Growing Colour Tyfu Lliw

Dyes from Winter garden 2 : an array of yellows.

2012-01-20T18:53:00.001Z

The dye plants I had in the garden were Genista tinctoria, Weld ( leaves) Dyers Chamomile and Tansy. I picked what I had,

I cut the plant materials up, soaked overnight added premordanted fibres and heated all of them slowly in a large pan

From left to right Dyers Chamomile Gensita tinctoria, Tansy and Weld


The sunny result-very nice to have in the winter.

As there is only so much yellow a girl can have I put rusty nails into the Genista tinctoria and tansy but in fact these only became a bronze/gold.(Top row), the acid yellow of the weld leaves stands out in the middle and in the fluff of alpaca to the right. There was so much colour in the dyers chamomile that I repeated it and got almost as good a colour the second time ( Alpaca on left hand side)

The alpaca I stuffed into a fermentation indigo vat- so now a truly eco green!

Dyes from the Winter Garden

2011-12-30T16:24:00.002Z

We have had, so far, a very mild winter and as I wandered around the dye garden on a very mild sunny day I was astonished at how many dye plants were either still in flower or doing well.

So:

Chinese Woad Isatis indigotica

I decided to dye with them all:
starting with Chinese Woad ( Isatis indigotica) .This was last picked in November so all this growth has been since then so I was not sure how much blue there would be in the leaves .

ripped leaves covered with boiling water

I picked all the leaves, weighing 220 g and ripped them all roughly , poured over 2 kettlesful of boiling water and left to steep. You can see the colour after about 20 minutes, this is the precursor to Indigotin.
Then I added 1 tablespoon of washing soda ( sodium carbonate)You can see that the water is now a murky green

Ready to beat

starting to beat

after beating for a few minutes

Then I started to beat to areate the liquid . This converts the precursor to indigotin to indigotin which being insoluble will precipitate out. You usually but not aways will see the froth turning blue . It doe slook bluey here but not marketedly so.

After beating. Now there is blue skim of indigotin on the surface. Hopeful!

Then I added 1 dessert spoon of thiourea dioxide which removed the oxygen so that the insoluble blue indigotin would convert to its soluble form indigo white. At the sme time I heated the little vat till it was 50 degrees C -the optimum temperature for dyeing wool . The pH was 9.
In the picture below you can see the fully reduced vat with some pale blue undissolved indigo on the surface showing that there is some blue but perhaps not a lot.

redcuced vat

warmed vat with fibres added

I enterd about 50 g of dry 18,5 micron merino and silk. Here you can see it soaking in the vat.

fires goingblue in the air

Here the fibres are hung to drip and oxidise from yellow to blue.

weld dyed merino and silk

I tried dipping the fibre again to get a deeper blue but there was little change in the colour so then I put in some weld dyed fibres - dyed with the weld I found growing in Conwy in November

Here is the result. About 80g of dyed fibres. Not as much as you would probably get if the leaves had growing durign sunny months but still nice to have especially in the bleak winter landscapes with grey skies and drizzling rain.
The rest of the dyes are cooking as I write.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year

2011-12-24T18:09:00.000Z

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to all my followers, readers and friends.

Logwood Persian Berries Eco Dye Pots

2011-12-18T22:31:00.001Z

Sometmes natural dyes can prove to be very difficult to photograph. Once or twice I have run into real problems getting the colour of the dye into the camera. A Logwood dark blue will never come out the colour I see it as. Today I have dyed some wonderful lime greens and purples with Logwood and Persian berries but no matter how I photograph it it comes out grey with flashes of purple.. Oddly enough the Persian berries greens look grey in artifical light too See for yourself-and you will have to take my word for it that this does not do justice to the colours at all what you see as grey on the screen is a lovely green.

Washing Art Yarns

2011-12-13T21:51:00.001Z

Now the evenings are long and dark, the wind is howling and rain is slashing agaisnt the window I am having a lovely time sitting at my wheel playing with colour and texture. Quite suddenly I can't get enough and look forward every evening to to the time when I can sit down and spin. This is when I rnew my stock of art yarns which have been selling like hot cakes but I do have a few up on my website. Here I couldn't resist a photo of the yarns being washed. I thought it showed them off quite well! I wash the yarn for a very short time in very hot water with a little of my lovely organic shampoo so the yarn hangs nice and straight and it firms up soft fibres a bit.
Of course every scrap of fibre is naturally dyed.

