Must Be A Weekend…

…because it’s raining! Pity the poor folks who had to work and then expected the lovely warm sunny weather that we’ve had all week to still continue on their days off. Sadly, nope. However I was quite ready for a little break. We’ve been busy in the garden for days now and I’m still only about halfway through transplanting everything into their beds. The veggie patch and the dye garden are looking pretty good though there are still gaps because it’s just not quite warm enough at night yet to put in the beans and squash. Soon though!

A friend who is moving was kind enough to give me some of her Anthemis tinctoria (dyer’s chamomile, variety Sauce Hollandaise) to add to the dye garden. (Hi, Suzanne!) I don’t know if this variety is a good dye plant since the flowers have white petals with a yellow eye instead of being completely yellow as in the more common form that was actually used historically for yellow dye. But we shall see! Anyway I really needed more daisy-type flowers – not! In the front garden we already have English daisies and masses of Shasta daisies, which are actually kind of a weed and show up everywhere where I don’t want them. Also there’s the feverfew that I’ve been trying to eliminate for years. Not that I don’t like feverfew – the bright light green leaves and little white flowers with yellow centres are pretty – but it’s another one that shows up everywhere and the ants just love it. They plant ugly black aphids on the stems and then bite me when I brush by them. Yuck! Ouchie and so annoying. Hopefully the dyer’s chamomile will be pretty and useful and not pesky. One can only try it and see, right?

Sorry I don’t have any photos for you today. My computer is not cooperating with my camera card. Humph…

Anyway, Thursday was Spectrum Study Group Day and we had a lot of fun playing with devoré on rayon/silk velvet. I managed to get my jacket cut out (barely!) from my 2 metres of 45” wide velvet. I had one teensy centimetre of fabric length left! Good thing my arms are short, huh? However I wisely decided that a practice session would be a very good idea before I ruined the real thing. Just as well because I actually managed to create a couple of holes in my sample pieces! There’s a definite learning curve to this.

I tried some simple freezer paper stencils ironed onto the back of the fabric and also freehand with a foam brush and a squeeze bottle with a fine nozzle. It was super-hot on Jo Anne’s back deck in the sunshine so our pieces dried really quickly after applying the burnout paste. After lunch we did the ironing part of the procedure which was also kind of tricky. You have to get the heat just right, not too cool or it doesn’t work properly and not too hot or it goes very dark brown and can make a hole in the silk. Also no steam or it moistens the dried paste and can smear your design. You want a light and even biscuit beige. I found it was easy to test if it was enough heat by scratching the pile with my fingernail. If the burnout was done the pile came off quite easily. After ironing we washed out the rest of the loosened pile in warm water. I found the soft surgical nail brushes from Lee Valley Tools were perfect to brush away the pile without damaging the silk backing. Good thing we always keep a large package of them about the house. We use one in the kitchen (for scrubbing mushrooms and carrots etc.), one in the bathroom and one at the basement sink.

Yesterday (Friday) Thom & I walked down to Granville Island to get some groceries and also stop in Maiwa Supply for a bottle of Fiber Etch so I can get on with the real devoré project. I only borrowed a bit of it from my Spectrum friends for my samples. I could have gotten the ingredients to mix up lots of paste for much cheaper but since it only keeps for a month once mixed I doubted I would use enough of it to make it worthwhile. So instead I got the 12 oz. bottle of premixed for twice the price of the 4 oz. bottle, which I figured might not be enough for my jacket. Fiber Etch does have a shelf life too though because I used to have some ages ago that ended up getting tossed. Hopefully I can use it up before it goes off. Might be fun to try something handwoven inspired by some of the devoré work by the late Anne Field from NZ, hmmm…?

Well, I will try to get my pictures to cooperate and attempt another post soon. Over and out for now!

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!

