Tag Archives: E Scoparia

January 30, 2013 · 10:11 am

Tree loving

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I decided on a bark collecting mission prior to a big heatwave we were expecting, so I went out with my trusty bike trailer and a couple of sacks to collect from this glorious Eucalyptus Scoparia.  I was hailed by the woman who lives directly across the road from the tree: ‘Oh, you are a good man!’  Eventually we left the gender confusion (and her embarassment about it) to one side and she embarked on explaining that the council hadn’t swept her street for two months.  We have spoken before when I’ve been admiring this tree, so I wasn’t entirely surprised.  However, tree hating always surprises me somewhat in spite of myself.

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I am privately amazed that this woman leads a life in which she sees this tree only as a source of rubbish that lands on the road, which she would prefer swept clean.  This saddened me so much that after I filled my first sack with bark, I collected up all the leaves from the gutter in my second sack and took them home to be appreciated by my chickens.  I am not sure if I was trying to spare her the agitation she clearly feels, or trying to spare the tree her anger, though the tree is indifferent.  It does concern me that when people hate trees, those trees can be endangered, since even when there are people dedicated to tree preservation, so many are cut down.

I managed not to mention that my favourite local tree has been reduced to this:

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Despite the council agreeing to ensure the tree was not chipped once it was felled, only intervention from an alert and interventionist neighbour from a few blocks away stopped it being shredded for mulch.  The neighbour was kind enough to leave a note in our letterbox explaining what she had done to try to preserve it, even reduced as it now is, to being wood.  Tree loving: now that, I can understand.

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January 26, 2013 · 5:46 pm

After the workshop

This week I ran a natural dyeing workshop for my Guild.  It was exhausting but fun!  I tried taking a picture inside the hall and my poor old camera wanted to use the flash–pretty useless.  Between that and having a lot going on, I decided to forget taking photos.  We ran lots of dye pots: E Scoparia bark, dried E Scoparia leaves (oranges), silky oak leaves (yellow), logwood from the abandoned/donated dyestuffs of the past stash (purple), black beans (not as blue as I hoped)… we mordanted with alum and with soy, there were leaf print experiments.  We dyed silk, alpaca, wool, cotton; fleece, roving, yarn and fabric.  Phew!

I came home with cooked bark and leaves and  ground soybeans to compost, quite a bit of remaining pre-mordanted yarn, a bucket of black beans with yarn tucked into it, a bucket of homemade soymilk and the logwood bath.  Can I just quietly mention how relieved I was when I got home without having sloshed a bucket over in the car?

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I have run the logwood bath twice more so far.  This is the second effort: superwash wool in the foreground, alpaca/wool blend in the middle, and greeny-grey-blue black bean dyed sock yarn at the back.  I have some roving still soaking and rinsing after the third logwood bath, and I’m mordanting more fibre to go into a fourth bath right now.  I wish that logwood was a sustainable local dyestuff.  It is spectacular and straightforward, and purple is a great colour.  I loved pouring boiling water on wood chips and getting purple water; dipping fibre into what became a brownish dyebath and pulling it out purple.  But logwood isn’t local or sustainable, so I’m making the most intense use of the logwood that I have been given that I can figure out.

I hope that my forebears at the Guild who abandoned the logwood there or donated it to the Guild would be happy if they could see the excitement it provoked in the workshop.  It’s possible that the former owners of this logwood are still coming to the Guild and will let me know what they think when word gets out of what we did in the dyeroom this week.  I feel so blessed to be part of the Guild–fancy being part of an organisation that has a dye room!

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January 22, 2013 · 4:13 pm

Eucalyptus Erythronema var Erythronema

Riding along the railway corridor near Oaklands railway station, I passed one striking red-flowered tree I didn’t recognise and kept pedalling, but when I saw a second, I pulled over.  Here’s the tree.

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The flowers were especially striking: bright red, with stamens curling back up and around the base of the fruit.  The bud caps are bright red, coming to a pointed tip.

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Quite a sight.

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In her book Eco Colour, India Flint argues that eco-prints are a good way to test potential dye plants using minimal leaf material, and she is, of course, right. On the right, E Erythronema var Erythronema.  Not much of a dye specimen.  On the left, leaves from another E Scoparia, I believe.

