Tag Archives: wool

July 6, 2015 · 9:51 am

Eco-printed scarves

I was rifling through some of the wool and silk items that I packed away protectively during summer, (when clothes m*ths are breeding) and realised I still have three scarf blanks that were given to me by friends. One is a wool gauze, I think.

One is probably silk scrim.

And the other looks like a finer grade of still quite open-weave silk.

I had an idea for how they might find happy homes, and after some days of wishing but not finding time…

These leaves were collected in the neighbourhood as they fell from trees lining a driveway. And of course, eucalyptus! One pot had a madder exhaust in it, because madder is never really exhausted as far as I can tell.

Out they came…

The silk scrim will need another dye bath, I think. The other two made me very happy–and this is good, because I planned for them to be part of my daughter’s birthday present. I tried a different folding and wrapping strategy on the wool and love the way it came out. The tie resist marks were great–

There are leafy parts and abstract parts, parts that are burgundy or grey-black and others that are more orange.

I tend to get more muted colours on silk, and this was no exception. Still lovely, and just as important in this case, different.

I hope she will like them both. She lives in a colder part of the country and she does love a good scarf.

And now… they have been folded, wrapped, tied with hand made string and placed in the post!

19 Comments

Filed under Leaf prints, Natural dyeing

Tagged as E Cinerea, E Scoparia, gifts, madder, prunus, silk, wool

July 3, 2015 · 3:25 pm

Alkanet and pomegranate

A friendly natural dyer (and highly accomplished spinner and weaver) from the Guild gave me a gift a while back. Alkanet root! This is a dyestuff I had not expected ever to be able to use, and a welcome gift: very generous of him!

Once it went into the bottom of the dye pot, its purpleness became ever clearer–albeit with some camera help! Jenny Dean clearly doesn’t like the smell of alkanet, and I have seen other dyers suggest it is especially unpleasant. For me, it evoked a rotting tropical fruit. The kind of thing some people find delicious and others find appalling. I do prefer the lovely smell of madder or eucalypt, but wasn’t troubled by the alkanet root bath. Mind you, I dye out of doors.

As it happened, this was the same day I made a delectable juice from the last of the season’s pomegranates. Years back, I noticed just one pomegranate tree in all the streets of the neighbourhood where I walk that never, ever, had a rotting fruit fallen underneath it. The tree was always in superb condition–clearly loved, tended and cared for by knowledgeable people. One day I found the people from that garden in the front yard and asked what they did with the fruit, because at that point, no one I knew had ever served them up to me (all this has since changed). The man I asked went into the house and brought me out a sample of the pomegranate juice he had made for his dinner guests! And then explained how to make it by releasing the jewel like seeds from the skin and then putting them in a food processor and straining the results. So. That’s how I had used the fruit. And this is all that was left.

Jenny Dean came with me again for the ride, and some of my cold alum mordanted fleece-of-Viola went into the pots. Once I had carried out Jenny Dean’s alkanet instructions, I threw more fleece into the pot to see whether there would be any additional colour in there.

On the left, the alkanet purple. Upper right, alkanet exhaust, which I would call a pale brown. Bottom right, the pomegranate yellow. Subtle but pleasing.

8 Comments

Filed under Natural dyeing

Tagged as alkanet, Jenny Dean, pomegranate rind, wool

June 26, 2015 · 9:59 am

Indigo fructose vat

I am determined to learn to use Michel Garcia’s fructose indigo vat rather than the very simple but clearly toxic and stinky hydrosulphite vat. I am also on a mission to create handspun, plant dyed yarns for colourwork, and I have a pattern in mind which requires some greens. Also a plan about sock yarn in which this previously undyed, now (osage orange yellow) skein of BFL/silk becomes a variegated green.

I prepared the vat and waited for a bronze sheen and yellow-green liquid below as signs reduction (the removal of oxygen from the vat) had been achieved. I have a Ph meter to ensure the Ph is within range.