Multicoloured eco dyeing

2011-12-05T17:11:00.095Z

I love multicoloured fibres and fabrics and although I can get this effect with the extracts of natural dyes I am rather pleased to find along the way of experimenting with eco dyeing that I had found another method of getting a painted effect.
I have been solar dyeing for the last three or four years with large kilner jars and have been enjoying stuffing fibres and dyes into large pots and seeing the result and opening a pot is rather like opening a Christmas present. But of course solar dyeing here is only an option in the summer so now Iam suffering form withdrawal symptoms. I decided instead to experiment with ecodyeing in kilner jars using one source of heat.
Here are the three pots I produced for a demonstration at Trefriw Christmas Textile Market .They all fit into one pan and although I stuff different things into each one they take about 50gs of fibre, a couple of silk caps, handfuls of mohair and pieces of silk for example. I usually stuff in silk cocoons and carrier rods too. This is an ideal method for a project as the different fibres all go together and in one pot you can get a lot of variation. My photo of the results of the madder logwood and persian berries pot is not brilliant because there are two different silk caps one from the bottomof the pot and one from the top. This is also a lovely technique for nunofelt as you can dye both the silk and the fibres together but I plan -as I am now into my spinning season (long dark cold nights and a woodburner) to spin quite lot of these into yummy art yarns. :)

The colours in the basket are from two lots of dyeing. The left is form madder cochineal and persian berries. The right from logwood and persian berries.

I haven't opened them all yet - I have just started so will post the results of these pots when the fibres are out and dried. But in logwood and cochineal pot I have pulled out some of the silk so you can see the rich colours .
The last pot you can see was the demopot form Trefriw,. Here I poured in soaked out madder Cochineal and Persan berries over the fibres and a long piece of silk. I haven't heated this one yet so this gives me something to look forward to.

Weld Eco pot and Trefriw Woollen Mill Textile Market 3/4th December.

2011-11-29T22:15:00.002Z

Quite where time goes too I don't know but although I am not blogging much I am dyeing.! :)

Here is the colour I got from the weld ( Reseda Luteola) I found growing by the Conwy Estuary a few weeks ago,. I roughly chopped the weld and put it into a kilner jar with 50 gms of blufaced leicester and then left it for a few days. When I had time Iput it into large pan with two other ecopots so the pots were in a waterbath andheated slowly for a few hours. The colour from the weld was not brilliant-quite pale but I was too busy to deal with it so I left it for a few days before popping it back in the pan for another slow heating . This time the yellow deepened and a tad of ammonia turned it the bright yellow in the picture. I haven't taken it out as I am demonstrating eco dyeing at Trefriw Textile Market on Sunday 4th December and this is a good example of how you can test dyes without having to use lots of heat. The other advantage of this method is multicoloured dyeing and when I have a moment I shall show the results of dyeing with several dyes. Or you could come ( if you can) to the Textile Market to the Demos on the morning if the second day!
Waterbath dyeing is decribed in my book Colours of the Wolrd Ecodyeing which you can buy from my website.
If you would like to know mor eabout the book Jenny Dean generously reviewed it on her blog and you can find that here

Weld and bloggers block!

2011-11-04T08:35:00.001Z

I have had bloggers block.
Here are the reasons:
Boring ones:
asthma
coming off HRT so I have lots of night sweats and insommia
Fun ones
A Kindle
I sit in bed drinking a cup of tea reading in the morning ( telling myself I really ought to blog but.......)
Marmite.
Marmite is not what you think , a famous black yeast spread to put on your toast , but in fact a black and white sprocker ( cross beteen a springer and a cocker) now a mischievous and energetic 5 month old. ( yes we thought we were mad too!)
Yesterday we were out for the day having a walk together and doing our best to tire out the said Marmite (as we call his name we hear a chorus from other dog walkers every where we go of "love him or hate him "-a reference to the famous advertising campaign for Marmite with a tag line of "love it or hate it") .

It was our wedding anniversary and we were going out of a meal in the evening so dog had to be well and truly tired out so he would sleep rather than chewing up shoes or slippers or some such while we are out-he always find s something . ) So we were walking along the Conwy estuary loking across the river to the famous Conwy castle built by Edward 1st to keep the Welsh down and trying to persuade Walnut our springer spaniel and Marmite that a dip in the fast flowing river was not perhaps the best of ideas when to my astonishment I saw huge stands of Weld. Of course I did not have my camera! (sigh ) but take my word for it there was masses of it behind fences.

I picked a bit of the seed heads where most of the dye is and tomorrow I shall dye with it. ( Not before sprinkling it the seeds around some newly dug earth where weld likes to grow.

I was surprised to see it so near the sea so I am interested to see whether it might be a different variety to the one I have growing in the garden . I tis certainly very vigorous some of stands were at least 6 ft high.
ps Marmite has kept me company while I was writing this and enjoyed himself ripping up an old catalogue and then enterprisingly he went down stairs, brought up the dustpan and is chewing that.