The Roots of the Madder

Well, I finally got my little madder bed dug up a few days ago. It’s only about 3 feet wide by 4 feet long or so and I had only planted 5 crowns in it but it took all afternoon to harvest. The plants had died back to straw and it was pretty easy to clear off down to the soil. Then I triple-dug every bit to make sure I had all the precious pieces of root. I ended up with a bucket full:

Madder (Rubia tinctorum) roots are surprisingly easy to distinguish from anything else. When damp they are translucent red-brown, juicy and brittle and with a thin yellow core which turns red on contact with air. The best ones are as thick as a pencil but I picked everything down to the skinniest bits. I didn’t want to waste any of my precious harvest! I saved out most of the crowns and split a few into more than one piece. You can see the old stems and the yellow shoots as well as the lovely thick roots, which I pruned a little before I replanted it:

I wanted to expand the bed more and also to give some away to friends who had requested it. That’s how I got my first few plants about 15 years ago so I always try to pass on the favour. They will grow from seeds but this was the first year I actually had any good black “berries”. Unfortunately they didn’t get harvested because I was away on vacation when they were ripe.

After digging up the patch I smoothed it out and applied some lime. Our soil is quite acid (blueberries and rhododendrons do very well) but madder likes chalky soil best. Then I replanted the big crowns and a few smaller ones and patted them home to grow for another 2 or 3 years. You can see why it would be best to have a whole plot full of madder plants if you wanted to dye with it often! Then you can dig up part of it every year while leaving the rest to grow. I’ll top-dress the bed with compost and manure in early spring because I don’t have any ready at the moment. They won’t mind waiting over winter. Madder is very hardy and relatively undemanding as long as it gets a reasonable amount of food and water.

Meanwhile back at the bucket of roots, I rinsed everything a number of times under the water tap:

This doesn’t just get off the dirt but some of the yellow and brown dyes in the roots that will prevent you from getting good reds. I even rinsed them again after chopping them up:

You can see how much of the undesirable colour is still there. I didn’t go too crazy though since I actually like oranges and browns! I recommend chopping the roots right away while they are still juicy and brittle. They are very tough when dried. (Ask me how I know!) I use a number of tools including pruning shears, garden snips, a mini food chopper (saved for craft use, not food) and my new secret weapon:

An Alaskan ulu, the Eskimo women’s knife. My mother-in-law brought it back from one of her travels and I’ve found it very useful for mincing garlic and herbs as well as doing a great job on the madder root – at least as good as the food chopper did and more quickly too. The ulu is very sharp! Now the chopped roots are drying before I package them for storage:

I stir them around as often as I remember and watch carefully. It’s been rainy and damp so I can’t dry it outside. Might have to break out the dehydrator if it takes too long. Don’t want them to mould! That would be a big waste of several years and a lot of work to grow them. No, I’m not planning to dye with my newly-harvested madder right this minute. Did I mention that I love the smell of freshly chopped madder roots? It’s kind of earthy and quite distinctive.

In other crafty news, I’ve got the white cotton warp for my new bedroom curtains wound and am now threading the reed. 785 ends. Good thing my hands remember what to do. It’s been awhile since I’ve woven anything at all. Yes, I warp front-to-back. For most things it’s easier on this loom. I thread the reed from the front and then put a cushion on the treadles and sit on them inside the loom frame to thread the heddles. Sounds weird but that brings the heddles close to my eye level making it very easy to see what I’m doing. The loom frame has a big “doorway” on each side so it’s not hard to get in there, at least so far. I’m still pretty flexible for a granny. Heh. This is going to take a couple of days to finish warping because I’m taking care to do it right. No point in making mistakes.

Speaking of mistakes, Debbie is still wearing my skirt so it isn’t getting re-hemmed yet. I’m still somewhat ticked off with it. I’ll get over it. Eventually.

I did finish my Black Spruce Shawl and it turned out just the way I envisioned. Pretty neat! However I haven’t been able to get a good photo. It’s been dingy and dark and the shawl is also dark. I need to photograph this outside and it keeps raining. So it’ll have to wait awhile. I’m also nearly done T-Man’s green socks. None too soon either! He’s showing me some very thin spots on several of his older pairs. If it was just a hole, I would mend it. But it’s not really worth mending socks where the sole has the wool pretty much worn off leaving only the nylon content to hold them together.

I need to discover what my next knitting project is going to be. Apart from yet another pair of socks that is.