I had success with reducing the vat but a lot of difficulty in getting the Ph into a range suitable for wool. In the end, I decided to make the most of it and dipped my ugly cotton bags several times.

In all I dipped them three times and they are now an old denim colour which is a decided improvement.

Once I had managed the Ph, next came fleece from Viola, previously dyed in coreopsis or osage orange.

Finally, in went the gloriously yellow sock yarn. That yellow was so awesome I was tempted to leave it as it stood. But I was looking for yellows and various shades of green, and here they are, ready for the next stage of my cunning plan….

10 Comments

Filed under Natural dyeing

Tagged as cotton, fructose vat, indigo, osage orange, silk, wool

June 24, 2015 · 12:54 pm

Madder

I still have some dyestuffs that have been given to me… and before I dig out my home grown madder, I thought I would use the last of the dried madder root I have.

First, the boiling water soak and pour off (saving the poured off liquid for another bath, in my case). Jenny Dean is my guide in the case of madder though I also read Jim Liles and Rebecca Burgess…

I decided to try to manage the madder (as opposed to having little particles distributed through my fleece and yarn) by putting it in a recycled nylon stocking–which you can see at the bottom of the picture poking out of the dyebath. First I added alum mordanted BFL-silk sock yarn. The first fibres to enter are those likely to be most red.

Over time the shade really does deepen.

Eventually I decided to add fleece, as you can see.

I did several exhaust baths, including one or two some days later. Then I did one a week later and still got apricot! I also tried a different method by which Jenny Dean (in her rather lovely new book A Heritage of Colour) achieves aubergine. I was sceptical about this method. Not because I doubt Jenny Dean really gets purple in this way–I am sure she does! But because it calls for using judgment in the matter of mordanting and modifier, and I know my judgment is nowhere as refined as hers. I further prejudiced my chances by using the poured off first bath rather than using the most powerful dye bath I could. I had, you know, only so much madder, so many plans, and only a modicum of confidence to be going on with. I kept looking at this brownish bath and thinking it was not succeeding. To my surprise though–once the fleece actually came out of the bath and I pulled it from the rinse bucket, it clearly was a shade of purple.

The sock yarn–made me happy. It came out of the dyeing process all scruffy looking, reminding me to always do my own skein ties. But I love the colour!

8 Comments

Filed under Natural dyeing

Tagged as iron, madder, silk, wool

June 16, 2015 · 2:33 pm

I’m just a girl who can’t say no to knitting slippers

It is that time of year again here in Australia, when slippers are called for. Just when I think I can’t bear to ever knit another one, I whip a few out. I had a virus that made me so stupid I had a couple of days off work doing mindless knitting and watching appalling daytime TV. That helped. And, completely charming stories of people’s slipper love come my way and make me weaken.

The red pair are for a friend who is struggling with cuts to public sector services in her workplace. It breaks my heart to see people who want to contribute to making things better for people whose lives are very hard indeed… and who have committed their skills and passion to this task… being treated so badly. By sheer happy coincidence, I got these to her in the week of her birthday. I am so glad she got born and I got to know her!

Her last pair of slippers had been worn to holes and shreds, and hopefully the sheep hide soles will help this pair go the distance. yes, this is the left over local sheep hide in the previous post. The green pair have gone to a wonderful organic gardener who runs a farm, and a pale blue pair that didn’t make it into the sunshine to have their photo taken have gone to her beloved co-farmer. The two of them do an amazing job. I handed these two pairs over at the farmer’s market where they have a stall, and right back at me came mandarins, pak tsoi, silverbeet (chard) and such. They are so generous!

