame grouse. This is the only one who posed for me long enough to get a picture.

You can still see lots of beetle-killed lodgepole pines on the mountain slopes. But it’s still really scenic. We took several long hikes:

T and I were falling behind because we were nibbling on the thimbleberries and black huckleberries. Yum! The black currants were not so tasty – too seedy and sour.

On our way home on Monday, we stopped at Sumallo Grove in the midst of the huge cedars. There’s a circle trail where you can see the grove’s trees but we went further along the Skagit River trail to the Delacy wilderness campsite, about an 8 kilometre round trip. Just off the trail and right beside a lovely waterfall is an old mine site:

Don’t know if you can just see the “Danger” sign in there where someone has broken open the blocked entry. There’s also the remains of an old cabin and even more interestingly a truck:

It’s been there for so long that trees have grown up around and inside it! The engine and tires are still there though. I love the front grill:

We were prepared for the rain but we were all pretty soaked and muddy by the time we got back to our nearly-matching VW Westphalias for lunch. I was really happy that I was able to walk with only a bandaid or two on the worst cracks on my soles.

Which brings me to today. Time to go back to Dr Serious Dermatologist. Blech. I’m renaming him Dr Arrogant Dermatologist. No, I wasn’t able to convince him to even consider that I had something else besides psoriasis. I told him I started healing without all the meds and he said I was probably just sensitive or allergic to them. Well, yeah. Then I refused another corticosteroid (which I’ve already tried and it doesn’t work anyhow) but we decided to try one more last-ditch med: Protopic (aka tacrolimus). At least it’s not steroidal but is normally recommended for eczema when nothing else works. For psoriasis or PRP, it’s off-label. But as a “topical immunomodulator” it’s worth a try, pricey though it is. My portion of the cost of 2 small tubes is nearly $40! It had better do something useful, or I give up. Truly this is the last prescription med I will allow. The very final one. (Make a note and call me on it if I renege.) I will give it a month or at least until we come back from our holidays.

Yes! We are actually going away. Yippee!!! T has a woodturning conference starting on Friday until Sunday and we’ll hopefully be leaving for parts south sometime on Monday. I’m thrilled that I’m feeling better enough (and no stinkin’ black tar!) to go. It’s our last hurrah before the dark of winter keeps us close to home. More about where we’re going when I research the options, but we’re thinking of Crater Lake and return via the Oregon coast. Much to do before then.

Things Are Looking Up

Well, somewhat. At least I’ve stopped coughing quite so much, my voice is nearly normal and I have some energy. Yay! Now if I could stop peeling all my skin off it would be lovely. The danger is trying to do too much too soon. Especially because I am so danged far behind on everything.

Milady Daughter (and Alien!) came over on Saturday and we had a lovely day chatting and dyeing with my woad. This time we got the best and darkest blue I’ve ever seen from woad. Gorgeous.

That is only two dips each! On the left is the first skein and the right is the second one which is still impressively dark, if a little uneven. They’re both 100g of 2-ply laceweight merino from a large cone purchased at Birkeland Bros some time ago. We got that strong depth of colour plus I also dyed 125g of my Perendale roving and still got a fairly good blue – about the colour of my cotton scarf from the last woad session. We probably could have dyed even more if we’d wanted light blue but I have lots from past woad baths. I figure there’s more where this came from, so I dumped it. That’s 325g of dyed wool from about 750g of leaves. Not bad at all! And it continues to grow in the dye garden.

Today I tackled the coreopsis which hadn’t yet been picked. There were lots of flowers, of which this is just a detail shot:

I love the configuration of my new dye garden because I was able to get a chair and sit in front of the plants and pick comfortably for quite a long time. I can reach about 2/3 of the way into the bed and there is some space behind to move the chair in to pick the rest. I got an ice-cream bucket full:

Now they’re drying on bamboo mats on the big table on the deck. They take up a lot less room after they’re dried.

I also noticed that some of my weld is starting to bolt even though this is only its first year and it’s pretty little still because it was late getting planted. Since I’ve never grown it before, I’m not familiar with it’s tricks so I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing. See the one at the top-left?

I will wait to see if the flowers develop and start going to seed. That’s the time to harvest apparently. I was all prepared to wait until next year, but if it wants to give me something to play with now, I’m not going to argue! However I’m hoping they all don’t bolt right away so there will be something to try next year as a full-sized plant. Otherwise I’ll be back to square one. Hmmm…maybe I can can get some new and more viable seeds from this to start next spring? And I know not to cover them because they like light to germinate. Here’s a great old botanical illustration:

Reseda luteola

This Year’s First Woad

So much for thinking I was getting better. Now The Bug has turned into full-blown bronchitis but I suppose it’s still not as bad as I’ve had in the past. My voice has gone all squeaky and uncertain too. I haven’t been sick (truly!) for a couple of years. We aren’t counting the Itchies. Which is now up to my waist all around if you’re curious. Tide’s still coming in, huh? Yuck. It’s all rather disappointing. At the same time, thanks to the new meds I’m peeling and feeling like a dried up old stick. I think I need to fill the bathtub with moisturiser and just wallow.

