Natural Dyes and Linen

 Would you believe that my family is planning on moving again? It would be my 5th move since I started this blog in 2008. If I'm lucky the future will hold a "craft room" for me...fingers crossed. I've been thinning out my possessions in preparation for moving.  I had little bottles of dye-stuff from Maiwa, the natural dye store in Vancouver BC. I figured a good use for these little bits would be to experiment dyeing something other than wool. I went with my second favorite textile---linen.

I cut little squares and began experimenting. Dying fabric and cellulose fiber is new to me. It was so much fun  using these little squares because there was no harm done if I screwed it up. It's not as risky as dying a yarn that took 2 weeks to spin, right?

Normally I don't like cutch but on fabric it looked nice. I added iron to cutch and got a totally cool dark taupe.  Marigold made a nice orange-yellow. I added tartaric acid to marigold and got a pale yellow.

I tried black tea and got a dull color. I used marigolds and back tea and it looked a little more interesting.

 The logwood experiment was interesting. When I added tartaric acid I got an orange instead of the standard purple that usually comes from logwood.



The house that we are trying to buy was built in 1912. I've looked at paint swatches of color palettes from that time period. Of course they only had natural pigments back then. Inspired by the old-timey colors and the linen swatches I was dying, I decided to make a color palette: cutch, marigold, cutch with iron, logwood with tartaric acid, and marigold with black tea! I showed the palette to my Hubby and he was not impressed. That's okay.  I'll just keep day-dreaming of remodeling my future home.

A Green Spring

 Seattle got to experience a few days of glorious weather. The sun inspires me to dye because I know it will help me dry in a fraction of the time it would take indoors.  This time I decided to try a dye brand that's new to me even though it's been around since 1879.  I bought Cushing's Olive Green, Green, and Bright Green.  I started with the Bright Green and dyed 8 oz  Norwegian White roving. I had never heard of Norwegian White before but a google search got me up to speed on this type of wool.  After spending just an half hour on the stove, I left the roving in the dye pot over night. In the morning the water was clear.  I drained it off and rinsed the roving and laid it outside to dry.  It was almost 70 degrees out and by evening the roving was dry.

Now the rain it back and I can sit inside and spin up my spring time yarn.

Look What's Cookin'

Getting ready for Thanksgiving. Fixin' something in the kitchen...
Mmmmm....
Happy Thanksgiving!

Yarn Make-Overs

BEFORE 100% Soysilk. Problem: color too close to "dusty rose".
AFTER Solution: Over-dyed with purple. Now that's a color that I'll enjoy!
BEFORE Hand spun wool yarn. Problem: It's orange.
AFTER Solution: Over-dyed with red. Ooh La La. Much better.

Live to Dye

Yesterday was another one of my crazy dyeing days.
I got up bright and early and began with the cool tones first.
The silvery blue roving is a wool-silk blend.
The teal-blue mass is a giant lump of silk scraps apparently left over bits from a mattress factory. Who makes silk mattresses? I'm not so sure about the story, but it's definitely silk and definitely scrappy. It's really soft and I like the colors.
Lastly, I dyed about 2 lbs of BFL top. Sadly some of the teal dye seeped out of the pan in the oven and left big spots on the orange top. I plan to pull out all the teal spots before spinning this.

Dyeing is one of my favorite things to do. It makes me so happy. Seeing this, my husband said that in our next house (we can't live in this rented apartment forever) he'd help me make a dye studio! My husband is really into multiplexes and he had the idea of using one of the apartments in this future house of ours to make more bedrooms for the kids and a kitchen could be easily turned into a dye studio for me! He is brilliant!

A Small Pink Skein

This BFL top was dyed with jacquard acid dyes. After applying red, orange, and purple, I thought it looked horrible and squeezed out the dye within a few minutes. I was thinking that I'd redye or over-dye it at first, but after seeing the shade that it turned out, I went ahead and processed it with heat.
I spun it into a 2-ply yarn. Now I'm working on (another!) baby hat. Good thing I know a lot of babies, because I can't stop knitting baby hats.

Dyeing, Drying, Cleaning Up

The wool locks are beginning to dry. The prepared top is dry and I picked the first one to start spinning today. I've cleaned up most of my dyeing equipment and put it away. Now I'll have lots of fiber to work with over the next few months. I plan on hand carding some of the locks, experimenting with blending. Some of the dye pots were filled with different fibers with the intention that they would be blended together later. Each type of fiber took on the dye in a unique way, so there should be rich dimension to the color in the end. I am excited to have so many kinds of projects to work on!

