Pokeberries, 2016

One of these years, I need to get all my pictures off my camera and onto these blog posts... Alas, another thing on the To Do list.

So, last year I used this as the basis for dyeing with pokeberries:

https://osbornfiber.com/2010/09/27/dyeing-with-pokeberries/

And decided to give it a try again. However, there is one thing I hadn't counted on. I shouldn't take the pokeberries out of the freezer until I'm ready to use them. I meant to dye with them about a week ago (or was it two?). So, the berries have been in my fridge for at least a week. Not the end of the world, but the berries were not as firm as they were last year. In fact, they were... squicky. I have no better way to describe them.

I decided to soldier on, because - pokeberries! -and just figured I'd deal with things like not knowing the weight of just the berries, because I did them in small batches. And by that I mean that squished and squeeze the stems/berries in the bag first, and then I removed the berries from the stem in small batches, and the removed berries went into a strainer sitting in the pot I thought I was going to use. (Last year, I used a crock pot. My concern with my crock pot is that it hasn't been giving consistent results - sometimes it gives great results, other times it doesn't seem to get hot enough for long enough.) I think I'm just going to add the dye to the cooled mordant bath as the pot is bigger.

So, this year I'm using the stove. (Sorry, love!) It's rather colorful after the past few weeks of walnuts, annatto, and exhaust baths. I'm trying to get the kitchen cleared out, which is why I have someone coming over tomorrow and want to get this done today.

Per the Osborn Fibers post, I am currently mordanting the wool (about 4 oz give or take of corridale/cormo cross) in a 50/50 mix of water and distilled vinegar. It was simmering for about an hour, so now I'm going to let it cool. Normally, I'd mix things together in one pot, or pour the dye stuff into the warm mordant bath, but pokeberry dye is rather heat sensitive, so I'm letting it cool down. I'm hoping to get one bath in before I need to get going for the evening.

Hopefully, in the next few days I'll get this done and remember to get pictures taken.

Fall dyeing, day one - walnut and annatto

I've been playing with dyes again, starting with walnut and annatto.

For the walnut bath, I mordanted the 4 ounces ish of fiber (Peredale, washed, but not processed). The walnut juice/extract (you'll hear me use both terms, but basically, soaked some black walnuts that I collected while helping out friends out at Bristol Ren Fair in Bristol, WI.) I let them turn brown/black.

I did a first boil/soak, strained, and gave that to a friend for walnut ink (for more on that, I suggest looking up Ian the Green's blog. He had a lot on different inks, and a few posts on walnut ink.)

After that, I put the walnuts in a 5gal orange bucket, added water, and let them sit for a while. Like, a few weeks. When I wanted to dye with extract, I just strained some, refilled the liquid in the bucket, and went to the stove.

The wool came out a nice light brown. Nothing too exciting, but I figured I'd have some fun and overdye it with some old annatto I had found while cleaning out the kitchen. Three handfuls of annatto seeds, with some baking soda, bring to temp, let sit, and they let cool.

I did that and added it to the walnut bath. And then I did it again, with the remainder of the annatto I had. I didn't measure anything, but added about 1 cup of baking soda. Heated, let simmer for about 20-30 mins, and strained. Added to the walnut bye bath, and brought the walnut bath to a simmer again.

The color I was hoping for was... I don't even know. But what I ended up with was very autumnal. A golden auburny orange sort of color.  Part of me thinks "rusty 70's orange" but my husband thought it was cool (the auburny description was from him) . I think I'll like it more when it's blended with something. Maybe like a robin's breast red, or even a yellow, green or brown. We'll see what I come up with.

Queen Anne's Lace 2016, take 1

My yard is full of Queen Anne's Lace (QAL), once again.

Went out today, and harvested QAL. As I did, I cut it up into 2-3":  roots, stems, and flowers. I didn't weigh them, but filled a Halloween plastic cauldron full of the chopped bits. Before I harvested the QAL I put water into a 6 qt crock pot - about a gallon's worth. When the plastic cauldron was mostly full, I went and put as much into the crock pot as I could do, which was most of the cauldron, but not all.

