It's About Time!!

OK. I have not posted since October. Shame on me!! It's not like I haven't had things to post about--September trip to Washington and Oregon, yet more dyeing, knitting, Christmas, growing my first mushroom kit, another trip to Oregon (can we all say "Voodoo Doughnut"?)--the list goes on.

Why the silence? Sheepishly, I have to admit the main culprit (since I am feeling like passing the buck) is Facebook. Yep, I am hooked. Farmville, Mafia Wars and best of all reconnecting with friends and family. Still, it has taken much time away from other things, such as this sad, lonely little blog.

I hope to post some more in the near future. I should have some indoor time since outdoors, things are supposed to look like this for the next two weeks:

















We are already making up for rainfall, weather wise, and are above seasonal normal. This should keep me more house bound and therefore in a line for posting. Also, Mafia Wars is finally starting to get a bit boring...

Some dye pics to post soon include lichen, marigolds, eucalyptus leaves, and YUMMY chocolate brown from walnut hulls, so stay tuned!

Raspberries!

Well, I have come to the end of this round of dyeing with one last fling. A fruit fling, no less. I decided that my Big Bin o' Natural Dye Yarn needed some pink, so after poking through my books, I decided to try raspberries.

Now, I know that there are other tried-and-true methods of getting pink: cochineal and brazilwood. I worked with cochineal this Summer and it does give pink, but what I got was a more mauve-y/lavender-y pink. Brazilwood apparently gives a truer pink, but it has become very hard to get. As much as I'd like to try it, I am a bit nervous at the thought of using it and contributing to the loss of trees. I don't know if it has been overharvested or if it has become collateral damage from rainforest deforestation, but without more research into ecological correctness the matter, I am hanging back. Dharma Trading Company has none for sale and I count that as a dubious sign.

One of my dyeing books, however, has an easy recipe for dyeing with blackberries. That got me thinking about using other berries, such as raspberries. I had one skein of Lamb's Pride left from last weekend that was ready to dye (I mordanted it with alum), so I figured why not try raspberries?

I bought two packages of frozen berries from Safeway. I got the organic kind mostly because the berries were frozen without sugar or any other additives. I dumped both packages in warm water and mushed them up with my hands as they thawed out to crush them. I then simmered for a hour or so, and steeped for an additional hour. I strained and crushed the remains. I added the yarn and simmered for about an hour and a half. I then let it sit another hour. When I checked, it seemed the right shade, so I took it out--no overnight this time. This is what resulted:

Raspberry yarn:



















This skein was rinsed until the water was clear. I added a little soap in the first rinse to make sure it was really clear. PINK!

The raspberries were a bit spendy, so I got a skein of Cascade Eco Wool and with exhaust dye it this weekend and try and really get my money's worth from the dyepot. I also like that pink color, so that last rationalization is my story and I am sticking to it!

This experiment has got me thinking about next season. My mom has two plum trees--a Satsuma and a Santa Rosa--and both give very red juice. She usually has more plums than she knows what to do with, so I will likely try plums as a dyestuff, if I can time a trip right.

This will likely be my last dye batch for a couple weeks at least. I am starting to think up projects for this yarn and I need to get my dyebook started to keep track of what I've done before I forget any more than I already have. The weather is turning here, and now the season for cozy fires, good books, fun movies and handwork projects is almost here. Time to knit what was dyed!

Looks Like Lavender, Smells Like Cabbage

Dye-jinks, part Infinity. I am plowing through the yarn I bought last Saturday. I alum mordanted all the skeins at once and have them wetted and ready to dye. Last night, I decided to try red cabbage.

I used two heads of red cabbage, that I grated in my cusinart. I added water to cover and boiled an hour or so.Then I steeped off heat, strained and proceeded to dye both skeins. The skeins were cooked at a simmer about 1.5 hours and then left overnight to cool and steep. The dye pot was BRIGHT purple and I was hoping the color might stay. Rinsing the first skein, though mean most of the bright color came out. Still, the resulting yarn is a lovely, dusty lavender--not an unexpected this time, but still I am very pleased. The second skein got rinsed a bit and then a quick bath with a glug of clear ammonia, then rinsed thoroughly. It turned a nifty dusty teal green, again not so unexpected. All in all, a pretty good outcome!

