Sheep silk

Posted by Helen
I have been dyeing merino tops now for years firstly because I wanted to use naturally dyed merino tops myself in my own work then for my own workshops. I have had them for sale on my website but with a limited success mostly,I think, because the photography does not really do justice to the colours. However I have been selling more and more and getting lots of positive comments back so I have decided to have a big run at dyeing merino tops (I am so glad that I did not know till after I had been dyeing successfully fora number of years that -"you can't dye merino tops as they felt"). As my husband was working all over Easter I have had a free run in the studio. Apart form walking the dog in the glorious sunshine I have been happily dyeing and here are some of results.
Over the years I have developed my own technique for dyeing these tops with minimum felting. I am very proud of them and just love the feel as I run my fingers through the wool. I dye a lot of the 18.5merinos which is the finest wool we can get here and what I use for stoles and scarves.I feel most envious of India Flints 15 micron merino. What must that feel like? The 18.5 micron merino feels, as a friend of mine describes it, as the nearest to sheep silk .

Plants in the spring

Posted by Enys
Finally got some time to write in the blog, having completely forgotten how it's done and having to e-mail Helen to remind me how to. The whole of one side of the green house is full of seedling at various stages of development (I have allowed my husband to grow his tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and various other plants, he's very long suffering!) although I must admit I seem to have at least 3/4 of the space. The persicaria is growing really well, Helen has taken photos of them 60 +, Chinese woad - 3 trays of 20 per tray, lots of Coreopsis, Anthemis tinctoria, Carthamus tinctorus - the first time I tried growing Carthamus it was a failure 3 plants which didn't thrive at all, this year all the seeds germinated and have been potted on. Three weeks of panic - no sign of the madder, three trays of compost greeting me and nothing growing until a few days ago and now they are sprouting up in all the trays, guess they just needed some of the warm sun that we've had this last week, so that's really great. The Echium vulgare are already potted on, and the Indigofera tinctoria -already 4 seedling showing. Gallium verum, Cosmos, Woad are also coming along well. Baptisia Australis has overwintered in the greenhouse so I've got some really strong plants to put out in the main garden, Asclepeas tuberosa also overwinted well along with Anthemis tinctoria, Coreopsis and one Weld which was growing on the floor, it's now in its own pot and looking very happy.
I kept 2 Chinese woad plants in the greenhouse for the winter to make sure that I would get seed and they are now flowering. The Chinese woad overwintered in the garden and promptly got eaten by the rabbits (3 of which are now in my freezer- the rabbits not the woad!) But it is growing again. The rabbits are a real pest, I have no problem with slugs, snails or any other pest except the pheasants in the Autumn when the gamekeeper lets out the young birds, they tend to eat the veg and some plants. We are now going to have to net a vast area of the garden- b....y nuisance. Fortunately my other garden behind the house has not yet been discovered by the rabbits so the Chinese woad was safe there. My wonder dog Cariad (German Shepherd) loves to chase them but being a sheepdog is not into killing just trying to herd them, they don't even have to run very fast to get away from her. Back to plants, there are not enough hours in the day now, , everything is growing so it's the busiest time, potting on, planting, watering. Weeds growing really well, turn your back and the dandelions are back. I've got a real problem with bindweed, not the big white flowered one, but the small pink flowered one, very pretty but not when it chokes my plants. Sadly rabbits do not eat weeds. Some of these plants (not the bindweed) will go into Helen's garden and I've just revamped a small part of mine approx. 40 metres x 4 metres, I'll take some photos and post them for next time. Back to work. Dog walk- plant - dog walk and so on the pattern of my days, + the odd days when I work in other gardens.
Enys

Reds?

Posted by Helen
I don't often manage to do the workshops run on the UK Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers although when I do I always really enjoy them. However this month Debbie Bamford of the Mulberry Dyer is running one entitled Dyeing the Reds. Debbie came to the very first dyeing workshop I ever ran in 1995 and I think has been dyeing ever since. She now has a successful business and does a lot with the re-enactors market and over the years has built up a huge knowledge in the history of dyes, historical recipes and specialises in, amongst other things, dyeing linen threads. Now it is my turn to sit at her feet and learn. We started off with dyeing lac.This I have not done since went to my very first workshop twenty or so years ago when my memory was of a number of us pounding away at the sticky resinous coating to get the red dye and it always seemed too much hard work. Sticklac ,the crude form of lac was also very hard to get. Recently however I have used the lac extracts sold by both Tinctoria Dyes and Earthues (sold incidentally by the Mulberry Dyer) and loved them being slightly redder than cochineal.

Both lac and cochineal belong to the insect dye group, lac having a range between Tibet and China to Burma Siam and India. ( Gerber, Cochineal and the Insect Dyes). According to Cardon there are 13 different lac insects of the Genus Kerria but the common Indian Lac insect Kerria Lacca is still used on large scale, not for the red dye but for the shellac. Kerria Chinensis gives the best red dye (Cardon) The resin of lac is collected from twigs on which the insects grows shaping the resin to the twigs, and this it is called sticklac. After the dye has been removed the resulting shellac may be melted and dropped forming buttons (button lac) or poured out into thin sheets when it is shellac)
If you want to know how I extracted the dye following Debs recipe you will have to join the Uk OnlineGuildof WSD and join the workshops!

I found a 100g of sticklac I had bought from Fibrecrafts about 5 years ago lying at the bottom of my stash and I used this to extract the dye putting 100g of fibres in the dye bath. Reading more about it in Gerbers excellent little book I find that the dye contents is very low 1/2%-3/4% of 1% of the dry weight of the raw material.
I put cashmere and silk,camel and tussah silk, a handful of teeswater curls and two carrier rods in the bath. The camel and tussah silk came out very blotchy with the camel taking up very little dye and that has gone back to be over painted with more dyes. The teeswater curls is the reddest as you can see. it is probably better to dye just one type of fibres in the dyebath as one always seems to grab more dye than the rest.