Leafy Goodness And More

True confession: I always feel like I don’t accomplish much because everything I do takes lots of time to complete. I have so many projects in my head that only a small percentage of them ever see reality. And it’s not that I don’t enjoy the process of making, however long it takes. Going back and perusing my notebooks filled with FOs really helps when I start to get frustrated that I’m not finishing more-more-MORE. However other people always say I’m really prolific! Guess it all depends on your perspective, hey?

Speaking of FOs, here’s the latest one. It was really easy to finish because apparently I can easily knit plain stockinette in sock yarn and read at the same time. I’m multi-tasking! Yay.

Johnny Boy The Third

For: grandson Stargazer

Begun: October 8, 2012
Completed: October 24, 2012

Yarn: Patons Kroy Socks FX, 75% wool/25% nylon, colourway 57110 Cadet Colours, dyelot 1206, 152m = 50g (shorter than most sock yarns), used nearly 5 balls.

Needles: Addi Lace circulars, 3mm (main), 2.5mm ribbing. Aero aluminum dpns, 2.5mm (neck ribbing).

Pattern: Johnny Boy by Berroco Design Team, Ravelry link, free pattern link, size 6.

Mods: I left off the buttoned shoulder bands thinking they were too babyish for a 6-year-old. I used dpns for the neck ribbing and finished with my new favourite bind-off, Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off.

Comments: This is the third time I’ve made this sweater for my grandson! He loves it and wears it but keeps growing out of it. How does that happen? Since this is the largest size, I’m going to have to find a new favourite for his next sweater. Judging by past history, I have maybe another 2 years to hunt.

I discovered much later that Patons Kroy Socks has less yardage per ball than I’m used to with most sock yarns. It has the same 75/25 wool to nylon ratio and it doesn’t seem much thicker if any at all. Add that to the mystery of why I only used just under 5 balls of yarn, maybe 800 yds total, which is not much more than the size 4 that I made him last time. Go figure. It seems counterintuitive to my meagre little brain.

Anyway, I love knitting with sock yarn especially in stockinette stitch. My hands just go where they’re supposed to and it becomes a totally relaxing experience. Maybe I need to make a sock yarn sweater for me?

So what else? I played with some eco-dyeing. This is definitely the time of year to take advantage of the leaves! First I did a sampler square silk scarf using leaves from my yard and a couple from the purple-leaf plum across the street. I had already mordanted three scarves in alum acetate and this one was just rinsed but still wet. I arranged the leaves in groups on one diagonal half of the square and folded the other half over top before covering with plastic wrap. I wanted to keep the layers in the roll separate so I could really see what colours I could get from each species. Here’s what it looked like after it was all rolled up before steaming:

After I steamed it in the colander for an hour I turned off the heat and left it overnight. Very hard to do! I wanted to rip it open right away. The next day I couldn’t stand it anymore so I opened my pressie:

This is a quick-and-dirty photo on top of the washer while the scarf was still wet. Want to see a close-up?

The green leaves are Japanese indigo (unexpected, I know!), the purple ones are smoke bush, the yellow ones are cranesbill geranium, and the brown one is Persian walnut. In the top photo you can also see the Japanese coral bark maple (yellows) on the left and the dark wine colour of the purple-leafed plum on the right. That big blur of purple and burgundy at the bottom is woad. There’s also some blueberry (red-brown), white ash (surprisingly deep wine colour), plus a few you probably can’t see: heuchera “Palace Purple” (pale purple blur), blackberry (very pale beige), American chestnut (even paler beige). It is of course somewhat lighter after it dried but virtually no colour rinsed out. After ironing out the creases, I amused myself by using a fine black permanent pen and writing all the Latin names of the plants next to the leaf prints on the darker half of the scarf. On the lighter half (which had contacted the back sides of the leaves) I wrote the common names. I think it’s kind of neat! A wearable sampler.

So of course I couldn’t leave it alone after that! Yesterday I covered the long narrow silk scarf with woad, purple-leaf plum, “Diablo” nine-bark (one I hadn’t tried yet) and cranesbill geranium. This time I didn’t use any plastic wrap at all. I wanted the colours to mingle and blend. I have yet to unwrap the bundle today. And I still have one more square scarf left.