A very discouraged friend gave me a sleeveless vest a while back. She had already knit it twice and I perhaps also partially felted it in an effort to get fit and finally given up in frustration. The wool is handspun and hand dyed. In all likelihood, by one of my Guild friends. I wanted to honour all the work that went into this wool, now a little past its prime. I tell you what, when you unravel a garment you learn a lot about the design and about the knitting skills of the maker. My friend has a very thorough and diligent way of darning in ends! I feel so sad that her vest didn’t work out after so much effort. I don’t think I have developed the patience to knit the same garment twice. Evidently, knitting the same slipper pattern dozens of times is different…

Eventually I got the vest apart and decided I really did have to wash the wool to unwrinkle it a bit. These photos are the ‘after’ photos. And now, all that wool is a pair of slippers for a young father, teacher and farmer, whose sheep hide is going to be sewn onto the soles. I have one more pair on my mental queue and needles and then I can make a pair for the mother, community development worker and farmer side of their partnership… so the season of slipper knitting isn’t over yet. I made slippers for both parties for their wedding, and I had in mind to make them fresh pairs when their second child came along recently. But my intentions didn’t get turned into actions very quickly… best keep knitting!

8 Comments

Filed under Knitting, Sewing

Tagged as alpaca, wool

June 9, 2015 · 12:29 pm

Yellow!

I have been so excited by my recent colour knitting success that I have been moved to dye more shades and spin with the intention of colour knitting. Not just spinning up all kinds of stuff and then deciding to use it in stranded colourwork on a whim. Though that turned out remarkably well, and the errant graph book with the knobby club rush design in it magically appeared on the weekend, nestled among sheet music (my filing clearly needs more work–I had been looking for it in the dyeing and knitting collections–what was I thinking)!

I’ve been cold mordanting Viola’s fleece with alum in preparation. She is a white/silver grey/dark grey sheep, and that will give me room for a bit of heathery loveliness, I think. These big jars were being thrown out at the Guild and this seems a decent use for them. Some BFL/silk sock yarn has been getting the same cold mordant treatment, because why not?

I had quite a lot of coreopsis flowers, because my mother is such a generous woman, she saves her dead flowers for me. And in case anyone ever wondered where my thrifty ways come from, these flowers were lovingly collected as they wilted and then dried–and then delivered in paper bags previously containing mushrooms and purchases from the newsagent, and in a reused cardboard box that was lined with two layers of pre-loved Christmas wrapping paper. Bless her heart, my Mum is a treasure.

There were also osage orange shavings that had been left at the Guild. Many years old, to judge by the packaging. At times such as this, Jenny Dean is my trusted Guide. So I followed her instructions from Wild Colour as best I could. It’s an interesting thing, this dyeing with only me there in body, but with a little posse of imaginary friends about me, some of whom I’ve never met! Jenny says osage orange can give more dye on a later extraction and India would no doubt agree on principle (I have been rereading Eco Colour)… so with the three of us in agreement on that, I planned an exhaust bath from the beginning and in due course, decided to honour Mum’s collection by tossing that in too…

After the first stage of heating, I filtered out the dyestuffs through an old nylon stocking (also deposited at the Guild in quantity–more of my imaginary friends present on this occasion in tangible and intangible ways!)

And in went the fibres. They had a nice long wait in the dye baths after the heating stage was over.

The sock yarn took the dye with alacrity–that golden yellow is rather lovely, I think–I am planning to overdye with indigo, but this yellow is glorious as it is. I thought I remembered the coreopsis being a more golden yellow and the osage orange being a colder shade, but not this time. They look remarkably similar.

The exhaust bath made use of the stocking too… and out came some paler but still yellow fleece. My fingers are itching but the day job calls… and there has been yet more knitting…

1 Comment

Filed under Fibre preparation, Natural dyeing

Tagged as coreopsis flowers, osage orange, silk, think globally, wool

June 8, 2015 · 2:43 pm

Socks!

These socks were on the needles a long while: begun in March and finished in May. But–they are finished and turn out to be a great fit.

The pattern is trusty old Jaywalker by Grumperina. It isn’t a very stretchy stitch pattern, but once you get these on, they have fabulous staying up power, and they are great for a variegated yarn such as I love to knit.