Anyhow, I sucked it up long enough for my friend Bonnie to come over yesterday and we played with the rather rampant woad:

This was taken before we harvested a large bucket full but it doesn’t look much different afterwards. I didn’t have that much that I wanted to dye so I let Bonnie have a good go at it. And of course forgot to take photos. I dyed an old cotton scarf that originally was an extremely pale marbled blue, pink and green. Now it looks like this:

I like it much better! On top of the scarf is the little bit of wool sliver I threw in at the last, though judging by the depth of colour I could have put in a lot more of it to use up the dye. We followed the same recipe that I always use with only 2 changes:  we cut the leaves more coarsely (maybe chopped in thirds) and Bonnie had this great idea to put the 2-litre pop bottles of ice directly into the dye pot with the leaves to cool it down even more quickly. Worked a treat and we got a very good blue vat with lots of colour in it and a lovely violet bloom on the top. I think I’m getting the trick honed to a science now! It also helped that we’ve had some lovely hot sunny days to ripen the woad. I think this is the earliest date I’ve tried to use it and with such excellent results. There’s lots more left to play with too when I’m feeling better. For those who like a full blow-by-blow account:

Detailed Woad Procedure

• Put large stainless dyepot filled about 1/3 full with water on to boil, maybe 6 litres in my pot.
• Harvest a large bucket of woad leaves (around 700g). We pulled off the good mid-sized leaves from the rosette, not the new babies nor ancient bug-chomped ones.
• Wash leaves under cold water to remove any dirt or animal life. This time we only found one big slug!
• Coarsely chop leaves. Very fine is not necessary and actually may be counterproductive. Apparently you can even skip this step and use the leaves whole though I haven’t tried it.
• Add vinegar or acetic acid to the water in the dyepot to get a pH of between 4 and 5. I do verify with pH test strips. Another step you can perhaps skip but it works for me.
• When it’s at a full boil, add the leaves to the pot. Stir and bring up to at least where you see bubbles coming up between the leaves and they are starting to turn from bright green to a more “cooked” tan-green. This should take only a minute or two.
• Immediately cool the pot. We put 3 frozen 2-litre pop bottles of ice in the pot which was also standing in cold water in the sink. You want to lower to 50C as fast as possible (preferably under 15 minutes).
• Strain out the woad leaves (which can be saved for a more conventional mordant dyebath or composted) and squeeze to get all the juice.
• Add soda ash to the liquid to bring the pH up to between 9 and 10. For my pot it took about 15ml (3 tsps) to make the vat turn from sherry-coloured to greenish.
• Beat, whisk or pour from one bucket to another until the froth turns from green to blue and back to green again. This should take between 5 and 15 minutes. Of course it doesn’t always follow that sequence and there’s no need to go beyond 15 minutes max. This time it turned blue almost right away and pretty much stayed that way. And there wasn’t much froth at all. Give the pot a few minutes to let the froth subside.
• Check the temp and raise again to 50C if necessary. The vat should be murky blue-green with floating blue particles.
• Add thiourea dioxide to remove the oxygen and “reduce” the vat. For my pot it usually takes about 10ml (2 tsps). Don’t use more thiox than necessary or the vat will strip the blue out as fast as it puts it in. (Ask me how I know!) Stir in gently and leave to rest for 40 minutes to an hour.
• After that time the vat should have a purplish bloom or flower on the surface and be clear greenish-yellow underneath. If that’s not the case (still murky), add a teeny-tiny bit more thiox and let rest a little longer. If necessary warm it up to 50C again.
• When the vat is fully reduced, gently introduce your wetted-out fibre, cloth or whatever without disturbing things as much as possible. Poke anything under that pops up. Allow to remain in the vat about 20 minutes.
• Remove fibre carefully without dripping back into the vat. Try to squeeze out under the surface with gloved hands. Place dyed fibre immediately into a bucket of water (either cold or warm if desired to prevent shocking wool). Swish around a little, squeeze out and hang fibre to oxidise for at least 10 minutes before redipping.
• Dips can be repeated as many times as wanted for deeper shades. The first dip can be splotchy and uneven but the second evens things out. Eventually it won’t get much darker no matter how many times you dip so I usually don’t go past 3 or 4. If you want, you could leave the last one in overnight. It won’t hurt.
• Finally, allow the fibre to oxidise for at least a couple of days before washing and rinsing to remove any unfixed dye.

So if you’re paying attention you will notice that we are doing several steps that seem counterproductive. First acid then alkaline; next add oxygen then take it away again. Do NOT ask me how the ancients figured out how to get blue out of these cabbage-like plants. It’s a fascinating mystery. Though Teresinha has some history here.

Meanwhile I’m waiting for my Chinese woad and weld to grow up enough to test. I tried a couple of 2-litre canning jars of solar dyes. I layered some of the Merino-X fleece with marigold and coreopsis flowers, oregano (no idea whether it will work or not but I have lots) and a leaf or two of woad on the top of the pile just for fun. Besides some dissolved alum (7%) and cream of tartar (6%), in one jar I poured in a 1-litre jar of old used rhubarb root dye and in the other a 1-litre jar of old used rhubarb leaf mordant. Then I filled both of them to the top with cold water, screwed on lids, labelled (because my brain ain’t what it used to be!) and put them on the deck in the sunshine. We’ll see what happens over the next few months. Perhaps I should have made more layers though? So far they’ve changed colours a little:

The one on the left obviously has the yellow rhubarb root in it. And the one on the right has turned quite red where the coreopsis and marigolds are. Seems to me that rhubarb leaf might be very interesting with coreopsis? Unfortunately I’ll have to wait until next spring to test because my rhubarb has died back in the summer heat.

Yes, I’m kind of odd. Why do you ask?

Into The Blue

I forgot that I was going to mention that Henri Lambert, the Woad Master, passed away recently. It was only back in October last that I got the once-in-a-lifetime chance to take a workshop with him and his wife Denise.

He was a gentle, precise, funny, kind and generous person and he gave a huge gift to the world of natural dyers by reviving the Art of Woad. It seems at least that Denise is determined to continue without his presence. I wish her all the best. There’s a blog post here from Maiwa.