OK. Bye…

How Can It Be September Already?

My fingers are sore. I spent a goodly part of Wednesday afternoon stitching and stitching on the new screen for my VW van:

It took about 4 hours and I went over every seam twice to make sure it was going to last. I had to stand on the cooler to reach and even wore my sunhat for awhile until the sun shifted behind my walnut tree. I think it looks pretty spiffy if I do say so myself! If you’re wondering why I worked so hard on this, here’s the original screen:

The new one is much finer and will keep out no-see-ums as well as mosquitoes, wasps, moths and other winged critters. The old one (ca1989) wasn’t keeping out much of anything! Hopefully it will be good now for as long as the van exists – or at least as long as the canvas top survives.

Then yesterday was our monthly Spectrum Study Group dye day. This time we played with madder and modifiers. My tussah silk yarn mordanted in rhubarb leaf came out a disappointing rose-beige for some reason. I suspect the madder needed to be stronger since we only used 7.5% WOF. Other yarns mordanted in alum came out somewhat brighter:

Not as intense as it could be though. After dyeing them we subjected various skeins to acid (vinegar), alkali (ammonia), iron and copper. Only the iron modifier made any real changes in the colour:

The acid modified yarns were slightly brighter than normal but the alkaline and copper ones didn’t change much at all – at least that we could see while they were wet. I’ve experienced much more dramatic differences in the past so I’m not sure what was going on unless it was just that the madder percentage was too low. I usually use 18-25% WOF so we used less than half that. I also usually get at least one or two exhaust baths from the stronger amount but this was completely exhausted right away. We used a finely powdered madder and unfortunately didn’t put it in a bag in the dyebath so now my yarn is full of madder dust as well as kind of homely! It’s still wet and I don’t have a photo yet to show you. I might just try overdyeing it with a little more madder to see what happens. Probably not until I get back from holiday though. I have things to do.

Meanwhile here’s a basket that Kirsten arranged of some of the yarns that she’s been dyeing during this year of Spectrum:

Pretty colours, huh? Who says natural dye colours are all boring and dull. And here’s a little bundle of hand-dyed weaving thrums that was lying around:

Yummy.

Today I was going to accompany Milady Daughter and Rosebud to get her boots adjusted but apparently Milord SIL has contracted mumps. Maybe. They’re still trying to confirm but meanwhile their little family is quarantined. They are certainly not wanted at Children’s Hospital! And baby Rosebud hasn’t had her immunisation for it yet. Cross your fingers that she has my natural immunity. Both my adopted siblings had it, one of them twice (once in each cheek), but I never caught it even before I had my immunisation shots.

So I’m planning to spend some time today carding and spinning more of the black Corriedale yarn. I’ve got half of what I need for T-Man’s Brownstone sweater but I’d like to have it all spun and wound into cakes before we go away. I might be asking too much of myself though. Won’t hurt to try! Every skein I get done means I can get further on the knitting while we’re travelling.

Memo: Always pack your craft supplies first.

I’ve Got The Blues Again

Blue sky, that is. Nice to see in winter, I’ll tell you! One does get a little tired of the perennial grey around here. Of course, along with the blue sky comes frost. I think my mizuna is done for and I didn’t pick a bunch of it the other day when I had the chance. Le sigh. Oh well, I still have a bit of lettuce in the fridge and hopefully the tah tsai is going to survive for a few days longer. It’s pretty cold-hardy. Whatever happens, I consider 2009 to be a very successful garden year. Must have been because I managed to keep on top of things – well, most of the time anyhow.

Our monthly Spectrum Study Group met yesterday and had a lovely time as usual. Even though I didn’t really do anything but knit, chat, drink tea and eat. They’ve collectively decided (when I wasn’t able to attend) to carry on a colour study, each choosing a colour and playing with it in their journals and then hopefully into something more tangible. I haven’t started playing yet, but I think I’ll choose blue since that seems to be the colour I’ve been messing about with lately. Woad dyeing and all. Interestingly, although blue is the most popular colour in western society, it’s not really my favourite colour. My one and only pair of jeans is dark grey (black and white really but it blends optically), not blue. I do have a few blue items, most notably my indigo-dyed (by me) hemp jacket that I made a number of years ago and still wear quite often. But I can’t say I would choose blue first out of a pack of colours. I normally gravitate towards the orange/red section of the spectrum, preferably deep and muted or toned or muddied up some. I do loves me my tertiaries!

