Lichen Experiment 2020

This was a lichen dyeing experiment changing the pH of the dyebath.  The lichen on the left is Usnea hirta; in the middle is Lobaria pulmonaria; on the right is Usnea longissima. Fiber samples include a hank of wool yarn and silk and cotton fabric swatches.  Each lichen was simmered for 3 hours before entering fiber.

Usnea hirta

The bundle on the left was at pH 4; in the center, pH 7;  on the right, pH 9

All fibers were simmered simultaneously with lichen for 2 hours.

Lobaria pulmonaria

The bundle on far left was at pH 4 (1hr); left-center was at pH 4 (2hrs).

The bundle right-center was at pH 9 (2hrs)

All fibers were simmered simultaneously with the lichen.

Usnea longissima

The bundle on the left was at pH 4; in the center, pH 7;  on the right, pH 9

All fibers were simmered simultaneously with lichen for 2 hours.

Japanese Indigo 2019

After reading about creating an ice bath for dyeing with fresh Japanese Indigo leaves,  I decided to try it, rather than create a traditional indigo vat.  First, I pulverized the freshly picked indigo leaves, along with a little water in the blender, then scraped the mash into a copper bowl.  This bowl was set in a larger bowl filled with ice, to keep the whole concoction cold.  Next I entered a blend of wool and alpaca fleece into this mush and squished it around until the fiber was completely submerged in the indigo mash.  Then left it overnight.  That was it!  So simple.

The next morning I rinsed the fiber and laid it out to dry.

  It was a beautiful pale robin's egg blue.

After spinning the fiber, I knitted it up into a lace cowl

 which I gifted to a friend.

Horsetail - Equisetum arvense

Field horsetail also called “snake grass,” or “puzzlegrass,” is a relative to the fern and is one of the longest living plants known to us.  Horsetail dominated the understory of late Paleozoic forests for well over 100 million years.  Some even grew to be large trees reaching to over 90 feet tall.  There are over 20 species of horsetail, and they reproduce by spore, rather than by seed.  Today horsetail is native throughout the arctic and temperate regions of the northern hemisphere.  The plants I harvested, pictured here, were growing in the wild along a logging road in western Washington state.

I simply chopped the stalks into 1-2 inch pieces and covered with water, letting it simmer for an hour or so.  A nice orange color began to develop.

After allowing the bath to cool, I entered in three small hanks of wetted yarn, one recycled cashmere mordanted with alum, and two hanks of wool yarn, one mordanted with copper and one with iron.  I also tossed in a small swatch of cotton fabric that had been mordanted with soy milk.

At the same time, I did a similar dye bath using scotchbroom.  More about scotchbroom can be found in another post by that name.  Scotchbroom will yield yellows if using only the blossoms, but light greens can be obtained by using some of the green leaves and stems along with the blossoms.  This time I used mostly blossoms which resulted in a soft yellow.

Results are as follows:

On the fence left to right:  scotchbroom:  cotton fabric swatch mordanted with soy milk, recycled cashmere mordanted with alum, wool mordanted with alum, then iron and copper mordants;  next is the horsetail, starting with the coral-colored yarn which is recycled cashmere mordanted with alum, then wool mordanted with copper, then iron, followed by a cotton fabric swatch mordanted with soy milk.  The real surprise to me was the coral color.

Eco Print on Silk Scarves

For years I have admired the work of India Flint, of Australia, a master at eco-printing fabric using leaves, particularly the eucalyptus leaf.  I own most of her books, which I adore.  Several times I have tried to get into one of her classes when she came to the northwest, but usually was about number 40 on the waiting list.  Sigh.

So, when I saw that a class on eco-printing was going to be offered at the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat in 2018, I immediately signed up.  It was not a class with India, but was the next best thing to get me started.  The Madrona class was taught by Hilary Grant.  We each dyed 6 silk scarves using leaves, (alum and iron mordants), along with acid dyes to assist with background color.  I learned some great techniques which I hope to put into future practice.

