Creating colour to combat the Christmas blues and two reviews of books.

At last time to write a blog.  Well that is not strictly true what I really mean time to do something and write a blog about it. Somehow Christmas and a frozen world had blocked all my creativity

This is what the dye garden looked like after heavy snow and -10degees C .  Most of  the UK and now half of he US look like this not to mention many European countries but I like to have  a memory of what is a very unusual event for us.

I waved off the family yesterday and immediately fell down into the dumps, the post Christmas blues hit me right between the eyes.  This required emergency action so after a token stripping the  beds and dumping sheets into washing machine I began to think.   Although we have had a thaw here my studio still has all the water turned off as I have one burst pipe and all the dye pots and also my mordant pots are all frozen up.  However I did  manage to pull out some mordanted carded mohair.  Aha! This has a history, Years and years ago our local bargain store that sold bin ends had some of this . As spinners we were very snooty about it as it spun  nothing like spinning mohair from fabulous high quality mohair fleece. .  However it is just the thing for Pluckyfluffs clouds of mohair yarn. page 139 of Intertwined by Lexi Boeger aka Pluckyfluff ISBN 13-978-1-159253-374-9  Here carding fabulous mohair results in too heavy a result so rather than light clouds I had lumps. Now I didn't have this mohair but a friend of a friend had bought masses and being a hoarder there it was in a huge sack in her loft which she now wanted to clear out so this is what I dyed in preparation for a lovely exciting spinning session. January is such an  ideal month for sitting warm and cosy and spinning.

So quietly while DH was out with the dog and no one could see  I crept into the kitchen and dyed carefully on the kitchen table. ( I feel guilty only because I have a studio, an office and mostly a summer house for my own use not to mention two spinning wheels, a drum carder and related baskets in the sitting too)  but actually DH only laughed at my sneaked in  little dyeing corner)
I mixed up lac, cochineal, logwood, logwood and fustic and Jazz (an Earthues dye that gives a reddy purple) If you are going to do this don't forget to wear a mask and gloves and never use for dyeing something you might later want for cooking

I put some cling film onto an old baking tray more  to contain the dye than for any other reason

I poured some of the dye in and then covered it with cling film and pressed the dyes into the rest of the mohair.

Then I added a silk cap to mop up the excess dye.  Although my mordanted pot was full of them I could only free two and even these had to be defrosted in my studio microwave

Then I microwaved the lot for 5 minutes ( in my studio microwave )

You know it is ready when the cling film is crinkled and sucked in slightly. Ideally leave the dyes overnight  to set at this point -which is what I always tell my students but what the hell! Laws are made to be broken and I wanted a result.  So I rinsed and spun in the washing machine and put the stuff to dry by the wood burner.  By this time even outside the camera  flashed  when photographing it so the colour are not quite as dark as they  in real life but although the cochineal gave me a little too much pink I was pleased with the resulting colour.
Tonight I  hope to sit and spin .  In Pluckyfluffs instructions she says to card  mohair interspersing it with some sparkly stuff and colour and then to ply with sparkly yarn.  Hmm!  I am not to keen on sparkle bur a yarn I had plied with some sparkly stuff went in a flash at Trefriw Christmas market so maybe I need to be a bit more relaxed about it.  Besides I have  some bought at a stall when I did Lexi's workshop on Bristol in March

I am  still reading Respect the Spindle. This not a new book but one I came across recently so new to me.   I found this a most inspiring book and it really got be going on spindle spinning again so much so I sat on the sofa for two nights spinning watching television and spinning by rolling down my thigh. This meant I was sitting slightly twisted and  the following morning I could hardly move and then I developed sciatica . Two months on it is still giving me a bit of a problem .   This is hardly an advert for the book but in fact it is the best spindle book I have ever read and I loved it .  Especially the story of how Abby learnt spinning a child in the Andes and of leaning over the Inca ruins to spindle and see who amongst her friends who could spin the longest yarn without breaking.  It was usually her she says who had to hurtle down the mountains side to get her spindle.  The book is full of photos of  spindles with beautifully spun cops of wool and she tells you how to do all sort so different spindling as well as having projects in the back.  Now I have a thorough dislike (normally ) of books which are full of projects but these are in fact quite gorgeous  and I have started to spin (cautiously) for the neck warmer .

The second book I  have had on my shelves for a while and used the freedom of having time for a concentrated read to get into it although I  found it hard going.