And speaking of woad, my last year’s plants are bolting and my baby seedlings are getting their second leaves. I need to take a shovel to the old ones but I’m delaying as I debate whether or not to try getting any blue from them first. It seems such a shame to waste it all in the compost. But everyone always says that there’s no blue to speak of in second-year leaves. It’s a great deal of work if the outcome is going to be zip. In the meantime, the darn things are shooting up. Probably losing any blue they had while I was arguing with myself. Silly me.

Instead I’ve been obsessing about my new project, the Pebbles Baby Cardi for my nephew and his wife’s impending first child. I finally rummaged around enough in the stash to locate 2 –50g balls of Regia sock yarn in one of the Kaffe Fasset colourways. It looks like multicoloured granite or beach pebbles in subdued beige-pastels. I used my new Knitware software to design a top-down circular cardi in a 6-months size. This kid is going to be born in July so I don’t want him/her to grow out of it before they get a chance to wear it! I’m just to the underarms now but haven’t had a chance to photograph it yet. It’s raining today and too dark to get a good colour likeness. This yarn is tricksy! Trust me – it’s turning out really cute. Baby things are so popular because they are such instant gratification.

Meanwhile I’m supposed to be gathering up my stuff for the demo at Fibres West tomorrow. I’m bringing my Victoria spinning wheel, spindles, fibre and some sample yarns and handspun items. But I can’t stop knitting…

A big thank you to all those who replied that they can see my blog just fine. I’m glad it hasn’t disappeared and that the general consensus is the changes are good ones!  Whew.

Woad Workshop Continues

Here’s my notes for the day after the workshop ended. I had my revived mother vat from the day before, all rested and ready to go.

Maiwa Symposium - Woad Workshop Notes: Day 2

Next morning I made up the main vat using half the amount of soda ash and thiox as we used in class. Then I poured in half of the mother vat and let it rest while I soaked my fibres. This time I had a set of 4 cotton napkins with tape lace edging, a skein of 6/2 silk that had been mordanted in alum for another project but came out somewhat brittle (I’ll use it for art quilting or something), a 50 g skein of Louet Gems fine fingering superwash wool yarn, a skein of 30/2 silk from The Silk Tree, a couple of tiny skeins of 5/2 natural cotton, and about 200 g of crossbred wool roving. I got good colour on everything except the little skeins of natural cotton yarn that I threw in at the last. They only got one dip and it was pretty wimpy so the yarn is blotchy and “interesting”. Everything else was fairly even except for the wool roving which I hadn’t spent time to unravel properly. It’ll make good yarn though.

Final Comments: I was a bit disappointed that Henri and Denise were not very encouraging about growing your own woad. They insisted that their product was of course superior to anything we could do in our own little garden and home. I showed some samples of my extraction woad and Denise immediately countered with her much darker samples! However, it’s not going to convince me to quit. I get blue, darn it! And their woad powder is $19.95 for a mere 30 g, enough for maybe two vats. Or $47.95 for 100 g, perhaps a more economical amount but larger initial outlay and Maiwa was all sold out of the larger containers when I went in with my symposium student’s 20%-off coupon that was burning a hole in my wallet. My home-grown woad costs very little except time and effort.

Another point of discussion is the second day’s addition of indigo to the woad vat. It did indeed increase the intensity while still keeping some of the characteristic softer colour of the woad though it was closer to that of indigo than woad by itself. I noticed that the fibres from the revived mother vat (Day 3) were even more indigo in appearance with less of the woad showing up. My thought is that the woad was pretty much depleted by that point. Even in powder form, woad is not as strong as an equal weight of indigo.

Here you can see wool skeins from each day, from right to left: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. I think the woad-to-indigo colour shading difference is pretty obvious. Though the first skein is not bleached superwash and the other two are, which may make a difference. Judging by the final results, wool takes the dye much better than any other fibre. And woad is more muted turquoise than indigo blue.

The suggestion is that for a good stable light- and wash-fast dye, 7 dips are optimal. These need only 5-10 minutes each with at least 15 minutes oxidizing in between. We were in too great of a hurry to give the fibres that many dips. The most I got was maybe 4 or 5 but I kind of lost count after awhile! Too many different items going in and out. Might behoove me to keep track in future though.

The sludge consists of tiny plant bits and other organic and non-organic molecules. It swells and sinks to the bottom and you don’t want to rile it up except in the case of reviving the mother vat. Let it settle and pour carefully so the majority of it stays in the bottom of the mother vat. The big vat gets very little of the sludge on the bottom of it. This helps avoid some of the staining problems that can happen when the fibre rests on the sludge. It’s similar to Maiwa’s indigo recipe and the “stock solution”.

Final results of Day 1, bottom of stack to top: cotton napkin, cotton napkin quarter (test piece), wool yarn (overnight in vat), wool yarn.

Total weight: 183 g.

 

Final results of Day 2, bottom of stack to top: natural linen/rayon (variegated dips), silk habotai, bleached cotton, bleached linen (test piece), sock yarn (superwash wool/nylon).

Total weight: 342 g.

Final results of Day 2, continued: handwoven cotton scarves, lighter one had 2 dips and darker crinkle one had 4.

Total weight: 181 g

+ the 342 g from previous = 523 g

Final results of Day 3, bottom to top: cotton napkins with tape lace edging, 5/2 mercerised unbleached cotton yarn, 30/2 bombyx silk, 6/2 bomby silk, 2-ply superwash wool, wool roving.

Total weight: 542 g

 

Everything was eventually rinsed and then washed in warm water with a little Synthrapol: fabrics in the washing machine on gentle and skeins by hand. Some things needed only a little rinsing for the water to come clear and others needed several more changes of water. I dried the cottons in the dryer and hung the others on the line. All the fabrics were pressed with a hot iron (not too hot in the case of the silk) and the silk skeins were “whapped” a few times on the counter to soften them.

And that’s the story of my Woad Workshop adventures!