Eucalyptus Bark 2017

There are over 700 species of Eucalyptus trees, most of which grow in Australia.  Most species cannot withstand frost.  Still, Eucalypts can be found growing in other countries with warm climates. This bark was found shed on the ground in a rest area near Sacramento, California.  The smooth-barked Eucalypts shed their bark throughout the year, which makes it easy to harvest. The bark I gathered is referred to as "ribbon" bark because it peels away from the tree in long, thin, curling, ribbon-like strips. 

I cut the strips of bark into about 4" lengths, then submersed them in water. This simmered for several hours off and on over a couple of days before entering some wool fiber. No pre-mordanting of the fiber was needed because bark contains natural tannins which act as a mordant.The picture above shows the bark after I had already used it for dyeing. I forgot to take a photo before dyeing, when the bark had a deeper, reddish-brown shade of color.  Here the bark looks pretty well spent.  

Most of my dyeing is just for experimental purposes so I rarely measure fiber or plant material.  I am most interested in just seeing what kind of color is possible.  If I were dyeing fiber for a specific project or thought I might want to try to repeat a color, I would take the time to measure.  Rule of thumb is to use at least twice the weight of plant material to the weight of fiber.

I began with a handful of white Polworth roving, and a handful of taupe BFL roving, putting each in a net bag large enough to let the dye bath soak all through the fiber.  I left the bark in the dye bath to allow the fiber to simmer simultaneously with the bark. They simmered together for 2-4 hours before I turned the heat off and left the dye bath to cool over night.  The next day I pulled the fiber out and laid it in the sun to dry.  The picture below shows the original, un-dyed fiber at the top.  The taupe came out a beautiful chocolate brown, the white a medium tan color, both in the first bath.  Another handful of the taupe roving went into a 2nd bath and tuned out just a shade lighter than the first.

Next, I blended the three dyed fibers together using my hand cards.

  It makes for lovely spinning!

2-ply, drying

    Eucalyptus-bark dyed fiber, spun 2-ply, ready for knitting

   

Summer Dyeing

Tansy ragwort - Spokane, WA 2017

Summer is the time to harvest many roadside weeds for dyeing. Tansy ragwort (shown above) is in full bloom.  This photo was taken near my motel in Spokane, WA while I was traveling a couple of weeks ago, but you can find it almost everywhere!

Driving along I-5 north of Olympia a couple of days ago, I noticed lots of Queen Anne's Lace growing in the dry ditches.  It looks very much like Cow Parsnip, both having white, umbrella shaped blossoms.  The QAL is much smaller in size and more delicate than the Cow Parsnip, and its leaves are more feathery like carrot tops.

Both the Tansy and the QAL will yield lovely shades of yellow.

Also, along the roadsides near my home, the Foxglove is prolific this time of year. The purple blossoms can easily be stripped from the stems by hand and stuffed into a plastic bag.  I usually gather about two shopping bags full of blossoms for one dye bath for one 4-oz skein of wool yarn.
Pre-mordant your yarn with alum, then simmer the yarn simultaneously with the blossom for several hours. Leave in the pot all night to cool.  Yields a beautiful yellow-lime green.  

Check out the post links on the right for more information on dyeing with each of these plants.

Spring Dyeing

Spring is a great time to gather weeds that grow wild along the roadside to use for dyeing.  We are in the middle of a major kitchen remodel at my house, so I won't be doing much dyeing over the next couple of months, but I do hope others will be able to take advantage of a springtime harvest of some of the most prolific weeds the Pacific Northwest has to offer.

Scotchbroom

Scotchbroom  is at it's prime right now in the northwest, and will only last a few more weeks, so don't wait too long to harvest, or the blossoms will be gone.  The tender, green branches filled with deep, yellow blossoms chopped up into the dye pot will yield shades of light green on wool yarn. Check out the "Scotchbroom" post on the right to see the results from an experiment I did a few years ago where I achieved 25 subtle shades of green, using different mordants and modifiers.

Cow Parsnip

Late May is the time when the Cow Parsnip begins to blossom.  These flowers hang on through most of the summer, so you have a wider window to harvest.  The flower tops will yield lovely shades of yellow or gold, depending on the mordants used.  The "Cow Parsnip" link on the right will guide you through the process and show you my results.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Shawl

Here is the story of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Shawl.  This lovely shawl was handknit by Lou Hearnesburger, a member of the  Schafer Meadows Fiber Arts Guild of Elma, Washington, USA. When I saw it, I immediately fell in love with all the beautiful colors and knew I needed to buy the shawl and make it may own.  After wearing the shawl and receiving countless compliments from other's, I realized that this special shawl of "many colors" should not lay folded and tucked away in a drawer or closet where "moth or dust" might corrupt.  No, it was meant to be worn!  It needed to be shared!  Thus began"the Sisterhood of the Traveling Shawl."