 The Root of Wild Madder by Brian Murphy ISBN-13 978-0-9432-6421-1
This is a book about Brian Murphy's  love affair with Persian carpets
I nearly threw it in the bin following a snooty  comment about western natural dyers being  hobbyists on the level of someone milk churning at a country fair and I struggled too as he writes rather too much about politics and history of Iran and Afghanistan . Slowly however I began to see how he was trying to set Persian carpets into context but he also went off on a mild spiritual journey inspired by a mediaeval poet  and Sufism  so he could find a carpet that had meaning for him.  He describes the best carpets as a form of poetry.   However and infuriatingly he  had very few photos of the carpets he talked about even the ones he bought.  Verdict on the book?  Interesting  yes,  would I recommend it to a friend -hmm- not really it seemed to fall between a lot of stools for  me.  It told me nothing new about natural dyes, not enough about carpets and too much about politics and  history.

Recovering and new solar pot

I have had a peaceful couple of days-pottering around and amongst other things making a new solar pot. To do this I had to empty one in use and I chose my birch leave pot which has been on the go since May 5th and does not appear to be changing. So I removed the fibres-some teeswater and some prefelt and washed them and hung them on the line.
One of my first dye books- I think I have mentioned before- is Jill Goodwins A Dyer's Manual published by Batsford 0-7207-1327-7 . Jill, still, her daughter tells me spinning and dyeing in her 90's , has a fantastic list at the back of her book of all the plants she used and the colours with various mordants. The book itself is a little out of date particularly on the level of mordants but I still use Jill's method of dyeing with woad and I think it is still worth getting if only for the list at the back .
Very slowly I get round to trying some of the plants on her list. It was here I found that could get green with Mullien Verbascum thapsus and copper and also with horsetail (Equisetum spp).
I now make a copper mordant by submerging copper piping in water containing vinegar and leaving till the water goes blue with the copper acetate-Ipresume that this is what it is. I add copper piping and some solution to the pot so it is a very hit and miss affair, quantity wise .I picked 200g of equisetum from the hedgerow as I walked the dog, chopped it up , added some alum mordanted prefelt,and some unmordanted fleece, hot water , copper solution and my pot was done.
Left to right they are
Madder, Eucalyptus with iron , Golden rod with iron, new pot.

Shibori & Felt

The Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers are running a shibori workshop. The tutor is Rachel Hardy and the workshop exemplifies, I think, how good an Internet group like this is as we can all use what ever we want to and do it in our own pace. Rachel has a very free and easy experimental approach which I like and some fabulous pieces. She talks about the techniques and we use what fabric and dyes we wish. Rachel dyes with procion dyes on cottons as she makes quilts. I am using natural dye extracts and fine felt. Sadly for us ( and for Rachel) she has been laid low with a malevolent dose of 'flu and we are all hoping she will recover soon. So far we are only looking at folding clamping tying but there is enough in these techniques alone to keep us very busy. Originally I intended to use what ever I had -bits and pieces of fabrics and silks, but a few years ago I did some stitched shibori on fine felt and have wanted to do more of it ever since so I have succumbed to using felt -whatt a surprise- and now I have to make my fabric before I start dyeing with it. This takes time so I have only a few pieces. One of the stoles I took to summer school, which I sold too, was tied around 2p pieces and I loved the effect.

The top picture is tied around two p pieces with a thick hessian thread and dyed in jazz -an Earthues logwood-and annatto. The picture below is the other side

This piece above was wrapped around a piece of dowelling , tied with linen thread, and dipped many times into a fermented indigo vat. I then united, retied and dipped again
This piece above was tied with fine linen threads and dyed in annatto,jazz and green extracts being retied every time. below is the other side.


This piece above was dyed in indigo after tying around a spaghetti jar with thick hessian thread which was then pushed down till the felt was very crumpled.The above piece was part of the demo I did while giving a talk to the Abergele Guild of WSD ( you can see more of that here) was folded in half, rolled around a piece of dowelling , tied with linen thread, and then using pipettes, I dropped annatto, lac and brazilwood onto the felt.


So above are my first samples. All are on 18.5 micron merino except the last two which are on fine pieces of 16 micron merino.

Dyeing the Greens

The photo of my samples above also has dyed fibres from half a dozen leaves of Chinese Woad (Isatis Indigotica). The orange fibres were for Dyers Chamomile with a touch of ammonia. The colour was so fabulous none of us wanted to over dye !




