A Funny Story and a Dye Day all in One Weekend!

First the story: I went to the harvest festival in Jericho, VT this past weekend. I always have something to do with me. Sometimes I use my spindle, most often I knit on a small project. Right now its an entrelac scarf. I looked up (while waiting for a shuttle) and this woman was stareing at me with her mouth hanging open. I smiled and she said that my walking around knitting was the wildest thing she’d seen all day. Mind you, I’m standing next to my 11 y/o daughter who was wearing a crochet hat made of crazy art yarn. It was covered with bits of ribbon, curlieques all around on the top, hair yarn, bobbles, it even had a small plastic lizard knit into the hat. Did I mention it was made from about every color you could imagine?

take a peak:

I was stunned. I said, I’m standing next to my daughter wearing “THAT” and I’M the wildest thing you’ve seen all day???? What a hoot! I was laughing so hard I almost peed!

That was on Saturday. Sunday, I was running crazy. I'm moving in a month, and my fibery obsession has no organization. So, the morning was for errands. The afternoon was a dye day with my crazy kindred spirit friend Barb. We collected the indigo leaves, and made a chem indigo vat, plus Black eyed susans for green, and Sulfer Coreopsis for what turned out to be BLAZE ORANGE. Hunters beware. I tried two different mordants. Alum, and rhubarb leaves. I can't see the difference on the dyes. I'll add a pic tomorrow when its light out.

Seed Saving Time

Hi All. Sad to say, my dye garden is starting to wind down. The indigo is setting seeds. The coriopsis tinctora is finally slowing down on the bloom production. I was out in the garden this morning tying string around the flowers that had the best characteristics. Color, size, bloom production... so I can be sure to collect next years seeds from the best possible seed stock. I also tagged a few of the best BES plants so I can dig them up to take with me when I move. I was looking for bloom size, petal color, center size vs petal size, and resistance to powdery mildew (a REAL issue around here)

The Hopi Black Dye Sunflower seeds are drying on the rack now. I still need to find out how to store them (if they need cold, should I add a drying agent to the bag,...). The big winner this season of the plants I tried for the first time was the sulfer cosmos. The amazing shades of orange were a wonderful surprise. I have tagged plants that I'm collecting seed from (bloom size, plant size/bloom production, and bloom color). So, I'll know which ones are "special".

I'm going to try planting them in different beds to see if I can't cultivate plants that produce just the way I want them to. I figure it will take several generations to get the right stock.

I'm slowly gathering up a nice supply of naturally dyed fiber. I'm trying the BES again today (followed by the jewel weed and the goldenrod). I haven't spun anything. I still need to get some silk for mixing and some seacel for blending with the cotton (IF I manage to grow any). I'll post pictures if I get results worth looking at.

Till later, live well and dye happy!
Leah

Dye Days

I have been working really hard at getting my fiber combed, carded and mordanted, because its time to dye all my fiber for spinning. Here are some of my results:



The first 3 are coreopsis tinctura. The first is on shetland the other two are on tunis.
Next is Sulfur cosmos exhaust on tunis. Sulfur Cosmos first dye on tunis. Sulfur Cosmos + an ammonia rinse.
The last 2 are tunis and shetland respectively. Black Eyed Susan. I hadn’t been getting the green I wanted. I thought if I added a reducing agent (ala indigo) unfortunately it didn’t work. Got yellow! (Bummer). I’ll try the BES again after I collect a bagful on Wednesday. I have to do some cochaniel batts to so I'll have them to overdye on the weekend to get some purples. This should be a great spinning winter.

Wednesday will be another try at BES, Jewel weed, Milkweed and Goldenrod. The weekend will bring another indigo dye vat. I've been holding off on making another vat to give the plants time to set seed and mature, hopefully giving me a darker color and more variations with the exhaust.

Here are a couple of pictures of the cotton crop (Yes, I'm still trying to get a VT cotton crop). If it doesn't work this time I'll try one more time in a hoop house. That fails, and I'll be buying my cotton evermore.