Little Pots

The morning after I made my first six sample pots, I tucked a bit of alum mordanted wool into each of them and placed them in a bain marie.   The colors had changed considerably over night and I was eager to make some tests.

The bain marie.

  After about an hour of low simmering I pulled the glass yogurt cups out and let them cool on the counter.  I couldn't wait to check out the colors, and so I pulled out the little samples, squeezed the excess dye out with my fingers and dropped them onto a paper towel.  I quickly labeled them to avoid confusion. 

Right to left: Oak, Everlasting leaves, Everlasting stems

Right to Left: Hairy rose hips, Hellebore leaves, Hellebore flowers

 There were many surprises.  The rose hips made a nice rusty orange, but it wasn't quite as red as I had hoped it would be.  The oak leaves were a lovely warm peach.  The hellebore tests were probably the most exciting.  The flowers made a primary yellow and the leaves made a good strong golden yellow.  The everlasting leaves made a really electric yellow with a touch of green, but the stems were a bit of a disappointment.  When I came down in the morning the test for the everlasting stems was blue green, a very pronounced blue green.  In the bath it darkened considerably, but the color didn't really take.  Here's what the jar looked like after the bath.

The everlasting stem bath.

 I wish I could get that color onto my wool.  Oh well, you can't win them all.  Today was also productive.  I finally had a chance to strain and dye with the 200g of what I believe are phellinus tuberculosus mushrooms that I had fermenting on the kitchen counter. You can see pictures of them in this post.  They had been there for a good four weeks and my husband was happy to see them go into the compost.  I also made up a bath with 300g of carrot tops from the market.  The color from the carrot tops was a stunning yellow green.  The mushrooms made a soft peach.  The skeins are still drying on the rack.  I'll post pictures as soon as I get the chance.

Right to Left: Mushroom bath, Carrot top bath

Myrtille came over for a "Dye Lot" planning session and we had a very full day of chatting over the dye pots.  We even went for a walk and collected some more samples for dye tests.  Myrtille wanted to test some flowers from a wild fruit tree, the name of which I'll have to look up.

Right to Left: Madder tops and roots, Yellow Flowers, Tree bark

  I pulled up some wild madder which grows on just about every rock wall we have.  We also collected hellebore flowers and oak leaves for two more dye baths. 

Madder, flowers, bark

When we got back to the house I got out some glass yogurt pots and we cut up the flowers and the madder.  I took the branches from the flowers and decided to test them too.  We poured boiling water over and watched as the color started to collect in the pots.  Myrtille's flowers immediately made the water turn yellow.  The pot with the bark from that same wild fruit tree has gone a soft peachy pink.  The madder started out yellow, but is now a burnt orange color.

The madder pot.

While we waited for the pots, we decided to cut up the oak leaves for a dye bath.  We managed to chop up 175g before getting bored. 

Oak leaves

 I'm going to dry the rest of the leaves. They should be much easier to crumble when they're dry.  Also, I'd like to see if there's a difference in the dye depending on whether or not the leaves are fresh or dried.  We made the bath of fresh oak leaves.  I pulled out a jar to show you the color of the bath. 

The oak leaf bath.

The hellebore flowers are simmering in the pot.  I'm not going to simmer them for too long.  I've read that flower dyes don't usually like too much heat or long simmering.

 I was so busy trying to think of what to make for dinner that I forgot to weigh the flowers before tossing them into the pot.....another victim of multitasking.

Spring Suprises

Today I had another chance to go on a hike with the baby.  We went to collect lichens but that soon evolved into other things.  I decided to pick some flora for samples.  We even found an old birds nest.

Dye tests in old yogurt cups.

When we got home I tore my samples into pieces, put them into old yogurt cups and poured boiling water over them.  There were two real stand outs.

Left, wild hellebore test.  Right, hairy rose hip test.

The wild hellebore flowers and the deformed rose hips made some surprising color.  The flowers made a clear lime green tint.