Posted by Helen

These last two summers I have run workshops in my studio using dye plants from the garden. This year I could only manage two workshops as I am teaching for a week at the Lincoln summer school for weavers spinners and dyers. The first one which I ran last weekend was Dyeing the Greens (The other is Dyeing the Blues on August 29th) As all natural dyer know greens are rare and even where you can get them they are mostly olive greens and dark greens. So I had great fun devising different ways to get there. We achieved green by modification of yellows from Elderflower leaves ( Sambucus Nigra), Dyers Chamomile (Anthemis Tinctoria), Mullien (Verbascum Thapsus) Yarrow (Achillea Millefolium) Tansy (Tanacetum Vulgare)-this was at the last minute as someone said they had got some green from Tansy leaves -with either ferrous sulphate or copper sulphate made up by dissolving 2 g in 100ml of water (Jenny Dean's recipe). We overdyed Weld (Reseda Luteola) in Indigo, and used Indigo Sulphonate mixed with Fustic extract. Indigo Sulphonate is Indigo dissolved in concentrated Sulphuric acid and was discovered inthe 1700's and is probably one of the first chemical dyes. It is often called saxon blue and while it is not as lightfast as indigo itself it gives a fabulously strong blue with a slight green tinge. I use Jim Liles recipe in the Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing , but Trudy Von Stralen also has one in her book Indigo Madder and Marigold. Finally we ended up by painting some merino tops and silk cap with extracts using green, osage orange and fustic with a little logwood grey to make the green turquoise.
Welcome to all the new followers - I hope you enjoy the blog- do drop by and say hello

Dyeing the Blues

Posted by Helen

Here is Maureen delighted with the colour of her hand spun yarn at the Dyeing the Blues Workshop

Yesterday I held the last of a series of natural dyeing workshops held in the studio here over the summer. This one was Dyeing the Blues and covered dyeing with a variety of sources of indigotin. I decided to roughly follow the path that dyeing the blues would have taken in history. so we started by picking woad ( Isatis Tinctoria) and the Chinese Woad (Isatis indigotica) which turned out to be covered in lots of green caterpillars happily munching away. We tore the leaves up,having removed the caterpillars, and covered with boiling water. After twenty minutes we squeezed out the leaves and added washing soda to the liquid. I put in a bit too much and the pH was 10. My students energetically beat the liquid and the froth turned an astonishing deep deep blue. I had never had this before. Was it the time of the year? The hard beating? Or the unusually high pH , I usually have a pH of 9). Unfortunately I took few photos. I find it difficult to take photos at workshops as I am always racing around keeping everything running smoothly so there were none of this stage. I added thiourea dioxide to reduce the vat

The next vat was an introduction to a fermentation vat. I had a large one with about 9 litres in which was a madder/bran vat started four day ago. This too produced very dark blue fibres nearly a midnight blue. The indigotin in this vat came from Indigofera Tinctoria.

My students then made a stock solution also with indigotin from Indigofera Tinctoria ready to make a modern vat and we went off for lunch.

After lunch we dyed with the woad vat. This gave a deep blue the deepest colour I have ever had from fresh woad leaves. I have included a photo of the increasing depth of colour from repeated dippings from a previous workshop as a pointof comparison . The woad dyed the equivalent of no 10 ( reading from left to right starting at the top left).

Time seemed to vanish and we rushed around dyeing with what I described a Modern Vat or Chemical Reduction vat, before galloping back out into the garden at high speed at about 2.45 to gather Persicaria Tinctoria ( the Japanese Polygonum Tinctoria). We gathered two armfuls of these stripped off the leaves then all five of us chopped away with scissors. I covered the leaves with water and acetic acid and then kneaded the leaves. We strained the leaves and then I kneaded the leaves again just as I would have kneaded bread and added the resulting liquid to the rest in the bucket. We stuffed in silk, and wools and even one hank of tencel before leaving it to go back to more dyeing indoors. Finally at nearly 4 o clock we found all our fibres in the Persicaria Tinctoria had turned a beautiful turquoise and everyone was pleased and excited (especialy me as this was only the fourth time I had used the fresh leaves to get turquoise with one failure.) Below is a silk cap on the left, handspun tencel yarn ( spun by Maureen) and Teeswater curls on the right.The photo below shows the bucket after dyeing which today has gone a deep blue with grains of stuff on the bottom which I assume is indigotin settling out.

This photo is of all the colours of day. The bright greens were golderod overdyed with indigotin from the woads

The pan below is the Persicaria Tinctoria vat today.

S