So that leaves me with a challenge that it seems I’ve already started to meet in spite of my best efforts to avoid playing along. My last 3 knit/crochet projects were blue and even the legwarmers contain blue as one of the colours in the yarn. I also have a selection of fabrics and fibres and even more yarn that have all recently come in contact with my woad experiments. More blues. My buddies in Spectrum commented yesterday that they never normally see me in blue and there I was wearing one of my cotton scarves that I dyed in the Maiwa woad workshop.

Several other Members had chosen red, one chose teal green and one chose yellow. Sandra said that she needed a bright sunny colour to chase away the winter blahs! We all know what she means for sure. Now she is seeing how many yellows there are in our environment. Focusing on one thing makes you see it everywhere! It’s an interesting exercise, don’t you think? Guess I’ll have to get out the old art journal and the paints and glue stick and such and have at it.

Speaking of colours, last time I was at Maiwa Supply I picked up a copy of Jenny Dean’s most recent little book called “Colours From Nature: A Dyer’s Handbook”. Jenny intends this to be a replacement for her 1996 out of print book “Natural Dyeing Without Chemicals” which I’ve never been able to find. Unlike her two other books which I do own, this one has no gorgeous photos of dyed fibres and dye plants. However it’s chock full of procedures, recipes and other helpful information in an easy-to-use format and includes information not in her other books. This is THE modern natural dye book to have! It was rather pricey at C$29.95 but it’s going to become my dyer’s bible, I can tell. Perhaps I should scan the pages, print them out and put them in page protectors to keep a copy in the dye studio. Yeah, I know that’s probably a big copyright no-no, but I’m betting if I asked her, Jenny would approve. I’m sure she means this book to be used – not sitting on a shelf. But I’d sure hate to spill something on it rendering this expensive book unreadable! Plus her books tend to go out of print, rendering them rather irreplaceable. I do like the way this woman works. Her considerations and procedures very much follow my own, though she is much more experienced than I am with natural dyes. I spent a very long time with synthetic dyes instead and am only recently leaning over to the more sustainable side.

Besides Jenny’s, a couple of other of my other favourite natural dye blogs also include a whole lot of really useful information. First is Leena Riihelä from Finland. Her blog is written in both English and Finnish. She grows her own Finn sheep and has a small business, Riihivilla, producing natural and botanically dyed yarns and knitting kits. Her specialty is mushroom dyeing and she gets wonderful colours from them. Then there’s Helen and her friend Enys of Growing Colour who garden with dye plants and use them to dye fibres in Wales, UK. Helen teaches workshops in felting and uses her dyes to make thickened and stabilised inks for her paintings. Then there’s the blog from Renaissance Dyeing situated in France which also has a lot of great information for natural dyers. And there’s Teresinha Roberts’ Wild Colours website. She doesn’t have a blog but she has put up what amounts to an entire natural dye handbook! One more really great dye resource comes from Bjo Trimble of Griffin Dyeworks: her comprehensive Understanding Mordants and Modifiers. This will help you translate all those weird chemical names, whether scientific, colloquial or historical.

Such fun taking roots and leaves and bark and bugs and using them to colour things! It’s very exciting and you never quite know what results you’re going to get. More like alchemy and less like science.

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.

Nary A Tire Track Or A Footprint

Yes, I survived yet another loooonnng (OK, only 4.5 hours) session with the grand-beasties. Successfully passed them off to their other grandmother and collapsed quietly with my knitting for awhile. They were really pretty good actually though I didn’t hear Other Grandmother at the door because Somebody was yelling in my non-augmented (aka deaf as I can be with no hearing aids in) ears. She had to phone me to get my attention! Which of course I was glad to provide. Here’s the kids; what’s your hurry; can I help strap them into their car seats?