Happy Halloween!! How do you like my costume?

I’m the Knitting Granny! Mwaahhhh-ha-haaaaa!!!!

Woad Workshop Part 2

OK, here’s the second day of the workshop at Maiwa East. Have I mentioned what a cool place this is? Check this out! Wouldn’t you just love to curl up on that bed in the middle with your knitting and a hot cup of chai? This is the Indian furniture sales and storage shop. Upstairs is their dye studio and sewing workshop where employees create some of the wonderful clothing that is sold in the main shop on Granville Island. Of course I only own one single 15-year-old linen shirt but that doesn’t mean I don’t love their stuff. Lately it’s mostly naturally dyed too.

Maiwa Symposium - Woad Workshop Notes: Day 2

Back again for more blue, we had to wait while Henri scraped the woad flower off the top of our vat into a foam coffee cup for each of us. Don’t know why we couldn’t do it ourselves but <insert Gallic shrug here>. He didn’t really explain how to use it after it dries but I know you can make watercolour paint (some instructions start here and here) and fabric paint with soy milk (as in John Marshall’s instructions here). I could also try making pastel crayons (instructions here). Pretty much anything that works with indigo flower (aibana) pigment should work with woad. Or try any pigment recipe.

While we were waiting we started a number of pieces of fabric soaking in buckets. This time we had a quarter-yard each of silk habotai, bleached cotton and natural “linen” (I suspect it’s actually linen/rayon) plus a tiny square of real bleached linen. I fished out my large skein of wool yarn that had sat overnight and oxidized it and dumped out the vat, rinsed it and refilled with hot water, soda ash and thiox for the next stage.

When the Master was done with our mother vat, we poured half into our buckets and waited about 10 minutes. The little square of linen was used as a test piece for this darker vat, though being linen and not easy to dye it didn’t really come out any darker than the previous day’s cottons. With that successful, everyone dove in to dye their fabrics. We only broke for lunch after adding more mother vat to the big vat and to go downstairs to Maiwa East to buy Indian handwoven cotton scarves for more dye fodder. They were kind enough to give us a 20% discount on the price. Some of my classmates were into the bling and got the ones with silver, gold or multicoloured metallic stripes. I was more subdued and happy with a crinkle scarf and a slightly larger shawl with lace squares.

After dyeing all those pieces, I tried a skein of sock yarn in superwash wool and nylon. Denise insisted that the nylon wouldn’t take the dye but it came out after 4 dips very deeply coloured and very even. Meanwhile Henri had been cloistered in the dye room with Michele Wipplinger and they came out to tell us that the “dépôt” could be revived with hot water, 1/2 tsp soda ash and 1 tsp thiox. Let rest 2 hours before using. That message got me excited and I sacrificed my plastic disposable lunch box to fill it with not only my sludge but my neighbour Ellana’s too. So now I could take it home and see what else I could get it to do.

So does everyone look like they’re having fun or what???

That evening at home I “revived” my mother vat sludge in a 2 quart canning jar with hot tap water and soda ash and thiox. I used a wee bit less of the chemicals (maybe 2/3) because my jar wasn’t as large as the one in the class and I was planning to use a smaller bucket for my vat. Then I left it overnight to rest.

Next time, Part 3 – or what I did in my own dye studio the day after the workshop ended.

Woad Workshop Part 1

Whew! Finally finished with all my Maiwa Symposium events for this year. We are indeed lucky to have this resource so close to home. I never fail to take part in some aspect of it. Lectures are every year while workshops are only every other year. Too much work for one small local company and a handful of volunteers to manage! I’m betting Charllotte Kwon and her crew will sleep for a month after the last guest leaves in another week or so. They’ve been going full-bore since early September.

Last night’s lecture was packed and Dr. Elizabeth Barber did not disappoint. I broke down and bought her book “Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years” whereupon she told us that it needs revising. “The First 30,000 Years” would be more appropriate now that more research has come to light. The development and dispersion of spindles, looms and fibres used by prehistoric people, mostly women, is a fascinating topic. Nice to know that Dr. Barber’s research has encouraged others to look at old evidence with new eyes and multiple disciplines. Even though the information is somewhat dated now, I’m still looking forward to rereading the book.

Now for the woad stuff. I decided to divide this into 3 parts because it’s too long and detailed for one post. Hope it helps someone to contemplate making their own woad vat!

Maiwa Symposium - Woad Workshop Notes

Dates: October 22-23, 2009

Where: Maiwa East, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Instructors: Henri and Denise Lambert from Bleu de Lectoure, France.

Day 1: Thursday we settled into our seats for an enthusiastic introductory lecture by Denise, with Henri filling in where necessary. Lots of translating back and forth between French and English! They were dressed completely in woad every time I saw them. They are very committed to the revival of “pastel” in France and Henri, who was an artist, became a self-taught Woad Master through research and trial and error.

Watching from the sidelines was the botanist Michel Garcia, also from France. I had previously heard his lecture on the inclusive dye garden that he had started. Also in the class we had Michele Wipplinger from Seattle’s Earthues – a celebrity student! Plus a whole bunch of other excited women, including me, itching to get into the blue. Our class assistant, Dani, was lucky because Denise did a lot of the assisting during class time instead, leaving Dani to participate in the dyeing along with the rest of us.