The yarn has been in my stash for years! It’s Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Lakeview. Finally, the perfect project. I adapted the pattern for my dear friend’s especially slender feet, and they have been my trusty companions not only at WomAdelaide but also on buses and trains and in meetings and coffee shops. I already have a new friend keeping me company on all such occasions…

4 Comments

Filed under Knitting

Tagged as gifts, socks, wool, yarn

May 27, 2015 · 4:48 pm

Rhubarb leaves and tamarind

I haven’t found a lot of joy with rhubarb leaf mordant so far… but I do grow rhubarb and often wish I could use the leaves somehow before they reach the compost heap. One chilly day I wondered whether they might just be good in the dyepot–if I heated them surely they would release oxalic acid into the dyebath and even if that is all that happened, raising the acidity level of the bath can be a good thing. Why not?

Then, in with E Scoparia bark. And eventually, two mesh bags full of polwarth fleece. In fact, the last two! I seem to have reached the end of the polwarth fleeces, which seems well nigh miraculous–though they have been just lovely to work with, these are BIG sheep.

The rhubarb leaves did produce a deeper, burgundy shade–than the citrus acidifier in the other pot. Is this a quantity effect, sheer luck…? I am not honestly sure, but I will certainly try it again. The water has to be heated for the dyebath anyway and letting it steep a little before removing rhubarb and adding eucalypt is not too difficult.

In another acid experiment, I have been cleaning out the kitchen cupboards (well, some things over a decade old are leaving the cupboards)–and found this:

Wasn’t I in Brisbane at least 12 years ago the last time I cooked with tamarind?? I put it into a big jar and topped up with water.

Then, into a dyebath with E Nicholii and some of ‘Viola’s’ fleece–she’s a local pet sheep who seems to have some English Leicester parentage. Another gift fleece.

Tamarind on the left, citrus acidifier on the right. Curious! I have another bath with the exhaust dye baths and a second round of leaves steeping (also known as waiting until I have time and inclination…) now.

5 Comments

Filed under Natural dyeing

Tagged as E Nicholii, E Scoparia, English Leicester, rhubarb, tamarind, wool

May 25, 2015 · 9:38 am

Woad!

I know, I’m easily excited, and I shouldn’t shout at people who are kind enough to read this blog, but WOAD! I hang about on a couple of natural dyeing boards on Ravelry and I think it was there I saw a link to this resource about dyeing with woad–entirely graspable (apart from the absence of a reducing agent). And in metric, always a plus. A couple of other Australians were chatting on Ravelry about when to use your woad–and that had me thinking now was the time to do it. So. Here are my two plants (before).

There has had to be some explanation about this not being a salad green, which ought to be a clue about the variety of salad greens we grow here.

I had a lucky find behind the woad… the last of the cherry tomatoes.

There was more woad than I thought. And for anyone who has been wondering, I now know where the snails live and prefer to breed. Which confirms my opinion that the trouble I have had growing woad from seed might be due to its being utterly delectable to snails and slugs and every passing nibbler.

This is the harvest! For anyone else who has been wondering why some of the silverbeet hasn’t been thriving, another duh! Moment in the vegie patch. Those are white beetroot. I don’t remember planting them, but more than happy to eat them in any case…

Chopped woad leaves. Three litres of chopped woad leaves. A lot of care was taken to ensure no snail was wounded at this stage.

Into the boiling water.

Straining through four layers of cloth.

Measuring the hot liquid (about 2 3/4litres)–and a pinky-browny colour.

The first few locks of wool went in and ten minutes later–that isn’t blue?!

After a second quantity of wool which also came out mauve, another batch came out still silver-white. I decided to try a smidge more ammonia, and out came some pale blue.

I can’t say this is earth shaking colour, but it is colour, and it is a colour I don’t usually get from the garden, and it isn’t as crushing as the total incompetence and series of accidents I’ve had going with austral indigo. It’s enough of a success to make me think I should try again. Let it be said that having a much larger quantity of leaves has to be an asset, because while woad reputedly has a low yield of indigo, so does austral indigo and its leaves are much smaller. The austral indigo drops a lot of laves at this time of year and… I think I will just let it be this year!

