Ruby Slippers

rainbow shawl

I finished my latest knitting project - a rainbow shawl knitted out of lopi wool dyed with natural dyes.  Every year our Sunshine Coast Spinners and Weavers Guild has a stash day where members bring items from their stash that they no longer want.  Over the years I accumulated a fair bit of lopi yarn which I dyed with lac, logwood, marigold, indigo and horsetail.  Such beautiful colours from Nature!

I knitted one half, then the other half and then joined them together with the kitchener stitch.  I didn't have a needle long enough to hold the entire shawl and also I was making the increases by putting the wool over the needle for the first stitch to make a loop and that wouldn't work on the half I was decreasing on.  I changed colour by sewing the new colour into the cut off end of the old colour and then strengthening the join with a felting needle.  The colour change shows along the edge a bit but not enough to notice when I'm wearing it.

 

When I'm not wearing the shawl I'm going to drape it over the back of a chesterfield.  I live on the edge of the forest and in good weather I have moths that visit me and eat any wool left out. Last year the bad creatures ate the wool around the ankles of my stuffed llama!  So now my shawl is spending several days in a plastic bag with a number of lavender sachets in hopes that when I take it out the lavender scent will hide the smell of wool that attracts moths.

christmas gifts

Now that Christmas is over I can post pictures of some of the gifts I made for Christmas. Here are a couple of little flower faeries, all made with naturally dyed wool.  I also made a Japanese indigo little being but forgot to take her picture.

And a little gnome.

An eco-dyed bag with cards inside.

And the eco-dyed cards.

a gift of mushrooms

I live in a rural area and live way at the back of my house so I was surprised when I heard a banging at my door one night.  Who on earth could that be at this hour? I wondered.  It was a neighbour bringing me a bag of lobster mushrooms.  I'd been wanting to do some dyeing with lobster mushrooms so it was like rubbing the lamp and having the magic genie appear to grant my wish!

The lobster mushroom (Hypomyces lactifluorum) is interesting - it's a parasite on a common white mushroom Russula brevipes which is edible.  This is wonderful - no fighting over who gets the mushroom - dyers can peel off the outer red part and gourmets can eat the rest.  This photo is taken by Ann Harmer, our Sunshine Coast mushroom guru.  Mushroom Annie's website has a wealth of information and beautiful pictures of mushroom dyeing.

Lobster mushrooms are not only red like lobsters but also smell like lobsters.  Definitely something to be cooked on my deck rather than my kitchen stove.  I cooked up the mushrooms and then transferred a bit of the dye bath to another pot.  The bit of yellowish wool in the middle is from that dye pot.  I added some washing soda to the main dye pot to make it alkaline and the rest of the wool and silk were dyed in it.  The photo doesn't do justice to the absolutely scrumptious coral/apricot colour of the silk, which interestingly, comes out of the dye pot pink like the wool but looses the pink when washed.  Since this picture was taken I've done 2 more dyeings and there's still a bit of colour left in the bath.

onion skin shawl

In the summer of 2011 I dyed some wool with onion skins using a variety of mordants.

I spun the wool and put it in a basket for our Sunshine Coast Fibreshed display.

This past winter I started knitting it into a shawl which I recently finished.  The green wool was overdyed with indigo.  I call it my Don't Cry for Me shawl.

Japanese indigo dyeing day

This is the third summer that some members of our Sunshine Coast Spinners and Weavers Guild have grown and dyed with Japanese indigo.  I have six garbage pails planted with Japanese indigo – 3 plants per pot.  This is more than I need but I grow extra for those who have lost their plants due to slugs, deer or other perils.  In mid-July five of us gathered to do a dyeing using the vinegar method. We cut the stems just above a node, leaving about two nodes below the cut.

We had an abundant harvest.

We stripped the leaves from the stems and then cut the leaves into pieces.  We covered the leaves with water and added 30 ml of pickling vinegar per litre of water.  We ate lunch while the chopped leaves soaked in this mix.

Next we used a hand blender to blend the leaves and vinegar/water mix into a bright green ‘soup’ which had an intensely rich chlorophyll smell.

We lined a strainer with a piece of silk chiffon, strained the ‘soup’ through it into a pot, squeezing well to get the liquid out.  The pulp was mixed with more vinegar and water and strained into the pot.

We then added our fibres and fabrics to the pot.  One of the joys of Japanese indigo is that no mordanting is needed.

Here are our results. Icelandic fleece from a local sheep, a 55% linen/45% cotton blouse - a very light but lovely seafoam blue - and handwoven silk chiffon which will be the backing for the nuno felted Icelandic fleece.

Raw silk fabric and 80% raw silk with 20% polyester fibre.

Local wool fleece.

Wool rovings, silk hankies around the outside, silk/alpaca blend in the centre (darker than shown in photo), silk chiffon with silk fibre bottom right.

smoke bush gift

When I came home from our Guild's spin-in yesterday I found that a Good Fairy had left a smoke bush on my driveway.  I guessed who the Good Fairy was - my friend Dorothy knows that a smoke bush is a bundler's Bliss.  This morning I planted it and it now sits there snugly in its nest of straw.

horsetail and garden dye plants

Unfortunately this picture of horsetail is taken in my garden – in a bed which has been overrun with it.  I have to admit, however, that this time of year it’s really quite pretty.

I cooked up a basket of horsetail - pulling it up where it’s invading the path.  It’s one of those plants which have a desire for garden domination.  I simmered the dyebath for several hours, let it sit overnight and then added my fibre and fabric.  I held it just below the simmering point for several hours and then let it sit in the pot overnight.