A Good Day to Dye

I just spent the last 10 hours dyeing. I dyed Blue Face Leicester top, Merino top, Angora, raw Tarhgee, and some Cormo that I had hand washed lock by lock but never spun.
I dug out all non-dyed fiber in the stash went crazy. I used the plastic wrap method for the top and I dyed the locks in pots. All the burners on my stove were going all day.
The roving is now drying on the rack. The two last pots are on the stove and pretty soon I'll have to clean up the whole mess and put all the equipment away. I get so much joy from dyeing. My dream house would have a dye room. For now I just have to transform my kitchen and try to be careful---not to splash and not to contaminate any food or surface that's used for food.

The Best Day Ever

Today was my birthday and before we went to Cupcake Royale (yum) I opened presents from my family. My husband gave me about 5 pounds of Targhee and the book Teach Yourself Visually - Hand-Dyeing. The kids gave me wonderful non-fiber-related gifts. I received these gifts after spending the whole day dyeing. It was awesome just to listen to pod casts all day and dye roving/top in my kitchen.

I started with about 3 pounds of different types of top.

I tried several types of space dyeing. I heated some in the oven in tin casserole pans with tin foil lids.

I steamed some of the roving/top in the canning pot.

And now it's all drying on the rack. I can't wait to spin up these samples and see how they come out. Once the roving is dry I'll take more photos. Today was the best day ever!

Solar Dyeing

My plan was to dye some roving using tin foil to make a little solar oven. When I went to buy the roving at Sweet Grass Wool, Patti asked if I was going to use black plastic bags. Well, I think her idea was much better so I did indeed use black plastic bags. It's been in the 90's lately so not only is it hot enough to dye, everything dried quickly. First I made trays out of old card board and black plastic then laid the roving in them. I squirted on the dye and then covered the whole thing with another black plastic bag. I kept going out side and touching the black plastic to see how hot it was getting. It got very hot, even to the point that it hurt to touch them! I could feel the roving inside and knew that there was enough heat to process the dye. I tossed all the cardboard and plastic in the trash afterwards for an easy (and wasteful) clean-up.

I went with fall colors so I would have something to spin when I move in the fall.

Even though I said I'd just be doing fiber prep now and spinning later, I just couldn't help myself. I started spinning the sweater yarn that I recently carded.

I know my profile says I live in Seattle, but I'm actually in Montana now. The plan goes as such: my family and I are moving all our stuff to Seattle in a week or so. They will stay there and I'll fly back to Montana to work* until Sept. During the time that I'm in Montana without my family I will have a lot of time to spin. So I'm getting all my projects together now.

*As some of you know, I'm a midwife. I only have 2 births left this summer in Montana so I'll have a lot of time to sit around and spin and wait for the babies.

Absolutely do not try this...

I got this idea that I'd make a 3-ply novelty yarn out of slubby singles. And here's the novelty: I'd dye the singles before I plied them.

After I plied them I planned to over-dye the yarn so it would have a multi-color effect. One of the singles was white and I was thinking that this would pick up the true color of the over-dye...

but that's not the effect I got. Absolutely do not try this with such a dark over-dye. It took the contrasting colors completely away. So that's one experiment that failed. (Quite a lot of time involved!)

This experiment seems more promising. I blended gray Shetland, black merino top, and silk scraps together on my drum carder.

I've only spun one bobbin of singles so far, but the effect of the colorful silk threads on the gray wool looks interesting.

The Next Big Thing

This is my next project: I'm going to make this sweater out of a Romney-Cotswold cross that I bought on Ebay. I took the whole fleece and washed it and then spent the last two days dyeing it. I'm happy with the colors that came out. I used Acid-dyes. Now I'm going to let it dry, card it, and attempt to spin a semi-self-striping yarn. This is a frick-load (new made-up word)of yarn and it will take a long long time to spin. I reserve the right to change projects mid-way if the yarn does not suit the pattern in the end. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Over-Dyeing

After over-dyeing the ugly pastel orange yarn I realized that a person does not have to live with ugly color. Inspired by this concept I took out some wool that I had dyed a very neon green. I blended it with some Merino top and spun the batts into a 2-ply. Then I got some "Avocado" dye and over-dyed the skeins. I'm happy with the mossy green that showed up. Now I'll actually use this yarn.