I've been having concerns about my crock pot getting things hot enough, so I let the QAL in the crock pot stew for several hours before adding more water.

I did some testing of my tap water, and figured it to be about 8ish. Not an exact measure, but it does give me more of an idea of what I'm starting at with the water.

The last time I did this, dipping a small skeing in ammonia and it turned it darker, so I'm going to add some baking soda to see if I can get more of a shift in color.

Now, to mordant wool after dinner arrives.

Things that I keep looking up

So, I keep looking up very mundane things over and over, so, I'm going to write them down:

Vinegar is a acid.
Ammonia is a base.
Baking soda is also a base.

For four ounces of wool this is the formula if I plan on using an alum/cream of tartar mordant:

4 oz of wool, mordanted with 2 T alum and 1.5 t of Cream of Tartar, simmered for about 35-40 minutes

...And the new kitten has escaped and fell into the wool washing tubs...

SO that's why I should record these things

So, with a lot going on, I'm trying to remember something I did before. It was some yarn that was spun and loaned to me to dye.

And in trying to recreate a color I did, I have no idea what I did.

And with that in mind, I'm going to be better about recording what I've done. (Especially since I've used some left over dye stuff and have no idea what it was, other than in my fridge for a very long time. Probably used for that project I mentioned above.)

Right now, I'm trying to remember if it was logwood or cochineal I used to dye.

I have been dying. Pokeweed, Queen Anne's Lace, and more. I've just been horrible at recording what I did, so now I have to do it over again, and make the same mistakes as well.

Not my favorite way to spend my time, but it's my own fault.

So, learn from me. Write things down.

No, you probably won't remember what you did...

Has it been that long?

Hadn't meant to spend so much time away from dyeing, but I've learned to spin and love it. I've spent much of the past two years spinning, scouring, and processing fleeces.

However, I do want to get back to dyeing. So tonight, I'm about to mordant some wool and try out some sumac or annatto tomorrow.  I seem to be reading that people have better luck with annatto after they let it soak, which is something I was unaware of the first time I tried dyeing with it.

So, I'll do an overnight soak on the annatto seeds, and then try again.

Right now, I have 6.3 oz of Jacob wool mordanting in 3 T of alum with 2.25 t of COT. I was going to try something else with this wool, so I had it soaking in water overnight. I took it out this morning and wrapped it in a towel to keep it damp. Seemed a pity to dry it only to need to wet it again later...

Since I have 6.3 oz of wool, I've read that I should use half the wool weight of annatto. That's nice, as I don't think I bought that much. (woohoo...)

Tonight, I'll let the annatto soak, and possible Saturday, I'll dye. I'll try tomorrow, but don't know if it will work, time wise.

(I dyed, naturally? I dyed of natural causes? Yeah, I'll work on it.)

I also have 17ish oz of dorset to dye next. Right now, I'm giving it a quick wash (well, not so quick...) as there was still a bit of lanolin feel to it, which can effect how/if the dye attached to the yarn. We think that happened previously, so I'm about to go give it a rinse and think about mordanting it. Since we've done greens, blues, and browns, my friend asked for reds, yellows, and oranges this time around. We'll see what I can do. :) I'm thinking of doing 2/3rds of a skein with yarrow, and then going from the other end and dyeing 2/3rds in madder. I also plan on doing one of the skeins with annatto seeds, and another one with sumac. We'll see how these turn out! :)

Birch bark

Okay, I didn't weight the birch bark before I soaked it. It's been soaking outside for the better part of the summer, which mean a good amount of it has evaporated. Especially because it was one of the driest summers on record. However, it has rained recently, which has added some of the water back.

Going to mordant four ounces of wool, but will probably only use two ounces for the dye.

Time to see what happens.