A couple of days later, using the same bath, I did my first dyeing of local fleece.  I have about 6 ounces of rovings from Olivia, a fine sheep who lives in my neighbourhood.

It was magical dyeing local fleece with something that grows in my own backyard (even if it was horsetail).  And now I’m an addict, looking for my next hit of local fleece…  I’m very involved with our Sunshine Coast Fibreshed, one of whose mandates is encouraging the production of quality local fleece.

Meanwhile in the garden, a couple of the woad plants a friend gave me last year are in full flower and I can see the seeds starting to form.

 

The madder plant another friend gave me has pushed through its straw mulch.  It’s safe for a couple of years and then I’ll be after its roots.

Last spring I planted pokeberry seeds and they grew into small plants by the end of the summer.  I wasn’t sure if they’d survived the winter as they were late poking up through the ground.  But once they did they’ve been growing enthusiastically.  I see stakes in their near future.

The other dayI emptied out the jars I showed in my May 7/15 blog.  The frozen purple petunia flowers dyed the silk a lovely dusky purple.  I still have to test the lightfastness but even if it fades in light I can always put it in books.  I paid a visit to the nursery to pick up some more purple petunias for this year’s garden.  While there, I found this amazing petunia (Mamba) with flowers like black velvet.

When I buy plants at the nursery I explain what the situation will be for them when they come home with me.  They’ll be well weeded, watered, fed and protected from slugs.  But they’ll be working plants.  As soon as their flowers start to fade – it’s off with their heads…

stuff, steep, store, bask

It’s time to clear the frozen flowers from last year’s garden out of the freezer.  Top left to right: fresh silver dollar flowers, fresh orange rhododendrons, frozen pink and purple hollyhocks.  Bottom left to right: frozen purple iris, frozen delphinium flowers, frozen purple petunias.

I used a version of India Flint’s Stuff, Steep and Store method.  I think this method has potential for plant material that likely wouldn’t produce good colour in a regular heat immersion bath.

I stuffed the jars full of plant material and a selection of wool and silk fibres and fabrics, put them in a canning pot, filled the pot with water to the jar necks and then heated until the water was just before the boiling point.  I then turned off the heat and let the jars cool overnight in the pot.

I take them outside on sunny days to bask in the sun.  The fibre and fabric are taking up colour well.  The test will be to see if the colour survives washing.  If it does I’ll then test for lightfastness.

When the sun goes down it gets cold.  So they come inside and get tucked in for the night.

little bag

I wanted a quick knitting project and I love making little bags.  So I knitted this little bag from curly mohair dyed with natural dyes.

from the dye pot

My dye pot has been simmering away on my deck.  Winter, when my garden is asleep, is a wonderful time for bark dyeing.  Last summer a friend gave me some apple bark peeled from pruned branches and I put it to soak in a back corner of my deck.  And forgot it…  Months later I rediscovered the fermenting bark (oh dear!), boiled it for hours with the top off to get rid of the smell and then put in the fibre (pre-modanted with alum).  It was gorgeous – in sunlight the mohair roving shines like burnished gold.

 

The beautiful arbutus tree (Arbutus menziesii) is one of the distinctive features of the Sunshine Coast.  Sadly a number are dying to diseases but many still remain.

The reddish-brown bark naturally peels away in thin strips and these litter the ground beneath the tree where they can be easily gathered by dyers.

 

 

I put some gathered bark in a pot, poured hot water over it and let it sit for 2 weeks before adding the water and bark to the dye pot.  I allowed the bark to come to a boil and then let it simmer for 7 or 8 hours.  I added the fabric and fibre (pre-mordanted with alum) when the dye bath had somewhat cooled and allowed them to soak overnight.  The next day I heated the bath to just below simmering for several hours and let the fibre and fabric sit in the bath for the next day.  More beautiful earth colours.

 

Next, I raided the treasures in my freezer – bags of frozen flowers from last summer’s garden.  I made a dye bath with some coreopsis flowers that were so generous with their colour that I did four batches all together.  It was very interesting – the wool came out of the dye bath a golden colour and as I rinsed it turned orange.  In ‘Craft of the Dyer’, Karen Casselman reports getting gold from coreopsis and sited a couple of examples of dyers getting orange.  I got a beautiful range of shades as I exhausted the bath.  The wool in the bottom of the basket is from cherry twigs.  What incredibly beautiful colours come from plants!

Despised by many as pesky weeds, dandelions have long been appreciated by herbalists for their healing properties.  I look forward to the first fresh dandelion leaves as an early spring green and love their bright yellow flowers in spring.

I gathered dandelions from the roadside and ditches (my own small patch of ‘lawn’ grows only moss!), simmered them gently for a couple of hours and then added the fibre when the bath had cooled.  I held the bath below simmer for 2 hours.  It dyed a beautiful soft golden yellow.

Karen Casselman says that to obtain a bright clear yellow (rather than a golden yellow) from fresh yellow flowers, they should be processed less than 45 minutes from the time the flowers and fibre go in to the time they come out, and the temperature should be kept under 190F.  I followed this for a fresh batch of dandelion flowers.  At the end of 45 minutes the colour was clear yellow but paler than I wanted so I let them stay in the bath for 15  minutes more and then removed the flowers and let the fibre stay in the hot coloured water for 2 hours.  This resulted in a beautiful bright clear yellow.  You can see the difference in colour between the first bath on the left and the second on the right.