Given the level of colour in my E Cladocalyx bark tannin bath (see previous post), I couldn’t resist trying to dye some wool. This is handspun finn cross wool, cooked for about 90 minutes in a solution of E Cladocalyx bark, which had been soaked in a sunny spot for 14 days prior to dyeing. The commercial superwash, alum mordanted strand of wool on my test card is a much darker shade of brown.
Filed under Dye Plants, Eucalypts, Natural dyeing
I am touched and delighted to have been nominated for the Illuminating Blogger Award by Dre from Grackle & Sun. I am inspired not only by her thoroughgoing approach to natural dyeing and her witty and illuminating way of writing about it, but also by her dedication to her wellbeing and to getting fit. I haven’t been writing about it here, but 2012 was the year I started running (jogging… slowly), so I’ve been on a wellbeing and fitness journey of my own on which all fellow travellers are welcome!
The rules of the award ask that:
I share a random thing about myself: Yesterday morning I saw a pair of gang-gang cockatoos in the bush, near Mittagong, New South Wales. This is the first time I’ve ever seen one in the wild: it was just so exciting! The last time I saw a gang-gang I was in some kind of zoo or wildlife park inside a big cage. I was wearing a spectacularly light catching and quite large stud in my ear–some kind of plastic bling. The male gang-gang landed on my shoulder, which was amazing. We had a short chat, and then he applied his considerable and strong beak to my earring, which was pretty scary really… but I still have an earlobe to this day.
Years ago I sang in a trio and one of the other members of the trio set ‘Bird and Man’ by Douglas Stewart to music in a most wonderful way (I believe some liberties may have been taken with the lyrics). My favourite couplet remains: ‘Bird is gang-gang, well he knows/His whole head’s feathered like a rose’. It turns out Douglas Stewart also wrote ‘A Flock of Gang Gangs’.
Nominate 5 (or more) other bloggers whose posts are informative and illuminating.
I love Wendi’s use of local and native plants, sense of experimentation and the sense her blog gives of her living a good life.
Pallas’ approach to dyeing is wonderfully systematic and so beautifully communicated. I love her generosity in sharing her dyeing processes and her experience as a dyer.
I find Deb’s blog full of information and a wealth of experience, and she is a delightful and thoughtful writer.
Every time I visit ‘Deep in the heart of textiles’, I find myself humming that famous tune as I enjoy textile ranger’s wonderfully eclectic and colourful blog.
Rihivilla, dyeing with natural dyes
I love Leena’s wonderful photography, dedication to growing and harvesting dye plants and her delicious colours. Her blog is a source of inspiration as well as beauty and information.
What a pleasure it has been to think about these bloggers and all I admire about their writing and dyeing! Have a happy and colourful new year…
Filed under Natural dyeing, Uncategorized
Following Rebecca Burgess’ instructions for a fall dye starter from Harvesting Color, I pulled out my rusty nail solution and, given the difficulty of collecting maple leaves nearby, took the opportunity when I was passing a street where oaks had been planted as street trees.
I wrapped my bundle and put it in a jar of vinegar and rust nail water on 16 December (that’s it beween the rusty nail jar and the hibiscus dye jar). Now to see what happens. I have to say it is a mystery to me why my rusty nails, which were…rusty and orange… have produced a black solution over time in my case. I have added more vinergar and water to the nails and the black particles have settled out in the bundle jar overnight in this photo.
After two weeks in the sun, my rusty water looks more rusty (and you can just see my bundle in there):
And yes, I did get a leaf print, albeit a mostly very blurred one. The colour is impressive, but I think this is a clear case of time (unusually) not being the dyer’s friend. Rebecca Burgess suggested 2-3 days and I left this for 10-11 days, which suited me but not the process. I will be sure to try again and be more obedient in my instruction-following!
Filed under Leaf prints, Natural dyeing, Uncategorized
I have been reading Rebecca Burgess’ gorgeous book, Harvesting Color, which had me thinking about how to create a tannin solution. The local solution for her is to gather acorns. That might be possible for me in autumn, too. There are some avenues of oaks in my city, and they have tiny newly formed acorns right now. But it seems to me that eucalypt bark would be a promising source in my own region. I thought it seemed logical to collect bark from a species that hadn’t shown a lot of dye potential (I’m trying for mordant, not dye). So I stopped outside the royal showgrounds where this huge E. Claodocalyx (Sugar Gum) had shed its bark recently. We were having unseasonably cool weather as this dull photograph shows.
I picked up a bag full of bark and headed home to let it steep in rainwater. This will be an opportunity to consider the dye potential of the bark as well as try it as a source of tannins. There are many of these trees around my area and this is a truly huge tree when full grown, which sheds its bark once a year, so if this is a good source of dye, I will have access to a lot of it! Here is how it looked on 15 December:
And two days later:
…so I put a metre of cotton cloth into it, which immediately turned golden yellow:
I left the pot in a sunny spot. The temperatures have ranged from mid-twenties celcius to 40C. By 1 January, the pot was darker still, with the liquid seeming a ruby red shade.