I loved it however and as soon as I can get some more sticklac from Debbie I will dye more

Dominique Cardon Natural Dyes Archetype Publications isbn 978-1-904982-00-5
Frederick H Gerber Ccochineal and theInsect Dyes published by the author isbn 09601814-3-1

ps Debbie has a new blog A History of Colour

Seeds

Posted by Helen
Last week I went round to Enys's house to have a look at the emerging dye plants mostly for the Woolfest in Cumbria in June but some will be big enough for Wonderwool Wales which is April 25th & 26th at the Royal Welsh ground at Builth Wells. The Japanese polygonum (Persicaria Tinctoria) has germinated well-over 60plants Enys said-plants like dyers chamomile (Anthemis Tinctoria ),coreopsis (Coreopis Tinctoria) and cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus) are as usual romping away, and the woads are better this year than last. One of the plants that is doing much better than ever before is safflower, carthemis tinctorius. Enys was furious at the madder -the seed tray on the top left of the picture of seed trays as none of the madder had germinated after two weeks. Over the years she has tried various ways to get it to grow, she tells me, but it is always difficult. I lent forward to inspect the reluctant seeds and saw one just starting to push it's way through. Time for champagne? I suggested hopefully. We went back to celebrate with coffee.
Incidentally the nearly flowering woad is Chinese woad (Isatis Indigotica) and as mine is flowering too we should have plenty of seeds for next year. The Chinese woad we have planted this year is still from the original seed sent to me by Annee Silk in Canada who sent them twice when the first lot did not germinate. Chinese woad (Isatis Indigotica) produces more indigotin (about twice as much)as does the European woad (Isatis Tinctoria). The comparison data is here

While I was there Enys proudly showed me lots of robust Baptisia Australis-"what dye colour do we get from it"? She asked. My mind went blank. However researching through my archives I found I wrote a post about the Baptisia and you can find what I did here!

Welcome to my all new followers.

Dyeing the greens

I haven't had many merino tops for sale on my website recently. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that my of my fibres really are one offs, so each time I put them for sale I have to photo them, resize, and write the blurb all for £4.25. Then a little light bulb went off in my head and I spent a long time working out range of repeatable colours of my own recipes. This however has not really worked partly because I don't really want to do that as I like the serendipity of not quite knowing what is coming out the dye pot, for example I know that 50% madder/50% cochineal will give me a red but I like it that each time it is slightly different, and partly because it gives me too limited a palette. Then my students/customers and friends said to me that the colours on the website did not do justice to my fibres. Finally I found I was really only just keeping pace with dyeing fibres for packs for my workshops and recently at every workshop armfuls of dyed fibres have just walked out with sometimes legs and a head just visible behind.
Finally despite the limited range on my website orders have picked up especially for the greens. So here is a picture of my most recent greens-the grass green on the top. Persian berries over dyed in indigo gives some of my favourite greens in winter. Normally I dye yellow then over dye in indigo but this time I also dyed in indigo first and then over dyed in Persian berry yellow. Something happened that I have noticed before namely that the take up of yellow is very poor suggesting to me that the indigo is blocking the receptor sites for the mordant. However I am not worried as it gave a fabulous turquoise. One 100g bump of merino came out beautifully patchy with yellow blues and greens almost as if hand painted. I could not repeat that one if I tried.
However the colours aren't as gorgeous on the photos in real life-so disappointing and the turquoises don't really look turquoise. :(
Now huge orders of raw fibres have arrived 23 micron merino , 18.5 micron merino,lovely yummy mixtures of the 18.5 merino with angora and with silk as well as self indulgent cashmere and silk and camel and silk . Finally some gorgeous white soft silky mohair from Leslie Prior of Devon Fine Fibres. It only arrived yesterday but I have washed one batch and now I am itching to spin it as I love mohair. So I am starting to dye ready for Wonderwool, more up and coming workshops and for the website.

Dye Garden

Genista Tinctoria yellows
A quick whizz around the dye garden this afternoon showed some of the dye plants have started to flourish in the spring sunshine.
Rubia Tinctoria below giving reds, corals and oranges
Isatis Indigotica Chinese woad blues
Anthemis Tinctoria Dyers Chamomile Yellows
Solidago Canadensis Golden Rod Yellows
Reseda Luteola Weld Yellows

Dyeing with extracts

Posted by Helen
I have a lot of workshops coming up all in the next three weeks: Leaves of Gossamer Felt (felting a scarf from 18.5micron merino), two Winter Landscapes and a weekend of Felt and Fabric Tote Bags.
I have had great fun dyeing the materials for these workshops and here is the result. All the fibres are hand painted in natural extract dyes which I use a lot especially for painting the fibres multicolours, but the very strong pink (bottom left) is dyed in cochineal extract 2g /100g of fibres. The exhaust a lovely pale delicate pink is in the dye bath as I write. The wool is all 18. 5 micron merino, and in the centre are balls of muslin for the Felt and Fabric Tote Bags. THe other fabrics are silk caps (some times known as mawata caps) some pieces of silk chiffon and teeswater. I am very proud of my dyed merino as I have, over the years, developed the technique which leaves the fibres open and soft.My friend Debbie, the Mulberrry Dyer, says I am the only person she knows who knows how to do this.
The dyes are cochineal, lac, logwood purple, logwood grey, madder, green, osage orange, fustic and persian berries. The lac and the madder are from Tinctoria Dyes, and the rest are Earthues except for the green & persian berries which are Living Colour extracts both of which come from the Mulberry Dyer.

I must be feeling better as I am blogging at night the first time I have done so since before the great lurgy struck me down.