Ammonia created teal on the left, untreated on the right:

Double Double, Toil and Trouble

Well, really, no trouble, but certainly a boiling cauldron!

Our story so far:

Rabbit has a problem; she can't quit dyeing yarn. She clips backyard plants and boils them up and steeps yarn and weird things happen...

As I posted earlier, my latest dyeing experiment was made using Abutilon blossoms. That's 'flowering maple' to those out there who don't live and breathe by their 'Sunset Western Garden Book' or some similar plant geek reference guide. As the child of an extended family of truly certifiable plant geeks, we tend to bandy Latin genus and species names with reckless abandon. But I digress.

My flowering maple shrubs (there are two) are pale orange and very pretty. Fortunately for me, they are still blooming profusely in this late October--pretty much the only flowering plant with any oomph left this year. (Even the white clematis has mostly pooped out, unlike last year)Abutilon blooms are very graceful, frilly bell-like blossoms:

Flowering maple blossoms:



















Much as I like seeing a shrub full of blooms, the potential for a dyeing experiment is too tempting, so I took all the open blooms. There are also quite a few buds, so there should be a new crop of blossoms in a few days. My harvest yielded about 1/3 of a potful:

Pot of blossoms:














I filled the pot to about 2/3 full with tap water and brought to a boil. I then simmered the blooms about an hour and let them steep another full hour. The final blooms yielded a pale peachy colored tea and looked drained of pigment. As a note to others, they also became somewhat unpleasantly slimy, so I didn't really squeeze them out much.

Anemic abutilon post-steeping:














I was, frankly, expecting a pale tan-yellow, so imaging my surprise when I dropped my alum mordanted skein of yarn in and got this:















Purple? Yes, VERY purple. The yarn is good old Lamb's Pride--a full 4 oz. skein. I simmered and hour and kept checking. The yarn was taking color, but not purple...green. A bright, light artichoke green. I let the skein sit in the dyepot overnight and today, I rinsed it and got what you see in the picture. Well, much like the previous Mexican marigold dyepot, this didn't turn out as I expected, but I like it!

A very un-brown green!



















As usual, you can't tell what you'll get from the dyepot until the fiber is done. Stayed tuned for more dye-jinks!!

Dyeing for Fiber

Well, it's Saturday. I am resting post-cold, and woke up with a migraine today, no less. Lovely. Still, I am pilled and mostly pain free now, thankfully and almost have a speaking voice back. Really I should be resting, and maybe doing some much needed light housework. However, my naughty dyeing self is working up to a run to Fortuna and the much-loved Generations yarn store (and beauty shop--let's not forget that!) They carry TONS of meat-and-potatoes yarn, including my preferred Lamb's Pride.

The bulk of my dyeing has been done using Lamb's Pride by Brown Sheep Wool company. It is 85% wool/15% mohair lopi style single ply, and somehow it just seems to take the dye better than anything else I have worked with. I have a binful already, but I can't stop playing.

I do have a couple of solid knitting projects in mind, and have now got the yarn for both, but more colors is better in my mind and I want to get a bit more dyeing in before the weather turns crappy for real. I do have my covered breezeway and solarium to work in, but when it gets too cold, it will be uncomfortable and I anticipate the damp will make it difficult to dry the resulting yarn. Dyeing season is really coming to a close.

Still, I have things in the works. My friend Q in Corvallis has access to elderberries that she says she'll freeze for me, and lives on a large ot with access to madrona trees; the bark is supposed to work well. I plan also to tap my aunt and uncle for some walnut hulls, since they have an english walnut orchard and I am sure would be happy to save some for me.