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January 18, 2013 · 11:52 am

Finished objects completed in my holidays

There has been a lot of holiday crafting going on round here.  But this post marks return to my day job!

I made some Thai style fishing pants.  I bought a pair in 2000 as the new century began, and they have finally gone to the worms in our worm farms, the ultimate destination of natural fibres that are worn past the point of repair and reuse around here.  I traced a pattern from them and made this pair from a sarong found at the op shop.  I assume the originals were cut to maximise the use of fabric from a loom that is a standard-ish size in the region, because the sarong was the perfect amount of fabric, with almost no fabric left over to be wasted or used for other things.  Surely this is the goal of all hand weavers, as well as a decent goal for thrifty and green sewers.

I used french seams and then top-sewed them flat, so that I could use only cotton thread and ignore the polyester sucking overlocker.  When commercially sewn garments go to the worms, the overlocker thread is usually all that remains.  The worm farm offers an education in the biodegradability of garments, and I am increasingly aiming for biodegradable.  There is a cotton-polyester t shirt in one of them that has been there since my daughter left home and abandoned it.  Over 10 years ago.  Polyester will clearly survive the apocalypse, along with cockroaches.   Seriously, my everyday garments do not need to live as long as the Gobelin tapestries.

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I made a pair of radmila’s slippers from a new book, Knitting from the Center Out by Daniel Yuhas.  They are knit from handspun merino roving dyed with Eucalypts.  I have to say that I gave up making matching pairs a long time ago and now make siblings rather than twins… further proof lies in the next two images. OK, make that three!

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I took up knitting in order to be able to knit socks, and that is what led me to spinning and then dyeing.  Sock production has slowed down, but I finally finished a pair of Jaywalkers for a beloved friend. She is a lover of bright colours who has appreciated these as splendidly red while they were still in progress.  This yarn was dyed by a fabulous local dyer, Kathy Baschiera.

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Remember the post where I was wondering whether a sow’s ear could be turned into a silk purse (actually, whether I could turn the less exciting parts of a polwarth fleece and some low quality alpaca into slippers)?  Well, the answer is yes.  These are knit using Bev Galeskas’ Felted Clogs pattern and dyed with Landscapes dyes.  I hope Bev Galeskas has made millions from her pattern.  I sure have made tens upon tens of these, though most are a shade less hairy.  Clearly I spun in a fair amount of guard hair, and it won’t felt.  Just the same, the recipient of the red pair at the back was very enthusiastic as he turned 40, and the delightful women who will be receiving a parcel today or tomorrow with the front two pairs are great mend and make-do experts who have darned their previous pairs extensively… they live in a very cold place and will enjoy warm feet and hopefully overlook the odd stray guard hair!

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Ah, holidays.  I hope you’ve had some to enjoy.

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January 14, 2013 · 8:08 am

Eucalyptus Saligna Bark Dyepot

Continuing the recent bark theme… and since it is the season of bark shedding for so many local trees, I bring you a Eucalyptus Saligna (Sydney blue gum) bark dyepot.  I collected the bark in December and had a very funny conversation with a passerby who had lots of ideas about what I might be doing with that bark.  This tree has a rough base but has shed all the bark above it in strips now.

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It is a huge tree!  It is outside a block of townhouses, where some trees were removed a while back but this one was saved by some local friends.

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What a beauty.

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Enjoy the tree, because as I write I’ve looked into the dye pot where my handspun wool is heating and this is a case of tan again, I believe.  Here is the bark after I added rainwater for a few days of soaking. 

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And here, my friends, is my dyed wool.

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And against a background of E Scoparia-dyed merino:

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January 7, 2013 · 5:47 pm

Hits and misses

The other day I was at an exercise class in a park.  One if the trees was helpfully labelled Lagunaria patersonia (pyramid tree).  It turns out to be native (to Australia, though not to this part of it).  So… I decided to take a sample and test its dye properties.

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I am here to report to you, dear reader, that this is not one of the stellar dye plants of our time.  That smudge on the right of the linen square with the questionable machine embroidery is the best I can show for a leaf print after an hour and with teh presence of iron and soy mordant.  The only fibre on my swatch showing any colour after an hour of simmering is wool + alum, a delicate shade of yellow-green.