20 Comments

Filed under Dye Plants, Natural dyeing

Tagged as blue, mauve, pink, woad, wool

May 6, 2015 · 11:24 am

Returning home

I decided to celebrate returning home from Tin Can Bay with some local bundles… and knitting, and a visit to the saltbush plantings… and time with my beloved and our friends, and music… but here I’ll focus on the bundles! If I can restrain myself that far…

I took my new found knowledge and experience of bundling paper, which built on my reading of India Flint’s Bundle Book. There is a cheap and simple e-book version available –or go for the glory of a solid object! I tried a different kind of paper, acquired in the last few weeks, and I used scrap metal my Dad cut me. I tried op shopping for flat metal with remarkably little success in previous months. But there are quite a few priorities on my personal list and some progress slowly.

Happy results! These are E Cinerea leaves–different to what I would get on fabric and very lovely. Like all bundle dyeing, part of the mystery and part of the joy is trying out what is local and seasonal. Everyone’s selection is different. My garden is heavy on calendula and marigold right now and I had some lovely little geranium flowers and all sorts of local leaves to try too.

I decided to use my flanellette string for bundles despite it being unnaturally dyed. I loved seeing some of my retreat companions loving their bundles enough to use handmade string to tie them. And my much re-used string collection is getting to the end of its tether.

I used all kinds of fabrics–raw silk from a recycled garment, calico, linen offcuts, and a little piece of silky merino given to me by a retreat companion (should she be reading, thankyou again!)

The silky merino gives such vibrant colours, but actually the linen was a bit of a standout too.

Meanwhile, the string making continues. I have decided to try using this process of making string as a point of reflection on my obligations under Indigenous law–and of so many principles of earth care that might come under that set of principles. The importance of things that will biodegrade and that will not last forever, the way plastic will. The intertwining of all life. The cycles by which nature does its magic. Our dependence on plants and water. the way things and beings come into closer relationship with one another. I keep sharing the string–as people admire or ask about it, I have a little stash right here by my hand and I can give them some. Sharing is a primary principle too.

I have in mind something like what Grackle and Sun might call atheist prayer. But different, of course. Do read her post and be inspired. I love her idea of chantstrands, but my experiments along those lines didn’t work for me the way taking a few wet leaves out to a tree to twist together into string and considering things has so far. So I have taken inspiration from her and begun to make cordage from it…

A few people have been asking about how to make string. I have put a link to an online tutorial in the How To tab at the top of the blog, but you could learn from a basket weaver (as I did) or from any basic basketry text. Or put yourself near India Flint, who shares string making everywhere she goes, as far as I can tell (having learned how from Nalda Searles). Or go to YouTube and be among survivalists who do something similar! Meanwhile, the garden is growing as rain begins to fall.

The first poppy of the season is out and beyond lovely.

And I had a new insight about this especially beautiful saltbush which I have so far not managed to propagate. It has taken a lot of observations to figure out when I might be able to collect seed, but one day at work recently I pulled out a seed envelope I happened to have with me (as you do) and amused bystanders by rubbing the ends of these silvery stems gently into it. Who knows what might come of that? I have high hopes…

8 Comments

Filed under Dye Plants, Natural dyeing, Neighbourhood pleasures

Tagged as cotton, dinner, E Cinerea, India Flint, linen, saltbush, silk, silky merino, string, wool

Tag Archives: wool

Eco-printed scarves

Alkanet and pomegranate

Indigo fructose vat

Madder

I’m just a girl who can’t say no to knitting slippers

Yellow!

Socks!

Rhubarb leaves and tamarind

Woad!

Returning home

People you may like to visit online

Administrivia

Search

Recent posts

Follow Blog via Email

Archives

Categories

Tag Archives: wool

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

People you may like to visit online

Administrivia

Search

Recent posts

Follow Blog via Email

Archives

Categories