In m own yard, there is the abutilon flowering I mentioned earlier--my first goal. There is also an apple tree covered with lichen. I have no plans to move, or anything, in the near future, but somehow, I feel a sense of urgency about seeing some of these things through. Nervous, I guess.

So, I am making hay, so to speak. Strike while the iron is hot!

Dyer's Addendum

So I dyed my last skein of prepped yarn. It was a large skein: 7.4 oz of yarn. I almost split it in two because it was so big, but trying to reskein wet wool is a drag, so I ran with it.

As I said in my previous post, I planned to use Mexican marigold (Tagetes spp.) leaves. I showed a picture of yarn dyed with the flowers--2 skeins of buttery yellow, one slightly darker because it sat in the dyebath longer.

My previous experience with leaves includes horsetail and fennel. The horsetail yielded a soft buffy yellow, and the fennel, a greenish yellow--both colors subtle and gentle. I used both young and old leaves of the Tagetes, cutting off whole canes, since the plant needs serious pruning, and stripping off all the leaves from the stems until I had a decent potful. I covered them with water and simmered for a good while (at least an hour), until the leaves looked dull and the water was very green. As a test, I dunked a bit of white paper towel in to test. It came out green, so I thought, "OK. The yarn will likely be greeny yellow.". I was hesitant because I wasn't sure about a big skein of nondescript color, but decided to go with it. What the heck, right?

Well, wow. The yarn hit the dyebath and WHOOSH!! The water turned BRIGHT yellow and went from clear to opaque. I simmer for about an hour and a half and then let it sit covered overnight with the heat off. It wasn't green, it was YELLOW, yellow, bordering on orange. Would it stay that way after rinsing? Well...'

electric yellow orange--yeehaw!



















P's comment when he saw it was, 'Wow. It looks like the color of Kraft macaroni and cheese.". And it does, really. The skein you see has been not only rinsed thoroughly, but washed with mild soap. It could do with a little more rinsing, but it was pretty much stay that color. What a knockout. After the subtle tans, peaches, greens and yellows I have gotten of late to get this INTENSE yellow-orange was a treat. I wouldn't have predicted this color outcome, but I love it!

2009 Headlong to the End

I've been down with a cold this week. This has given me a lot of time to look at my surroundings and mentally take stock, at least. I also slipped in some easy yarn dyeing, since I had already mordanted and prepped my wool before the cold bug took me down.

I have been saving flower heads from my farm bouquets--mostly dahlias. I also have also had my eye on plants in my backyard. The most rampant growing is a Mexican marigold (Tagetes spp.). So, in my bored, cold-ridden state, I started in on the yarn.

Mexican marigold taken in my backyard:














Dahlias were first, and I boiled them and, whatever flowers we in the most recent bouquet, up into a nice tea. A quick 10 minute dunk gave a light sunny yellow. Longer gave a chartreuse green. I also overdyed some of my nettle and sumac dyed batches and got more greens.

My last farm bouquet, once lovely, became part of a dye bath when faded:



















I then cooked up all the fresh Tagetes flowers I could lay hold of and this gave a WONDERFUL clear yellow. I overdyed some of the yarn from all the previous batches and got some cross yellows and yellow-greens. Good fun!!

Yellows and yellow greens from dyer's madness:














I have one more skein of yarn ready. I am boiling up some tea from the Mexican marigold leaves. I want to redunk some sumac and nettle yarns to test. If I like what I see, I'll throw in the last skein. Otherwise, I will make up a bath this weekend using some orange flowering maple. There are two bushes in full bloom in the yard right now.

Flowering maple (Abutilon spp.):



















I figure I have to act fast. I heard my first skein of Aleutian geese a few minutes ago, which means Winter is not so very far away. They overwinter here in the thousands, and October is almost over. Furthermore, the Japanese maple in the yard is starting to show it's Fall color.

The first hint of the red to come:



















Orangey hints of the more radioactive red the tree will soon show. Plants are rolling it up for the season and that also means the dyeing season is rolling up--at least for the fresh stuff. So, make dye while the sun shines!!