Each one who receives this shawl, whether it comes to her in the mail or it is handed to her in person, has been chosen out of love to receive it.   My hope is that when she wears it, the wearer will feel a sense of being loved, wrapped in the love of the "sisterhood" of each one who has worn it before her; then, after a time, think of someone she would like to share the shawl with and pass it on.

Each recipient of the shawl, is being asked to please leave a comment to this post, letting us all know where the shawl has landed.  How fun it will be to follow together the travels of this beautiful shawl!

Over-dyeing with Tansy ragwort

After spinning a couple of skeins of gray romney-alpaca blend yarn, I had a vision of color...dusky golden-olive.  I thought I might be able to achieve this color by over-dyeing my gray with Tansy ragwort.  It was the beginning of autumn, and most of the tansy had died off, however, I spotted a few plants growing alongside the road just outside my neighborhood.  These plants looked like they were still in their prime, so I was sure they would yield plenty of yellow dye.

At home, I simmered the plants for a couple of hours, then strained the plants out, entered my wet skein, and heated to just below a simmer for another couple of hours.  Then left the yarn in the pot over-night while it cooled.

The results were almost what I had envisioned. I do like it, but I was hoping for more of a hint of acid green.  Next time, I may pull the yarn out of the dye bath sooner and see what color I have.

Dye Calendar & Booklet

This beautiful calendar and booklet were gifted to me by Fran Rushworth, of South Wales.   Fran and I met on Ravelry in the "Plants to Dye For" group, and I quickly became a fan of her dyeing, as well as her writing.  I am absolutely smitten by her conversations with "Elinor Gotsland!"  You will just have to visit Fran's blog to meet Elinor.  So, when Fran mentioned she was traveling to the U.S. to attend the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat in February, we quickly made plans to meet up. Between classes and events, we had several times to sit and chat, and it was simply delightful, getting to know her!

Fran is a natural dyer who has written a series of articles for the magazine "Yarn Maker." Her booklet "Dye Plants" is filled with information on choosing, sowing, growing, harvesting, and dyeing with plants -- Coreopsis tinctoria, Dyer's Chamomile, Weld, Woad, Japanese Indigo, and Madder. She also offers tips on dyeing with bark, twigs, acorns, leaves, lichen, and mushrooms, and the booklet is filled with beautiful, color photographs. I particularly like Fran's info on when to start your seeds indoors, when to put them out, and when to harvest.  That is so helpful.

Fran's calendar "Plant Dyes for All Seasons," offers a dye project for each month, with great instructions for making the color happen. The projects include bark dyeing, solar dyeing, contact leaf prints on fabric, as well as where to find  a couple of her free hat patterns using small bits of plant-dyed yarns.  I really LOVE this calendar!  It is one of those calendars you will keep forever.

You can find Fran as "sanmarzano" on Ravelry, or visit Fran's blog  here and find links to her booklet and calendar.

Poinsettia - Christmas 2016

What do you do when your  Christmas Poinsettia begins to fade and drop its leaves?  Well, I can't resist gathering up those beautiful red leaves and putting them in a dye pot. A few years ago, I dyed a sample mordant card and one small skein of yarn, mordanted with iron, in a poinsettia leaf dye bath. The yarn came out green, and can be viewed on a previous post.

This year my leaves went into a small copper pot, covered with water, and simmered on top of the wood stove for two days, adding a little water as necessary to keep the liquid from evaporating away.

After two days, the liquid was still only a light golden color, but I added a small skein of  alum-mordanted, wool yarn anyway, to see what might develop.  I let this simmer simultaneously with the leaves for another two days on the  wood stove.  Sadly, this only resulted in a dismal, light beige on the yarn.