I was happy that in this class we were to each make our own dye vat. This simplifies the dipping and timing considerably and we could work at our own pace. So we started filling a little jar with 100ml of very hot water, adding 4 tsps of soda ash, dissolving it thoroughly, and then 3 tbsps woad powder and stirring this to dissolve the powder as well as possible. The usual recipe is only 3 tsps of soda ash but Henri was shocked to find out our water here is below 6 pH (theirs is a neutral 7) and so had to compensate with more soda ash than his recipe states. Optimum pH for the big vat should end up around 9. We left that to sit 20 minutes while we filled a large plastic jar (maybe 3 litres?) with hand-hot water (45-50 C.) leaving a space at the top for the woad paste to stir in. Also in that jar, the mother vat, we added a little soda ash (for the pH) and 1 tsp thiourea dioxide, stirred it in and left it to rest until the woad was rested. Finally we gently stirred in the dissolved woad powder, which by this time had turned greenish. The dregs in the cup were washed out by a little more water and stirred in too.

Then it was time to let the mother vat rest (2 hours to overnight is usual), so we all had lunch. There was an event downstairs at Maiwa East with Bappa and his Bai Lou fabrics, plus musicians and many of my guild friends, so after eating most of the class went downstairs. I nearly bought one of Bappa’s scarves in stiff but nearly transparent double-woven silk with “coins” of blue and red-brown opaque silk tucked in the pockets. But I didn’t. I visited with people instead and shared some hugs.

After we went back upstairs, we filled our big bucket vats with hot water – though mine was cooler than it should have been and several people had to wait to heat more water after we depleted the hot water tank. Master (or should that be Maitre?) Henri added our soda ash (1/2 tsp) and thiox (1 tsp) this time for us. He was feeling the need to control things a bit more. After all, there were 18 of us! Too many cooks and all that… We waited awhile more. He demonstrated the next step with one of the vats.  Pouring about 1/2 of the mother vat in, careful to leave the “dépôt” (sludge) behind, we waited about 10 minutes and then Henri dipped a sample piece of cotton in and left it 5 minutes before pulling it out. We all watched the Alchemy of Blue happen before our eyes. The lesson was to use only part of the mother vat first and then test to see how deep the colour was and how fast the blue appeared, not too fast and not too slow.

We then dove in ourselves with our own vats. A lot of the time with a woad vat is spent waiting! Patience is definitely a virtue here. It is a different colour than I am used to, more murky and kind of greeny-brown. That makes me think I’ve been using too much thiox in my own vats. Will ponder that.

I did my test piece of cotton fabric which I thought was very slow to turn from turquoise to blue compared to the others. It did finally but I was envious of Maria’s vat next to me that was very deep and blue, more than anyone else’s. I gave my test piece a couple more dips and airings and then dove in with a larger napkin and later a skein of wool. Denise cautioned that we should dip the cellulose fibres and silk first before dyeing wool and other protein fibres. Apparently the grease that probably still remains in the wool will affect the evenness of the dye on cellulosic fibres. Wool absorbs the colour more deeply though so it doesn’t bother itself. Good to know. I took that advice to heart and dyed a small skein of wool last and then a larger skein which, after a dip or two, I left in the dye vat overnight. Denise suggested we do that to absorb whatever colour is left in the vat and deepen the shade. I didn’t know that wool could take the alkalinity for that length of time but it seems fine.

I was sorry that we dumped out the sludge at the bottom of the mother vat in order to begin a new one for Day 2. I’m sure there was a lot of colour left in it because we only dyed what we were provided which wasn’t that much. I weighed it later and it was under 200 g total. I vowed to bring more for the second vat! But we needed the jar and I didn’t have anything to save it in. So down the drain went nearly $10 worth of woad. Sniff.

We started again with the mother vat as before but this time we used the 3 tbsps of woad and, in addition, 1 tbsp of Pitchi Reddy’s indigo. We stirred it into the jars and were cleaning up to leave when Michel Garcia, who was still lurking about, advised the addition of a second tsp of thiox in each of our mother vats. I gather they thought that one tsp wasn’t enough for that amount of woad/indigo. So it was duly added and stirred and we headed off exhausted but happy.

Part 2 next time!

A Little Disappointing

Well, I used the second half (actually slightly more than half at something over 2 kilos) of my woad. And got…not so much blue. Whahhhh! I don’t know what I might have done differently or if it was the presence of the bolting plants or something else that made the last batch so dark. Perhaps it’s the fact that the first area I used gets somewhat more sun than the plants I processed today? Maybe the 3-day gap between batches was just enough to make a difference? Who knows? Anyway, I got the same lighter blue as I did in last year’s batch even with numerous dips. I dyed one 100g skein of Zephyr merino/silk for yet another lace shawl and 100g more of the Crossbred roving. And no, this time I didn’t use the leaves again in a boiling water bath. You aren’t going to get a photo yet because I’m too tired to get the camera – plus it’s still wet and oxidising. I won’t give it all a final rinse until tomorrow. So I’ll show you the final results when it dries.

What else? Oh yeah. My Ravelry Meetup group voted the Ugly Skein (the Alpaca Lace, comfrey/coreopsis overdyed in woad) as Not-So-Ugly. Fine. I will leave it as is and eventually knit something or other with it. I’m all about the lace scarfy-shawls these days. And tams. I want to make so many tams. What I really need though are sweaters for next winter. I’m tired of living in polar fleece when I could be wearing wool. I figure the Heather Hoodie Vest (Ravelry link) by Debbie O’Neill from the newest KnitScene is a perfect substitute for my favourite fleece hoodie. Unfortunately every sweater I decide I want to knit is in bulky yarn and I need to spin some first! Bulky is hard. I can do 2-ply laceweight in my sleep but heavier yarns are much more difficult and take much heavy concentration or I revert to finer and finer singles. I also want to make a blend of a bunch of different stuff from the stash and I have to wait until it’s cool enough to go stash-diving in the currently-oven-like temperature of the attic. I need something over 2 pounds of fibre in order to spin 1000+ yds of bulky-weight and I may have to do it as a 3-ply just to get the thickness for the gauge of 3.5 sts per inch. If I can process it before we go on vacation then I can spin it while we’re camping.