And here is the cotton I immersed in it so many days ago after drying.
Needless to say, I am now planning to dye wool in my bark liquor and see what happens…
Filed under Dye Plants, Eucalypts, Fibre preparation, Natural dyeing, Uncategorized
Yesterday I came through the royal showgrounds with my secateurs. On the way out, I spotted these fruits. I think this is one of the dianellas, probably Dianella Revoluta. It’s a common native, drought hardy inclusion in public plantings in my area. There were so many that on the way back, I took just a couple of stems from each plant and put them in my panniers. While I was there I saw some caltrop, so I removed that while I was there.
It’s one of the enemies of cyclists, as you might guess from these immature fruits… which when ripe will be the stuff of many punctures. I pull this out any time I have the chance.
I followed Jenny Dean’s suggestions about processing berries…
And, as might have been expected, the result was nothing like the fruits I started with. I would rate the unmordanted wool pale tan, wool with alum dark tan, the silk is grey-brown and the cotton is pale grey. Not too exciting, is my conclusion!
Filed under Dye Plants, Natural dyeing, Uncategorized
I keep finding myself humming ‘Deck the halls with boughs of holly’ when collecting bark. I realise it’s the first of December and there is a chance I have just been ear-wormed by a Christmas carol when passing by a shop… but I don’t think so. I think I am actually humming ‘Tis the season for bark-collecting, tralalalala tralalala’. Which may, of course, be even greater cause for concern! Today I went out with my bike and visited this tree, cunningly hidden behind and beside a carob tree (whose leaves you can see). I’ve tried dyeing with carob leaves, but nothing exciting emerged.
As I went to pack my bag of bark into my bike trailer a gecko ran out! Now that really was an occasion for celebration… a native lizard enjoying one of my favourite dye plants. I also collected bark from a tree in Leader St. I ran a sample dye pot some years back from leaves that had dried in the gutter beside it and got rich colour, but the council has trimmed the boughs so high I can’t reach leaves or see any buds or gumnuts. I am using the pattern of bark shedding to identify more E Scoparia trees. Anything that has bark that has turned dark grey and red just as it begins to shed is on my plausible candidates list if it is peeling now, which is why I visited the one in Leader St. Needless to say, there is a dye pot running now to test this theory. After all, ’tis the season for bark collecting…
And, at Guild today I became the happy recipient of natural dyestuffs of antiquity which I might be able to use for my dyeing workshop. Some had no labels, and this one is the most intriguing of the unidentified specimens. I could guess many, but not this one. Any clues? It looks to be the husk of a small fruit. Smaller than a hazelnut, say, but bigger than a pea. Dark on the outside and crimson on the inside.
This trove is going to take some research, but will be my first opportunity to try logwood and cochineal (let those bugs not have died in vain…) and suchlike, as well as some things I’ve never heard of, like shredded mulga bark (mulga roots are common firewood here, but I’ve never heard of this as a dyestuff) and ‘red sanderswood’. Happy times… I also received some undyed handspun yarn as part of the Guild birthday challenge, labelled ‘Goat Hair’. Perhaps it can be dyed from the new dye collection?
Filed under Dye Plants, Eucalypts, Natural dyeing
I decided to depart from my recent focus on ironbarks to try to identify this lovely tree, growing alongside the tram line.
This one is not an ironbark… it is a stringybark. Here’s a bit more detail.
All the usual reservations about my skills in eucalypt identification apply, but Euclid and I reached the conclusion this is E.Acaciiformis, wattle-leaved peppermint.
I ran a test pot last week and got a strong, bright orange… so I’m trying out a bigger pot. I’ve been running pot after pot with the same water and fresh bark over the last few days, but for this, some fresh, clean rainwater.
I brought the pot up to below a boil, then simmered for three hours, adding my fibre after the first hour and taking out leaf material after the second to allow more room for fibre circulation in the dye bath.
This is the result on merino and silk (on the left). The braid on the right has been dyed with E Scoparia bark. It is quite striking to see the difference between dye take up on the wool and the silk. All my sample cards suggest this outcome, and so do leaf prints really: I get colours I prefer on wool and cellulose fabrics rather than silk personally, though I see that other dyers love using silks. It does seem very different to the usual expectation about how these fibres will take up dyes.
Filed under Dye Plants, Eucalypts, Natural dyeing
Pohutukawa (Metrosideros Excelsa; known in Australia as New Zealand Christmas Tree) is a native plant from New Zealand, which is grown in Australia as a street tree, particularly in seaside locations. In New Zealand/Aotearoa I saw it growing right on the beach, gloriously. It is a hardy and beautiful tree. I came past dozens of them on Oaklands Road (a main road in the southern suburbs of Adelaide) yesterday and pulled over. I was immediately approached by some people who were looking for Marion Pool, so I gave some directions while I was there harvesting.