Well, that was not going to satisfy!  When using a copper or iron pot for a mordant, you can never really know how much mineral actually leaches into the dye bath, so results are quite unpredictable. While there may be enough mordant to help lock color in, it may not be enough to shift color. So, I pulled the yarn out, drained the leaves out, and added 1/4 tsp. of copper mineral salts to the dye bath. Once this had dissolved, I re-entered the skein of yarn and put it back on the wood stove for the rest of the day. Notice the blue-green copper residue on the inside of the copper pot. These are the minerals that leach into the dye bath, but again, the amount is unpredictable.

The added copper resulted in a pretty lime-gold color.  

I posted the above picture on Instagram and was more than surprised when I opened my new issue of Taproot magazine and found my picture on their "Letters" page!

  You can find me on Instagram as "AN-IMPARTATION-OF-COLOR."

Mushroom - Hypomyces lactiflourum (Lobster Mushroom 2016)

The Lobster Mushroom is one of my favorite things to dye with.  It reacts well to a pH change which allows for a beautiful range of colors.  These colors were obtained with an alkaline dye bath.  How I achieved these colors follows.

Every year I have the opportunity to harvest these mushrooms at my daughter and son-in-law's house. The mushrooms begin pushing up out of the ground in mid-late summer, growing in the thick fir needles under their trees.  It is always best to harvest these mushrooms by using a knife and cutting the mushroom just below the ground surface, leaving the bottom stem with all the roots in the ground.  This will assure a crop the following year.  I harvested about a dozen or so of these mushrooms.

Peeling the outer, orange, crusty layer of the mushroom and using those peels in the dye pot will provide the best color.  I discard the inner, white portion of the mushroom.

My husband found an old copper pail at a yard sale and brought it home for me to use as a dye pot.  I had been looking for a large copper pot for some time, so this pail was a wonderful surprise and I couldn't wait to try it out.  I put the mushroom peels in the pail, then covered with boiling water from the tea kettle and let it set.  Later, I set the pail on a trivet in water in another pot and set it on the stove, letting the whole thing simmer for an hour or so.

Next,  I added 1 TBS of washing soda, and brought the pH up from neutral to pH 9.  The color of the dye bath shifted immediately from an orange-y peach color to a wine color, which was exactly what I expected.

The first fibers in the pot were 3 150-yd skeins of a wool, alpaca, silk, bamboo blend yarn pre-mordanted with alum and pre-soaked in warm water.  The fiber went right in the pot along with the mushrooms.  The mushroom bits will shake out later.  This pot simmered for another hour or so until the color in the yarn was a deep raspberry.

Happy with this shade of color, I pulled the skeins out and hung them on a tree branch to dry.

There still being some color in the pot, I put in a small skein of wool that had been pre-mordanted with copper, and a large skein of wool which was a dingy, pale blue obtained from an exhausted indigo vat the previous summer.  I hoped the indigo skein might turn a lavender shade, and was pleased with the lavender-gray that resulted.  The little skein came out a light pink with a hint of peach.

Cow Parsnip - Heracleum maxima

Cow Parsnip, Heracleum maxima, takes its genus name from "Hercules" because of the giant size of these plants.  It can grow up to 7 feet tall, and its broad leaves can sometimes measure as much as 16 inches across. Its white flower umbrels are characteristic of the carrot family Apiaceae, which are generally much smaller and more delicate plants with fern-like leaves, such as yarrow, cow parsley or Queen Anne's Lace.

Native Americans found many use for Cow Parsley, including peeling and eating the stalks and young leaves, earning it the name of "Indian Celery" or "Indian Rhubarb.  They often dried the stalks and used them for drinking straws or for making flutes for children.  A mosquito and fly repellent was made from an infusion of the flowers rubbed on the body, and the roots were used to produce a yellow dye.  As it turns out, the flower heads also produce a lovely yellow dye.

My husband and I stopped along this roadside and clipped just the flower tops from enough plants to fill this basket, which in turn, almost filled my dye pot.

After filling the pot with water and simmering for a couple of hours the liquid was a pale yellow, and I wasn't sure there would be much color for the yarn to take up.  

Two 2-ounce skeins of yarn, one mordanted with alum, the other with copper, simmered for an hour or so and yielded these lovely shades of yellow, and golden-yellow.