Perhaps winter

Tags

brown, clothing, fabric, grey, weather, winter, wool

First winter day, and a promise of, but not quite real frost at least in this garden. It’s possible that I simply got out of bed too late, though! Uglemor has taken care of that bit of December greeting for me. 😉

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The yarn that wouldn’t

Tags

brown, colour, mordant, natural dyeing, overdye, wool

As I mentioned in passing yesterday, I had some non-results with dried walnut on one of my overdye projects. I can’t remember what came first, I think possibly alum and St. John’s Wort solar dye method (= mucky fawn).

Then I tried dried walnut shells, bought in a store, not collected, regrettably. (=beige) Ammonia: no change. Yes, it really lost colour compared to the original.

Another option would be mixing my used dye jars of hollyhock, cochineal and safflower on the odd chance they were not exhausted from the other hanks I showed yesterday. (=this added a slight greyish tint to the beige)

What’s in the bag?

Tags

alpaca, brown, fiber friday

My friend Nina happened to pass by this alpaca being shorn a few weeks ago, and clever her asked what they did with it. So here’s one side for me and the other side went to another wool craving friend. 🙂

Oak leaves

Tags

black, brown, dyeing, grey, modifier, mordant, silk, wool

Green leaves picked September 11th. Dried some, frozen some, to dye on silk, cotton and a sample strip wool only. The rest dyed immediately. Test also early summer leaves 2014 as well as brown self-dried.

4:1 fresh, 2:1 dry – oak galls 2% if colour not strong.

Those are my notes in short form. 😉 What that means is, I’ve dyed some wool 4:1 ratio, with and without premordant, and same with an iron afterbath. Then I did it again with oak galls in there too. You don’t quite see it in the photo below, but the dark skeins are actually a deep, chocolate brown, and the ones with iron minus oak galls are greenish.

The oak galls don’t appear to do much to the oak colour itself, it works with the iron. Don’t leave your yarn in there too long unless you are aiming for black!!! Half an hour the old books say. First dye for an hour, add iron, simmer another half.

Technically people use oak to get grey, a wonderful smoky/silver shade. I got all sorts of brown and grey shades, but not that one!

So I’ve saved a few leaves in the freezer as well as dried some to test later. Perhaps the grey is more easily obtained on cotton?

cotton

Then I had a stroke of genious if I may say so. Especially since I had not bothered to actually check what other people do, I just followed the book. What if I did NOT dye the yarn first, but plunked it into the iron/oakgall/leaf bath when it was squeaky clean?!

But I’m kinda glad I did follow instructions first, or I would never have gotten all those other shades. Of course now I’m wondering what happens if you just use iron and oak galls…..

Oh – and if you rinse and rinse and the water still comes out black as night – make sure you don’t have a piece of oak gall trapped in your fiber. 😉

Egeblade

De gamle bøger siger: egeblade vægt 4:1 friske, 2:1 tørrede. 2% galæble for at få mørkere farve.

Så det prøvede jeg. Man skal passe på ikke at lade det ligge i gryden for længe efter tilsat jern, med mindre man går efter sort, en halv time er vist passende.

Galæblerne gjorde ikke rigtig noget ved selve farven, de virker først sammen med jern, her var der en tydelig forskel på de “grå” nuancer jeg fik. Måske de flotte sølvgrå jeg har set, har været på bomuld? Indtil det faldt mig ind at IKKE gøre som i bogen, nemlig farve i blade først, og så putte jern i til sidst. Og det virkede. Men jeg er da ret glad for, at jeg ikke checkede hvordan andre gør, for så havde jeg jo aldrig fået alle de fine brune!

Jeg farvede både ubejdset (det er det, de fleste bruger) samt alun- og kobberbejdset, her var også klar forskel, så man kan let skabe sig en gradueret skala til brug ved flerfarvearbejde.

Silk

 

Fir cones 2

Tags

beige, brown, kogler, mordant, pink, silk, wool

Last year I did a brief experiment with cones and a rather boring result.

I wanted to know, however, if mordanting the yarn would make a difference, so I mordanted the original skein from last year with alum.

Got plenty of cones, boiled them good with some potash and waited until it had cooled and the pH gone down again. In with yarn, heat, sit in a bucket for 2 days.

The yarn is very dark chocolate brown when you take it out, like the dyebath, and feels oddly soapy?! But as soon as you rinse it, this is what you get:

I then added a silk skein and left in there for a few days. Disappointing light beige, so heated it for a bit. This looked so promising that I actually added the wool one more time! Simmered and left for a day. Very nice brown! Only… the day after they were dry and kinda pink…

While I was blooded and believed in brown I entered one of my failed cotton skeins (the ones I’ve promised to talk about later). It was almost white with a hint of yellow spots.

