Cochineal from Lanzarote

Earlier on this year Isabella Whitworth , sent me 100g of cochineal from Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, where efforts are being made by the Milana Association. to revive the cochineal industry which originally started in 1835. Lanzarote was one of the first places that successfully grew the cochineal bug outside South America. and certainly you see the cactus that is host for the bug everywhere in Lanzarote and I spent one very frustrating day about ten years ago trying to track down cochineal without success.

The producers want to know how good the cochineal is so I volunteered to try it out. Recently I have been experimenting with different ways to dye cochineal. I have tried extracting the colour from the whole bugs by boiling in distilled water but in the end I reverted back to the way I have been doing it for a while which I found originally in Trudy Von Stralen's book "Indigo Madder and Marigold". ( Still one of the best introductions to natural dyeing around I think) . For me with soft water this seems to give me the best colour, but if you have hard water you might want to use distilled to extract the dye as cochineal does not like hard water.
So I ground 50g of cochineal bugs in a coffee grinder kept for that purpose. Trudy Von Stralen says to grind it till it is like flour and I do grind it several times. The photo looks quite gritty and grainy but in fact the fine powder has clumped a bit.
I put the ground cochineal into soak with a teaspoon of cream of tartar and left it to soak for 24 hours. Then I heated it- I used an electric casserole on the low heat so it takes about four hours to come to the boil and then boiled for about an hour and left to cool overnight.
At the same time I soaked my fibres overnight before mordanting them in 12% alum and 5% cream of tartar. (For more information on mordanting look here.)
I added a 170g of 23 micron South African Merino tops , the fibre I use in my felting and for many of my workshops. This I heated on low till it simmered and let it simmer for about an hour. Both of the South American Dyes, cochineal and log wood, are the exception to my rule of low temperature dyeing as they fix better if simmered. The fibres were then cooled rinsed and dried. I used up the exhaust dyeing more merino, a 100g of tussah silk and teeswater. Altogether the 50g of cochineal dyed 970g of fibre paler and paler colours The first colour as you can see from the comparison photo was as good as my usual cochineal.It will be really good to have cochineal from a nearby and known source and with a lower carbon foot print too for us in Europe. I know that cochineal production gives an income to poor Peruvian farmers but I do like to know where my dyes come from and whether workers have been paid well for their labour too.

I still have 50 g left so now I plan to play around with the mordants such as iron and oxalic acid. Cochineal is polychromatic and responds to different mordants givng purples grey and pinks. The best book for this is Fred Gerber's self published classic booklet Cochineal. A mine of information but very hard to get hold of.

I have just been given this link to the Association Milana

Tagged and colours

I have been tagged! I have been tagged by Tumbleweed. I did not know what I had to do but apparently I have to list 7 little known facts about myself and pass the baton on towards 7 others. It seems a bit of mild fun so with apologies to the next seven victims I decided to pick up the challenge

Now I have found some more rules for this elsewhere and here they are:

The rules of this Tag are:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

2. Post the rules on your blog.

3. Write seven little known facts about yourself.

4. Tag seven people at the end of your post and link to them.

5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted

7 little know facts about myself

1. My favourite hand stitch is a french knot but I am too lazy to hand stitch much
2. I am 4ft 9 inches and my eldest son is 6ft 2"


3. I feel colour.


4. My eyes are hazel


5. If I am feeling tired and down I will retire to bed with a Georgette Heyer -writer of regency romances or Dick Francis's racing thrillers



6. I have a dog called Walnut and here is a picture of her on the sofa with her head on an expensive cushion inspired by Miro we bought at an exhibition at the V&A on surrealists.


7. I have always secretly wanted to be a helicopter pilot
   
   Here are my seven, Leena, Bettina, Anne Robin, Sue Nina Cedar

The merino's below have been dyed in golden rod overdyed with indigo, golden rods, green extract, madder, logwood, cochineal and cochineal /madder exhaust

I have also posted photo of all the fibres I dyed for my most recent workshop, Felt Mittens, I dyed dyed a range of merino ,merino/angora cross and merino/silk The merino in this case being 18.5 micron ( ie very fine). The swirls of fibres have silk cap layers stuck in the tops. I fully intended to show you a picture of the finished mittens alongside but alas for my good intentions I was so busy rushing around and helping a few at the end to finish their mittens it did not happen. As it was one of the students made tea and handed around chocolate cake. It is the story of my teaching life, I never have a chance to take pictures ,or if I do they are hasty snaps which tend not to do justice to anybody. So you will have to just take if from me that the some fantastic mittens were made. One lady made a very long one in lime green that came nearly to her elbow. It looked just like one of those evening gloves people used to wear with long evening dresses. It was so finely moulded on her hand I thought we might have to cut it off but no she managed to pull it on and off. Another was a pair made with cochineal dyed merino and silk. Enys was made up because she made a bright green pair to go with her green velvet coat.

The red photo is red teeswater which a patient customer has been asking me to dye for her for the last three months. The really bright red is cochineal /madder, the red is brazilwood/madder cochineal extracts which as you can see has given some rather pink shades.