Hellebore flower test.

 The deformed hairy rose hips were full of color, a beautiful rusty orange.  I've very eager to collect more for a proper dye bath.  I know that rose hips can be used for dyeing, but it's a pain to collect them and I'd rather use them for tea or jam.  These weird deformed rose hips are on almost all of the roses in my fields.  I think there are usually about three or four per plant.  I'm not sure if the winter sun has roasted them, but I think that may be a factor.

Deformed rose hip.

Deformed rose hip test.

 The everlasting was a pretty predictable yellow green.  The stems from the same plant were only slightly more to the yellow end.  I don't think you can see the difference in the pictures.  I'm going the try the flowers out later this summer.

Everlasting leaves test jar.

Everlasting stems test jar.

The wild hellebore leaves were also a nice warm peachy green color. Note: hellebore are poisonous plants.  Don't leave the dye bath where animals or kids can reach it.  Wash the fibers well after dyeing.

Wild hellebore leaves test jar.

There's an oak by the barn that I've been wanting to test for awhile.  It's a strange sort of oak tree.  It makes acorns, but doesn't lose its leaves in the winter.  I'll have to go and look up the name of it.  It did make a nice peachy bath.   Tomorrow I'll stick some yarn samples in each jar and heat them up in a little pan of water.

I've also been mordanting as much as possible in preparation for spring.

 Because of the nice weather I've been out in the garden a lot.  I trimmed 650g of branches and leaves off of my sage bush and decided to make a bath out of them before I chucked them into the compost pile.  I chopped and simmered the leaves in tap water before straining the bath.  I dyed 200g wool.  What an amazing surprise.  The bath didn't look like much, but it made a very vibrant yellow green.

Maybe it's because I've been suffering from a cold but the sage bath also inspired me to make a juniper bath.  I used 450g of chopped up juniper branches to 200g wool, simmered for a little over an hour.  The final color was less inspiring, but still pretty.  It's a slightly orange gold color.

This yarn I'm dyeing is a 2 ply Blue Faced Leicester.  It's supposed to be a sock yarn, but I'm not sure that it's cushy enough.  I'll have to test it out.  It took a lot of washing to get the spinning oil and natural oils out.  I'm very glad to have taken to time to wash the fibers before dyeing them.  I'm pretty sure my last dyeing disaster was due to my not taking the time to wash the fibers first.  Lesson learned.

Making Due

I've been very busy in the dye kitchen.  There's not a lot of plant material to work with right now, but I'm making due.  I've been reading India Flint's book "Eco Color".  It's a truly inspired book.  It's somewhere between a manual and a manifesto.  The coffee table like design and photography are dreamy.  She has a chapter on ice flower dyeing that I found very exciting. Now, I'm happily tossing all of my purple pansies in the fridge.

Pansies from the garden.

In another attempt to make due I've been washing and chopping up my avocado pits and peels and chucking them in the freezer.  When I have a good amount I'll make up a jar with some ammonia.

Avocado pits and peels from the freezer.

Speaking of ammonia fermentation.  Here's a shot of my yellow lichen ferment.  It's gone from brick red to magenta pink.  I finally got a copy of a lichen identification book.  This yellow lichen is better know as "xanthoria parietina".  I'll have to get dyeing soon.

Xanthoria Parietina fermentation.

In the mean time, I've been mordanting roving.  Spring is right around the corner and I want to be ready.

Wool drying on the line.

Sunny Day Dye Hunt

I recently bought a copy of "The Rainbow Beneath My Feet" after seeing the lovely mitten kits on this site.  I've always loved mushroom hunting.  I'm thrilled with the idea that I can hunt for both edible and dye mushrooms.  Today I had my first chance to go out on a hunt.  It's been very cold and I wasn't sure that I would be able to find anything, but I took my mushroom knife and paper bags anyway. 