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On the other hand, I made these cushion covers from leaf-printed cotton and linen.  They are for friends who invited us to a holiday house they share near Mittagong.  I hope they’ll accept these as thanks for the lovely relaxing time we had with them.

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They are custom fit to the cushions on the verandah of their holiday house, whose covers have seen better days.

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December 1, 2012 · 8:03 pm

Patterns emerge

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.

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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.

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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?

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November 29, 2012 · 6:27 pm

Eucalyptus Acaciiformis

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.

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November 26, 2012 · 10:03 am

Works in progress

I’ve been puttering along on a number of different projects over the last few weeks… and lest this sounds unusual in some way, that is probably the way life goes most of the time around here!  I returned to cold dyeing roving after retrieving my last spectacular failure.  For good measure, I also dyed some local mohair locks.  I am planning toward a textured yarn spinning workshop and I’m determined to go as close as I can to a local supply of materials for the participants.

We’ve had Ikea here for long enough that the op shops of the city now turn up these fantastic wool drying apparatuses.  One came with a small supply of plastic animals.  This time, just when I thought I had found them all, a small plastic dalmatian dropped out.  Hopefully the child whose toys left home this way is not grieving and bereft!

This time, the merino braids turned out better than I had hoped.  Perhaps I am slowly acquiring a better sense of colour.  Those with a red base (at the bottom of the picture) were the ones I felt most tentative about, but I like them best of all.

The mohair is ready to have seed heads picked out of it and to become part of some textured batts for corespinning and other good times.  Meanwhile, I have been preparing for a natural dyeing workshop focusing on eucalypts.  Again, I need to provide materials, so I’ve been laying in what I need.  It’s the season for bark collection so I have been touring the neighbourhood with my trusty bike trailer and a chook feed sack, pulling over if I’m passing in the car, or wandering out with a bucket, whichever may be appropriate to the day and location of the tree.  In short, I am keeping the E Scoparia bark that is falling to the ground from being blown away, tidied up by others or crushed on the road.  I have almost 3 sacks full so far.  Seeing the bark shedding has allowed me to run test dye pots on a few trees I had been unsure of with more confidence.  I’ve found several more specimens in the local area.  Meantime, I have been mordanting fibres (wool with alum on the right) and continuing to convert my sow’s ear fibre into slipper-suitable yarn (left) as I knit up what has already been spun. I think that particular batch of unlovely spinning may finally be over.  Two pairs of slippers are knit, one to go.

I’ve been converting milk bottles into sample cards, writing up notes and assessing the state of the Guild’s dye room.  Today, I’ve got soybeans soaking ready to mordant cotton for the workshop.  It has me wanting to dye…

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November 6, 2012 · 5:46 pm

Eucalyptus leaf prints of the week

Alongside all these  yarn samples, I made leaf prints.  I sprayed my fabrics in vinegar (as India Flint recommends in her beautiful book Eco-Colour: follow the link on her blog and support her that way if buying online: it is in the left hand sidebar).  Next, I sandwiched the leaves between two layers of fabric, wrapped them tightly around cast iron pipe and cooked them in rainwater for about three hours.

Here is my suspected E Scoparia before cooking: I got a small sample and only what I could reach, and when I got it home, there was a lot of evidence of insect activity!

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After…

I also set up some E Sideroxylon leaf prints, which as I have now confided in you, were not E Sideroxylon at all!   Some on recycled hemp shorts (I’ve decided that I am allowed to use the fabric of garments I no longer like/want for other purposes), and some on some hemp/silk fabric I ordered online. Here is one piece of what used to be a pair of shorts, before:

I am planning to make a leaf-printed shirt, but I am a bit scared.  I mordanted this fabric months ago.  I have a great pattern.  I did not expect this fabric to have one silk face and one hemp face, and I can’t decide which is the’ right’ side.  So I set up one sample on the silk face and one on the hemp face.  Here are the results.

Silk side:

Hemp side:

So… I think the silk side might be the ‘right’ side.  Feel free to offer alternative opinions!  And I might use a different tree for the shirt prints when I gather my courage.

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