Speaking of oven-like temps, it’s been a little cooler at a mere 27C. Amazing how much cooler that can feel after the stupid-hot days last week! The gorgeous weather continues though it’s supposed to become a little cooler each day. I’ll take it. And be happy.

I hope all my buddies who are going to the Sock Summit in Portland this week will have a wonderful time! Without me. Sniff. However, have you seen the Ravelry Sock Summit hand-dyed yarn contest? The photos are a wonderful inspiration for anyone who loves to dye their own yarns. Unfortunately my current fascination with botanical dyes from my own garden doesn’t lend itself particularly well to the hand-painted look. You can get something like it with extracts but the best I can do is dye fibre in individual colours and spin that into a more variegated yarn. Of course I have yet to actually spin most of my fibres! I’m waiting for a) it to cool off some so the stuff doesn’t stick to my sweaty hands and b) to have enough to work with because I dye in very small batches. More about this anon.

I’ll be babysitting the grand-beasties tomorrow afternoon while their parents go get their teeth cleaned at the dentist. Haven’t seen them for several weeks after the overdose I got when their mom was away in England for a week. I’m sure growth and maturity have occurred in the interim. It’ll be fun! Oh, and I’m nearly finished Milord Son-In-Law’s birthday socks. Yay!

I’ve Got The Blues

We had another record hot day on Thursday (half a degree hotter than Wednesday) but yesterday was a little more reasonable so I decided it was time to tackle the woad:

A couple of plants were starting to bolt prematurely so I chopped off all the leaves from seven plants out of the 14 total. But not that one from last year still trying to flower there on the left – it got composted instead. I’ve already got enough mature seeds from it. The rest of the harvested leaves (1800g) were washed and chopped and extraneous animal life (snails, spiders and sowbugs, oh my!) removed. Just like making a giant salad! I used the same recipe for extraction as last year from Sarah which works very well. This time I had pH testing paper so I could fine-tune how much acid or alkali I was adding. I only used about half a litre of my ever-present acid soaking solution (easier to come by in my studio than vinegar) to get it to a pH of between 4 and 5.

When I had cooled the acidic extraction pot and fished out the leaves and squeezed all the moisture I could out of them, the pot was the usual sherry wine colour. However when I added the soda ash to bring the pH up to between 9 and 10 (took about 17g) and started whisking, I could see that this vat had more suspended indigotin than any of my previous ones. Whoo-hoo! The froth was very greeny-yellow with flashes of blue which disappeared after whisking some more. After warming the pot up to 50C (120F) I used thiourea dioxide (10g) to reduce the oxygen out of the vat, adding a little more soda ash and thiox as necessary until it was a fairly clear yellow-green solution. It never cleared as well as previous vats but that’s probably because there was a lot more blue in it! 

I dyed Crossbred roving for spinning and overdyed my Alpaca Lace yarn leftovers that had previously been dyed with comfrey and coreopsis (copper mordant). My first dip was darker than any of my previous efforts though the second dip didn’t darken it as much as I had hoped. I used some fresh undyed wool roving in an exhaust dip and got the robin’s egg colour but darker than my first try last year. The alpaca skein is now really ugly and I’m not too sure what I’m going to do with it! It definitely needs help. In total I dyed about 200g in the blue vat.

After extracting the blue from the leaves, I put them in another pot and covered with water and boiled them for an hour. I removed the spent leaves which went into the compost. Then I added 10g (10% WOG) alum mordant and 4g (4% WOG) cream of tartar and entered 100g of the same Crossbred wool roving. After bringing the temperature back up to a low boil, I cooked it for an hour and then turned off the heat and left the pot overnight. As an experiment, I reserved a bit of the wool after dyeing but before leaving it overnight. The results were visibly darker the next day so it is definitely worth leaving the fibre to cool in the dyebath if at all feasible. This was an “all-in-one” dyebath because I didn’t have any already-mordanted fibre available. I got a lovely rose-beige colour from the woad leaves in a traditional boiling-water bath. Very versatile plant, hey? Not terribly strong colour though. I think the rose-beige will have to be washed in neutral detergent (Orvus or shampoo) to retain the pinkness.

Speaking of Orvus, my jar of this went totally clear and liquid down to the bottom in the heat we’ve had recently, even though it was in the basement in the coolest area of the house. I’ve never seen it do that! Usually it’s a white paste, even stiffer in winter.

So now I have 7 more woad plants obviously ripe for extracting the blue. I think I’ll do another dye morning on Monday or Tuesday, depending on the heat factor. I’d like to dye some skeins of laceweight yarn, the yummy wool and silk Zephyr. And perhaps overdye the Alpaca Lace skein again. More ugly? I don’t think that’s possible. No, you can’t see it.

Yet Another Teaser

I had my Ravelry knitting group over for a Deck Party today so I obviously haven’t had time to edit some more of the photos I took in Spokane that I still wanted to show you. So you’ll just have to wait a little longer. The knitters had a great time though! Such laughter and yummy food, sparkling wine and beer and lemonade. I bet the neighbours all wished they could have joined us. (Oh yeah, one of the knitters IS my neighbour!) Best of all, they left us some goodies including strawberries, ice-cream and blue corn chips. Unfortunately I’m still too full to take advantage of the leftovers yet.

Meanwhile back at the ANWG conference roundup, I found the YouTube link to the rap that the children of our keynote speaker Ruby Leslie aka Ruby Charuby made about their mom the weaver. Too funny! What talented (adult) kids. Of course their parents are creative too: besides mom the prolific and talented weaver, their dad is an artist and college instructor. Obviously there is a wonderful family climate in their vicinity!