Remains to be seen if they are lightfast etc.

Grankogler (rødgran)

Sidste år lavede jeg et kort eksperiment med grankogler, som blev ret skuffende. Men jeg ville alligevel se, om bejdse gjorde en forskel, så jeg bejdsede samme fed og farvede det en gang til!

Sjovt nok er garnet en flot, mørk chokoladebrun når man tager det op, men så snart vandet er trykket ud og man skyller det, så bliver det meget lysere.

For sjov skyld kom jeg så et lille fed silkegarn i bagefter. Det lå først i spanden et par dage, det gav kun en meget lys beige, så jeg varmede det op igen, og det så mere lovende ud. Faktisk så lovende, at jeg puttede ulden i en gang til! Fin brun – som blev til rosa, da de var tørret. Meget sært.

Bits and bobs

Tags

blue, brown, cardigan, green, hexagon, hexiflat, orange, purple, sweater, wollmeise

Not much going on here, but I did pop some of the solid hexagons I’ve knitted into a dyepot for a bit more pow. Should have diluted it a tad more, as some of them came out black! Of course being superwash, they grew to gigantic proportions when wet, so I tossed them in a bag and into the dryer. Wanna see what happens when you do that?

I’d meant to tie-dye or paint some of them but felt too distracted. Instead I did a couple of micro skeins with mixed leftovers. There goes “subtle” for the blanket colourscheme! And I have a couple of other ideas to try out…

Otherwise I’ve managed to finish the sleeves on my two “endless” sweaters, meaning they are in fact DONE. And since it’s never ending sweater summer, I may actually get to wear them… The orange is a cotton/alpaca blend on 4 mm and the blue is Wollmeise lace-yarn on 3mm. And no, the fronts don’t meet up and aren’t supposed to.

Rhubarb leaves as mordant part 1

Tags

brown, mordant, wool

Harvested the first rhubarbs, finally, and as a bonus to the lovely crumble pie I boiled the leaves to try using as mordant. The fumes being apparently toxic, I used a hotplate in the barn (clever thing that turns itself off), and forgot about them for a few days before I strained the liquid and added yarn.

Which I subsequently forgot about for another 3-4 days…..So, not only a mordant, but already dyed! I believe the colour, as I learned on some other blog, could be described as “mucky fawn”. (incidentally I have 6 hanks of this)

Well, we’ll see how it does with light and other dyes on top. I have a feeling it’s just going to be mucky with a hint of yellow….

I may or may not try this and not heat it AND pull it out a bit quicker, what do you say? Cotton?

Rhubarb leaf mordant part 2 >>

Yesterday’s yarn

Tags

brown, colour, orange, wool

More moderate lighting conditions and slightly less hurtful for the eyes 😉

 

Sweater SAL 3

Tags

brown, clothing, grey, orange, purple, shetland, sweater, wool

It’s knitweek at the cottage, so I finally managed to assemble my handspun sweater. Just have to weave in all the ends etc on this thing. I’m no grand knitwear designer, but it’s warm. I knit a double collar with silk to protect my dainty neck from scratchies.

Now for the second Shetland project, for which I need to dye more wool first, then spin.

Spindeforenings SAL del 3

Fiks og færdig pånær et par løse ender – ikke så køn, men varm, med silke i halsen for at beskytte mit sarte skind.

More witchy brews – all done!

Tags

brown, dorset, fleece, green, orange, purple, red, suffolk, wool, yellow

Finally got the last of the Dorsets coloured up with madder and weld. Some of the chunks had previously been dyed with other plants, but I wanted to see what happened if they had another dip – without any kind of plan or registration of which is what. Some dyed at 50 C, then a new batch in the same bath at 80 C for both plants.

Now to flick and then wait until I can card it. There’s a total of 1400 g so it’s going to take a while, since I also have that Suffolk fleece from the same source. I know I should practice using my handcarders, but argh!

And that’ll be all for a while, off to work on other stuff.

.

Færdig

Endelig har jeg fået plantefarvet al min Dorset uld, så skal det bare renses for planterester og kartes en gang. Der er i alt 1400 g, så det kommer til at tage tid. Jeg har også en Suffolk ham som jeg har pletfarvet med syrefarver, den skal have samme behandling før jeg kan spinde.

Jeg har brugt kraprod og hjemmedyrket vau, første bad ved 50 grader, blandet bejset og ikke, derefter mere blandet og før-farvet uld i samme bad og op på 80 grader

Ikke mere plantefarvning i denne omgang, nu er der fokus på andre projekter.