It has gone back to summer here and, though the rain was really needed and was a pleasant change for awhile, I’m happy to see the sun back. It was freezing in the house for the last couple of days. Just watch. I’ll be very quickly back to complaining about all the watering I have to do again.

So since it was finally light enough to take photos, here’s my current main project, the Bam-Boo-Bel Scarf:

As usual with lace on the needles it’s not very interesting really. I’m on Section C of the pattern with only 12.5 rows left to go to the end. Talk about a quick knit! Even including all the frogging I did in the beginning.

Now that it’s nice out again (with a bit of occasional cloud just to keep it reasonably cool) I have to get out in the garden. I have to pick this:

And then dry it to get this:

Curiously all these plants were grown from seeds that I saved from the more red-based flowers last year. None of that colour variety showed up though there are a few with larger red centres and a plant or two with the “seashells” tubular petals. Interesting if failed experiment. Also there is this:

Captive woad seeds! Just waiting now for them to dry out some more after the rain before cutting them off for next year’s plants. And the next batch:

Looking just about ready for the first harvest very soon. And speaking of harvesting, I got about a pint of blueberries yesterday off the earliest bush which is loaded with much bigger berries than usual this year. I would have gotten a lot more but the grand-beasties were “helping”, with Princess Pink instructing her little brother to “only pick the blue ones, not the white or pink ones”. He quickly got tired of trying to pick them from the bush and picked greedy handfuls out of my container instead. I just love the way he calls them “blowwies”. That boy has more L’s than he needs! Too cute.

Snow White And Rose Red

Well, maybe not “rose” but “brasa”, which means glowing embers. Too bad it’s just a poetic red dye colour. I could use those embers to stay warm! I’ve been slapped upside the head for thinking that spring was on the way but there was a skiff of snow on the ground this morning. Unfortunately not enough to use for snow-dyeing which is what I was hoping. Other parts of the Lower Mainland got more than we did because a number schools are having a snow day. Wusses. It’s not like it’s a foot deep or anything. Just a bit slippery. And it’s even brightening up.

I’ve been somewhat quiet the last few days because I was determined to finish spinning my silk/wool yarn. I ended up with about 45g and 740 yards of 2-ply. That’s pretty fine stuff! Right after I wound the last skein, I rushed down to the dye studio and washed them and popped them into a mordant pot (8% alum, 7% cream of tartar). Then I brought it slowly up to a simmer and kept it there for an hour. I also weighed out 100% (45g) of brazilwood sawdust and poured boiling water over it. After the mordant pot cooled a bit, I wrapped it in a towel and left both it and the brazilwood overnight. Now that I’ve read up a bit more, I probably could have left the wood steeping for several days. But I didn’t know that. Besides I’m impatient to get this project on the needles.

This morning I rinsed the mordanted yarn. I ran the brazilwood through a coffee filter into the dyepot and covered the “mud” again with water and brought it up to a simmer for an hour. I was interested to see what colour that first soaking would give so I put the yarn into it:


Orange! It wasn’t even heated yet and I didn’t care if it was somewhat unevenly dyed. Gives more spark to the yarn. After removing the skeins temporarily the second extraction was filtered into the dyepot. I replaced the yarn and started heating the pot while the sawdust was going through a third extraction. I removed the yarn again while filtering the dye a third time:


Dark orange! Note that each time I used a new coffee filter because they don’t survive more than one use. (Ask me how I know this!) This time when I re-entered the yarn and simmered for an hour I got an even deeper colour:


Warm red! Currently I’m leaving the yarn in the dyepot to cool as long as I can stand it. It’s already deeper than the previous photo. The brazilwood (probably Caesalpinia echinata) is some that I’ve had for so long the business I bought it from has been gone for years - though Maiwa carries it here. Mine is very finely ground:


I have no idea if it was sustainably harvested or not but since I already have it in my possession it would be stupid not to use it. The ecological concern is that C. echinata, also called pernambuco, is highly desirable for violin bows (not so much for dye anymore) and is rare and endangered in the country to which it gave its name. Maiwa says theirs is from waste wood and therefore ecologically ok. Interestingly, brazilwood dye is very susceptible to pH differences. To keep the warmer orange-based red I’m going to have to use a neutral soap when I wash the scarf. In a higher (alkaline) pH the colour becomes cooler and more purplish which might be fun to play with in future experiments. It’s also fairly washfast but not terribly fast to light. Doesn’t matter in this project because a lace scarf won’t likely be worn much in bright sunshine. And it could always be re-dyed if truly necessary.