Tomorrow it’s back out in the garden in the morning to plant T-man’s black-eyed susans before they croak. I have rogue baby tomato plants inexplicably coming up in the coreopsis and I have to tie up the woad better because the ripening seed heads are getting heavy. I guess I should chop most of them off and see what colour I can get in the dyepot, though I’d rather wait until they are closer to ripe and are black instead of the pretty chartreuse they are currently. I’ll check Bobby Irwin’s notes and see which might give me the most colour. After all, I don’t need ALL the thousands of seeds that 2 plants can produce. Only a couple of dozen would be plenty. The rest are fair game for experimentation.

Then when I get tired of gardening, I always have the dishes to wash from today. To be fair, several people offered to help wash up but I don’t mind. I just put on my podcasts and go to it. I’ve never really seen the need for a dishwasher especially when usually there’s only the two of us now and only occasionally do we entertain. No biggie. It was a very enjoyable day.

More Of The Same

Yup, I’m still here! Life has been both too busy and too boring to post about in Damselfly’s Pond these last few days. The weather has been “iffy” – it seems to sprinkle on me every time I step outdoors but remains dry if I stay in. To break that rule it rained like crazy last night so that I didn’t bring in any of the plants from the greenhouse. Hope they didn’t mind! They are like small children that I have to allow out by themselves sometime. They have to be planted in the garden eventually.

I finally pulled out all but two of my last year’s woad. I was too pressed for time (too lazy?) to try to use them to see how much blue they might still contain. They’re adding to my compost instead. The last ones I’m allowing to flower for seeds. See the pretty flower buds?

Those second-year plants are growing like crazy and are nearly as tall as I am now. The new baby woad plants are all planted now though they seem to be getting eaten by something (slugs? snails?) that’s leaving large holes in their leaves. I hope they grow fast enough to outstrip the damage. I gave them lots of compost and mushroom manure to help. They were hardly bothered last year so this is unusual. Every year in my garden is a different story! Some happy and some sad.

I’ve also got lots of coreopsis and marigolds to plant in the front garden as well when we’re finished preparing the space. T-Man cut the poor mostly-dead pyracantha (firethorn) back to a short stump and dug and composted the area underneath where it was growing. Now I have lots of new space for my coreopsis. Hope he doesn’t complain as much this year when I harvest the flowers! I’m so mean, aren’t I?

I’m glad it’s too wet out today to garden since I’m feeling like I need a bit of a break. I only have 5 more repeats on the Papyrine Wrap and the rows are getting steadily shorter as I decrease towards the finish line. Yes, I feel like I’m running a race! I’m determined to get this project off my needles and dyepainted as fast as I can manage because I’m so over it. I want to start something new. for starters, I need a bit of a wardrobe revamping before I head off to the ANWG conference in Spokane on the 27th. Yes, it’s only a few weeks away. Urp.

In other news, we babysat the grand-beasties on Saturday evening while their parents went to the Canucks hockey game with tickets that their mom won through a radio contest. Total worth: nearly $600! Not being a sports fan I would rather have the cash myself, but they had a wonderful time even though their team lost. Stargazer has his nasty cast off now but he’s still limping quite a bit on his poor leg. He even resorted to crawling so that he didn’t have to use it. Hope it feels better soon so he forgets the pain of breaking his leg. He’s a tough little guy but that’s a lot for a two-year-old when he doesn’t quite understand why it hurts. His big sister was pretty gentle with him for once so I think she understands and sympathises. That’s a big leap in her development at just 3 months shy of her 5th birthday. She used to consider her little brother a big annoyance and mostly just took all his toys away instead of trying to play with him. Nice to see her learn to appreciate that there are at least a few good things about having a sibling. Though maybe I’ll have to change her name to Princess Orange which is her new favourite colour! Copycat. It’s been my favourite for a very long time.

If you’re local, you’re welcome to come along to my weavers’ guild’s free slide lecture tomorrow night (Wednesday, May 6, 7:30pm) at VanDusen Garden’s Floral Hall featuring Jane Kenyon, fabulously talented textile artist. I’ve known Jane since she was a weaver and former member of my guild (GVWSG). She took the first City & Guilds Design and Embroidery Course with Gail Harker that was offered in North America and it completely changed her artistic focus. Her thread paintings are amazing up close! Pictures don’t do them justice at all so come see them in person. The topic is Fibre: An Obsession and there will be refreshments afterward plus a chance to chat with Jane and the other attendees. The guild offers a lecture every year and it is open to the interested public in order to share our passion for fibres and textiles.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! My baby sister lives in Mazatlan with her dear Mexican husband and their two handsome boys so I thought I’d throw that in. Though it’s more a celebration of Mexican heritage in other countries particularly the USA. Kind of an Hispanic version of St. Patrick’s Day, aka an excuse for a party!

And speaking of parties – tomorrow is my Fourth Blogiversary! I know I have at least a couple of readers out there, don’t I? Please leave a comment on tomorrow’s post and invite your friends to read my blog. (I’d love to get the stats up.) OK, I guess I’ll need to promise some more interesting posts to keep you reading then, huh?

I Haz Code In Da Noz

Of course it was inevitable. I’ve been pushing myself too far and I knew something was going to give. I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat and by last evening I was sniffling. Even though I was sick a lot last winter I never had an actual cold. Haven’t really had one for a couple of years. Just the Dizzies (3 or 4 times – I’ve lost count), the flu (twice!), and The Cough That Never Ends (and still hasn’t). Although I do feel somewhat yucky, I’m “as-if-ing” and pretending that I’m just fine. That sounds so like my dear departed grandmother. She was always “Fine. Just fine!” No matter what. However unlike her I tend to whine about how crappy I feel anyway.