My first find was a dead oak tree covered in these mushrooms.  I think these are "trametes versicolor".  They may not give me any good color, but finding mushrooms in the dead of winter was a triumph.  I only harvested enough to do some tests.  




A little farther down the road I struck mushroom gold.  I believe that these are "phellinus tuberculosus".  They look very promising.  I'm hoping for a warm golden brown.  Their flesh is a nice dark shade of caramel and is very dense in texture.  They weren't easy to pry off the trees.







The baby and I began to get tired of crashing through the underbrush and so we did a little lichen picking. 




 This is a hedge of prunelles a.k.a. sloes or blackthorn.  They seem to be particularly attractive to lichens.  Prunelles are also a good dye source. 




I turned over a fallen branch and, surprise, more mushrooms!  These are too little to use for dyeing but I love their color against the soft blue green of the lichens.




This blue gray lichen has a hammered looking surface.  My most recent test on this lichen is looking very promising.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a possible source of purple dye.  I won't be able to identify most of my lichens until I can find a good lichen book.  It's frustratingly hard to identify lichens.  They really are very subtle creatures.




We wandered back toward the house and on a whim I decided to cross through a field where I knew I might find some wild cherry bark.  I found the cherry tree, and we also found more little orange mushrooms. 







These last photos are of some mushrooms that I found on an earlier hike in the valley of the Vers.  I'm definitely going to go on more valley hikes when the weather gets a little warmer. 

 

 

 


 Here's one last photo of some spring flowers.  Just a few short weeks.......

Skein Show

I finally had the chance to take some pictures of my first round of natural dyeing.  There are two skeins of each color shown here.   All of the skeins are my own handspun Shetland or BFL.

Colors from ivy berries, onion skins and St. John's wort.

The ivy berry bath.

I mixed two of my exhaust baths to make this soft peachy color.

Both exhaust baths from the onion skins and the St. John's wort flowers.

The St. John's wort flowers had been sitting in a cupboard for at least two years, but they still made a lovely pale mauve dye.  I can't wait to try them again this spring.

St. John's wort flowers.

I actually made three baths with 200g onion skins.  You can find the details in this post.

The second onion skin bath.

The first onion skin bath.

Lichen Experiments

It's not very easy to take pictures of a murky dye solution in a small jar, but I thought a few pictures might be helpful.  I'm going to re-post some pictures from a previous post in order to make it clear which lichens are fermenting in each jar.
I have 6 jars with six different kinds of lichen.  They are all macerating in the same solution of one part ammonia to two parts water.  I have them sitting out on the kitchen counter so that I remember to shake them as much as possible.  Four of the jars are making lots of color, while two of them look like failures.

Oak moss growing on a branch.

This first jar is the oak moss solution.  It turned a brilliant yellow green within seconds of coming into contact with the ammonia solution.  It's now an intriguing yellow orange color.

Oak moss fermentation.

    Because I have so much of this lichen I'm probably going to use it mostly for a more traditional water bath dye extraction.  Oak moss has a lovely strong smell and is used as a fixative in perfumes.  Wool that is dyed with oak moss keeps this smell for years.  I'm not sure if the ammonia fermentation ruins the smell, but I have a hunch that it will.
This is my most promising jar.

Yellow lichen turned brick red.

Yellow Lichen on an almond tree.

    This is most certainly a lichen that contains the magical orchil acid.  I had read that most lichens containing this acid grow on rocks and are very slow to grow.  This was a wonderful surprise.  After a couple of months fermenting I should be able to get a magenta dye.  The best part of this discovery is that this lichen grows on many trees in my area, and I know it grows quickly because in two short years it's covered a young almond tree I planted.

The next two jars are two different shades of brown.  They look like they're making some nice rich dyes, but I'm on the hunt for purple right now.

A rich dark brown broth.

    These last two are probably failures.  They were both types of lichen that, when wet. have an algae like texture and color.   You can't win them all. 

Algae looking lichen.

Yuck.

A little bit of color, but not enough for a dye bath.