I was keen to try dyeing with the leaves of this tree because I’ve leaf printed with them on wool and found the colour almost purple. These leaf prints are on a strip of cream-coloured woolen blanket.
The leaves are green and glossy on one side and almost white and slightly fluffy on the back. One side printed pale green and the other, deep purply-brown. Or perhaps the purple part is in my imagination. These leaf prints were cooked with a set of eucalyptus prints, so for about 3 hours. It is possible a shorter time would be better for these leaves, though they are tough too.
Searching the web and Ravelry for clues yesterday though all I found were browns. Undeterred, I went ahead with two test dyebaths.
I cooked one with the leaves alone in rainwater and one with leaves, rainwater, and a trusty piece of iron pipe. I cooked them for an hour at a light simmer and left to cool and sit overnight. The olive green (or is it khaki) on alumed wool with leaves alone is interesting, but if there are exciting colours to be coaxed from these leaves, clearly I’ll have to try another method. For now, leaf prints are the best result I have achieved.
Leaves alone in rainwater (left) and leaves, rainwater, and iron pipe (right) with wool; wool + alum; silk; cotton).
Filed under Dye Plants, Leaf prints, Natural dyeing
I’ve been working my Eucalypt identification skills overtime and discovered that there are at least 3 dark-barked (by which I mean their trunk bark is brown to grey to black) types of ironbark growing as street trees in my area. The main two seem to be E Tricarpa and E Sideroxylon, but it appears I also have E Corynodes. One of the reasons I’m feeling some confidence is because of the results I have had from the dye pot:
In order of appearance:
E Citriodora–not an ironbark, just for comparison!–(Goodwood); E Tricarpa (Goodwood); E Tricarpa (Black Forest)
E Corynodes (Black Forest); E Sideroxylon (Goodwood); E Sideroxylon (a different tree, in Goodwood)
I would have to say that the dye results are more consistent than my perception of the appearance of the trees! One happy outcome of paying more attention is that I have observed that at this time of year E Tricarpa (and some E Sideroxylons) have tiny buds in formation among the fresh young leaves, and this enables a confident identification as between them. E Tricarpa has buds grouped in threes and E Sideroxylon has buds grouped in sevens. Sometimes fruits are so high in the tree I can’t tell, and sometimes the sample I am able to reach has umbels where some fruits have broken off but I can’t be confident how many. So this discovery is a help to the person trying confidently to tell them apart–me, for instance.
E Tricarpa (see those tiny buds-in-formation?):
E Sideroxylon:
I need to go a little further afield to consider other variations on the theme, but for now I think I will consider wider-leafed ironbarks to be types I don’t know well, rather than assuming they are E Sideroxylon with a better supply of water and nutrients. You know what they say about assumptions!
Filed under Dye Plants, Eucalypts, Natural dyeing
This tree is growing on the tram route in Goodwood. It is clearly an ironbark, but I am less certain it is E Sideroxylon, and thus, I chose to investigate further… There are three ironbarks in a little cluster at this spot. I think one of them is the same species and the other is so tall and branches so many metres above the ground that I may never know.
Here is the key feature of an ironbark: deeply furrowed bark which is impregnated with a sticky saplike substance (kino) which the tree produces in an effort to fend off attack by insects.
Here, more of a sense of the whole tree. It is a very tall tree… and while the trunk might be secure from predatory borers, the leaves showed penty of signs of lerp and caterpillar attack.
The upper branches were paler, more of a cream colour, and covered in smooth bark which had begun to shed. We had a very overcast day, but sometimes a natural dyer can’t wait!
The leaves smelled rather lovely while cooking. I didn’t imagine when I set out on this dyeing path that cooking eucalyptus leaves smelled different, except in the obvious case of ‘lemon scented’! They do though. Some smell quite spicy and some smell like classic Eucalyptus oil. E Crenulata was so overpowering it was voted out of the house for all future time.
As for identifying features, I collected plenty of leaves but could not reach any mature fruit. Since this tree is growing among others that may not be the same species, picking fruit up from the ground sometimes just confuses the picture. There were no visible buds or flowers–so, there are some limitations on identification. Just the same, this tree appeared to bear fruit in pairs and threes (and not the classic 7 flower umbel of E Sideroxylon). Tentatively, Euclid, hampered by my inadequacies in providing accurate observations, and the limitations in the data available, gives me E Tricarpa.
Here is the outcome of my dye sample (hemp/wool blend on the left and and wool on the right on each sample card). E Citriodora on the left and E Tricarpa (tentatively identified) on the right… equally unexciting to my way of thinking.
Filed under Dye Plants, Eucalypts, Natural dyeing, Uncategorized
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