So in my “as-if” state, yesterday I managed to get more blue wool from the rest of my woad:


Yippee! This was a little more successful than last time and I got a deeper blue on half as much wool. The proportions were 16 times the woad leaves to the weight of the fibre instead of 8 times like last week. I did everything else (I thought) exactly as last time but the vat had quite a bit more colour in it and it behaved and smelled a lot more like an indigo vat. Perhaps the second bunch of woad picked a week later had developed more blue in it? Or maybe I extracted it better? Who knows. I’m very happy with this:


The photo shows the latest blue at the top with last week’s paler and more turquoise batch below. The little skein was the merino/silk handspun that was only the palest blue in the final dip last week but I did a few successive dips this time with part of the skein out of the vat. It’s now several shades, still robin’s egg blue rather than indigo. It’s interesting that only in concentrated form do you get the more true indigo blue but the nearly exhausted vat gives more greenish shades. You don’t see that colour with “real” indigo no matter how pale. Woad has a different composition of dyes.

That was a really fun experiment and now I’ve gotten red (OK, orange), yellow, blue and brown from my own plants, though none of them were particularly intense shades. My own fault for trying to dye too much fibre with too little plant material! I have new and improved respect for those who dyed cloth before the advent of synthetics. Not to mention those who grew the dye plants and extracted the dyes. And while we’re at it, those who grew, processed, spun and wove the cloth. Over the years I’ve done most of those things but I keep forgetting that the general public is much more ignorant of where their cloth comes from than I am. Could explain why I keep things forever and don’t pay much attention to quickly-changing and ever-disposable fashion. You would want things to last as long as possible if you had to create them all the hard way from scratch, that’s for sure.

Today my “as-if-ing” has me cleaning out the linen cupboard and washing blankets and linens, including some of Auntie90’s stuff that I brought home. I will need to assess whether or not to overdye some things that are stained or repair a few holes. And I will have some nice clean cloth handkerchiefs for my sniffles. Little did I know I’d need them so soon! I don’t have a clothesline so T-Man has tied me up a rope line from the walnut tree to the upper deck rail so I can hang out my handwoven blankies to dry and they’ll be fresh and ready to go back on the bed for cool fall nights. (Not yet!) After it dries I’m going to pack away my old handwoven overshot coverlet. I’ve had it on the bed for years and years and it’s got so many pulls in it from the cats’ claws that I can’t repair them all. I can’t bear to throw it out though because it’s got hand-dyed handspun pattern weft and I and 3 of my weaving buddies made it together on a huge loom in 1992 so it’s kind of special. It also gave me the worst case of tendinitis in my wrists for at least 10 years afterwards so you might think I’d be more willing to give it up! Not yet. Yeah, probably my kids will be complaining about me like poor old Auntie keeping everything. Heh!

Oh, I nearly forgot. Meet my cute little friend:


He unfortunately had a leetle teeny accident and is no longer with us. Sayonara, darlin’. Japanese snails do not belong in my garden. I am Godzilla when it comes to pests.

It's Officially Spring!

A couple of things I’ve forgotten to mention in past messages:

The rhubarb we left out in the alley in pots got happily adopted by someone. My rhubarb roots on the other hand, are still in a bucket. Hope they don’t either dry out or mould before I can get to them. Oh, and the ones we replanted are doing ok thankfully. They have larger leaves and some new ones peeping up.

Somebody actually bought the super-expensive house next door. The For Sale sign has been gone for awhile and some inspector was checking things out. There are still plenty of things undone, such as repainting the front porch and stairs and finishing the fence and gate. Maybe moving the trees that are parked under the power lines and too close to our yard for comfort? Nah, nobody will notice them until they get big enough to be a problem. And then they’ll prune the poor things within an inch of their lives and they’ll look horrible. We want to know what’s happening with the back fence between our properties before I plant the section closest to it. Don’t want stuff all tromped upon but the dough-heads the builder hires. Time is getting urgent or I’ll be planting somewhere else in the garden.

Speaking of gardening, I got some woad seeds from my friend Chris of Joybilee Farm.

I hope I’ll be able to find somewhere to put several of these rather large plants. At least they’re prettier than my madder! This article on cultivation is by her teenaged daughter Sarah who has done a lot of experimenting with woad. I hope she will complete the planned article series soon. Meanwhile she’s taking her knowledge to the national science fair. You go, girl! I need to send Chris a thank-you gift and I know exactly what it will be. But I have to make it first.

Have I mentioned before that I’ve charted out the shaping for the Hepburn Cardi in pattern? Just so I don’t make any major blunders. I’m not good at winging my knitting when trying to carry on a complex cables-and-lace pattern while doing things like “BO 4 st eor twice and at the same time dec 1 st at neck edge every 5 rows 3 times and then every 6 rows 8 times.” I made that up, but you get the picture. It’s even worse when you have to pick the specific number for your size out of the middle of lists like “2 (2, 3, 3, 5, 7)”. Yes, I’ve used highlighter pen to single out my size out of the blur. But the words “at the same time” get me every time. So I use Knit Visualizer (I’m loving the new version 2!) and chart out each section. Sometimes I have to wait until I get there so I know which row of the stitch pattern to start the inc/dec/BO — but that’s ok. Knit/chart/knit/chart is much easier than knit/frog/knit/frog. Yes, I’m a bit anal like that. I have one last chart to do for the front neck area. I have to wait until I get there, but meanwhile I just have to knit as established for 15”. Easy-peasy. For this part I don’t even need the chart I made. At least until I get to the underarms where I use the same chart I already made for the back.

Well, I’m off to my weavers’ guild meeting this morning. Thank heavens for sock knitting to take the edge off the executive meeting. Happily I have to leave it early for my Library Volunteer job. I like that one. Play with books and magazines and chat with everyone who comes in. Best guild job I’ve ever had.

Happy Spring Equinox!