If you’ve been paying attention, I was planning originally to use red sandalwood (perhaps Pterocarpus santalinus which is also endangered or another similar wood which is a byproduct and not endangered). And yes, I have a pound of it from the same company where I got the brazilwood. And no, that’s not why they went out of business! However, the red sandalwood is one of the insoluble redwoods and needs alcohol to help release the colour. It’s also not quite as bright as brazilwood so I chose to go the easier route to the colour I was after. I can’t control myself much longer. I need to go do a final rinse and hang the skeins up (indoors of course) to dry.

Coreopsis Conclusions

On Friday, I finished up my coreopsis dye adventures. To recap, when I last posted I had just put the mordanted Corriedale wool sliver in the bath, simmered it for awhile and left it for the rest of the day. Before I went to bed Thursday night I added the ammonia to the whole bath, which I hadn’t tried before (only in a separate pot). And then I left the wool overnight in the coreopsis/ammonia bath. That was the secret to getting true orange!

By Friday morning I was finished with dyeing – or dyeing finished me, I’m not sure which. So rather than try to dye anything else I just dumped the bath even though I probably could have gotten one more exhaust bath because the colour of the fibre from the last bath was still quite strong. A bright orange in fact. In total, that medium-sized Ziploc baggie of dried Coreopsis tinctoria (about 110 g total) dyed 625 g of wool and alpaca! And we’re not talking pale pastels either. That’s pretty impressive really.


I didn’t do anything to this photo so I’m hoping it will be more accurate colours. Clockwise from the top right: bright yellow wool (exhaust bath), rust wool (ammonia over gold), comfrey/copper/coreopsis alpaca lace yarn, coreopsis/ammonia alpaca lace yarn, deep gold wool, and centre: bright orange wool (ammonia over bright yellow).

Some things that I learned about coreopsis as a dye:

It takes a lot of picking over several months to get 100 g of dried flowers.

They pack a lot of dye into their small blooms.

It takes time to extract all the dye. I did one overnight soak in hot water, plus several more short simmering extractions.

It takes time to apply the dye. One hour when it reaches a simmer is just a minimum. Leave to cool in the bath if possible.

Initial colours resemble that from marigolds: deep gold, bright yellow, lemon yellow (depending on dye strength).

To shift the golds/yellows to oranges, it needs sufficient ammonia. Check after replacing fibre that the bath stays red. If it starts to shift back to rust add more ammonia.

When adding the ammonia the heat was turned off and the bath was hot but not simmering. I was afraid too much heat along with the alkaline bath would be detrimental to the protein fibres. I didn’t reheat at all but left it to cool by itself.

An good long (overnight) rest in the dyebath with the ammonia helps to develop full orange. Shorter times or insufficient ammonia gives more rusty tones.

Coreopsis colour is pH sensitive. Rinse only in clear water, no added vinegar. Further washing should only use neutral soap or detergent.

And that’s it! I learned a lot and got some more wool to spin up for my languishing Backyard Sweater project. Too many other things keep jumping to the front of the queue but at least I have lots of pretty wool to spin when the spirit moves me.

In other news, poor T-Man got my nasty cold, sore throat and all! He wasn’t supposed to catch it but with me sniveling and coughing and waving my hankies around it was probably inevitable. We’re discovering that his previously strong immune system isn’t quite what it used to be. Ah, the downsides to aging are many and varied. Heh. And he’s much older than me – at least for another couple of weeks! Meanwhile, I’ve been making him tea and buying him throat lozenges with echinacea in them and generally babying him until he feels better. We’re due at his brother’s house this afternoon for the family Thanksgiving dinner so I hope we can keep our germs to ourselves. I’ve got to go make a green salad to take with me. I can put a bunch of the last of my Juliette tomatoes in it before they’re all gone.