Woolfest 11 the best ever. Solar pots and afterwards

2011-07-18T13:03:00.006+01:00

This years Woolfest at the end of June in Cockermouth Cumbria was the best ever both personally for me and I gather for the Woolfest itself with 5000 visitors . On Friday they had 500 more than last year a truly impressive achievement I think. ]


The Demo area next to my stall	Photo by Peter Davies

This was the first year I demonstrated and I had one of the new official demonstration stalls-I scheduled for 3 demos each day exhausting but worth it . FRiday was Solar Dyeing , Wild Carding and Natural Dye Inks, Saturday was Solar dyeing, Art Yarns and the Fructose and Lime vat. I was helped by Anne Campbell who taught me to spin and who stepped in and demonstrated the Art Yarns on Saturday which was a not only a huge help but actually she is better than I am anyway. ! All the Demonstrations were very popular but the one that drew the greatest interest were the Solar dyeing Demos which I did on both days and on the back of those I sold out of my new book Colours of the World Eco Dyeing and all my solar kits and I am still filling orders for these. The stall was packed and I even had people peering over the side of the stall-they must have been standing on something and I got a spontaneous round of applause. I loved it.

We finished setting up at 7.30 on the Friday having started at 3pm and after the 4 hour drive were fairly exhausted so shot down into Cockermouth and were very pleased to find the Tarantella open again -last year it was till closed after the floods and we had a lovely relaxing meal with good service . ( You can read the review here ).

The Woolfest was packed and thronged with people who did not seem to realise we were in recession. The buzz coming form being in such a dynamic and exciting event was tremendous and The standards of the stalls is amazing. I have been doing the Woolfest since the start and the standard and the range have gone up enormously . Sadly I had even less time to get round but managed to buy a fabulous spindle from IST Crafts and I have now ordered two more . I also bought some smooth fine shaped holly buttons form Tinker Tailor of the Woolclip which I dyed afterwards and I love them and will get some more. The downside was to get a cup of tea we had to walk the length of the Woolfest hall and queue and I always use the portable loos, which I think are fine- as the queue for the other is always horrendous

Enys who brings the dye plants sold out and I have been nagging her for ages to bring things like Genista Tinctoria and the walnut trees that Peter her husband lovingly nurtures. He digs up the sapling grown from nuts buried by the squirrels from a garden near a listed walnut tree with a preservation order on it and brings them on. Enys sold her Genista at Wonderwool within 15 minutes and the Walnut Tree at the Woolfest in the first hour. So now she has conceded that I have point. We are also looking at growing more native plants and she is planning for example to have the European golden rod as well as some more varieties of the Galiums .

	Photo by Peter Davies
View of the stall ( and Enys) form the Demo side.

My last demo was to have been the new Michel Garcia indigo vat with sugar and calcium hydroxide but I was surprised to find that there was very little comment from people about it and wondered if it is too new to have caught people's attention . In any event with the crowding and crushing we began to feel that despite precautions it was too dangerous to be heating water and reverted instead to demonstrating my natural dye inks again. As a result I sold a full pack of 12 inks which I was very pleased about but the customer asked me gently if I could write her instructions on how to use them particularly as fabric paints so that is my next priority.


Me showing the colours you can get from inks and wearing one of my naturally dyed felted Jacket				Photo by Peter Davies

This was the first time I had a credit card machine at the Woolfest and that took a lot of money also as much again as cash. The other thing I felt is that the people who come to the Woolfest are prepared to try things out and are looking for new and interesting things and as well as my solar kits other kits such one that using prefelt and Debbie Bamfords naturally dyed linen threads sold well too. -and at one point we heard a cry of delight and heard someone say " oh look! Slate buttons" taking a photo on mobile and a friend arriving hot foot to get some. Our slate buttons are not any old ordinary slate buttons. They are Welsh sea washed slate carefully hand picked by Anne where they bash against the sea wall and so have rounded smooth edged and then my DH spends hours drilling holes to turn them into buttons. So they are very special buttons.

On the last night we went to the Spice Club in Cockermouth where we had the most appalling service . This came close to ruining what had been a fantastic event and is without doubt the worst experience I have ever had in a restaurant and we eat out a lot! You can read my review here.

After the Woolfest we relaxed at a wonderful spot at Scales Farm High Lorton surrounded by the fells and Anne, who stayed with us, and I had a wonderful time spinning and dyeing with local plants while DH walked the dog off its paws.


This is what Anne and I between had in our stash to dye with .	The Kilner jars came from a kitchen shop in Cockermouth


Setting up solar pots with local dye plants such as meadowsweet, staghorn sumach, Birch , hawthorn and some Persian berries Anne had bought at the Woolfest.In the background are some lovely rusty objects picked up from the farm with the farmers permission. ( He had trouble keeping a straight face when we asked him if we could scavenge!)

In the foreground of the picture above you can see some spindle spun yarn dyed with indigo. I had the stock solution for the MIchael Garcia Fructose vat in the back of the car. I warmed it up by standing it in in bucket of hot water stirred and there it was. Fully active. I started a vat off and it dyed all day and was still active the following morning without anything being added. It dyed muslin , and then wool a d silk fabric to a lovely deep blue when cold

Dye Garden

2011-06-12T21:39:00.000+01:00

Weld elderflower dyers chamomile and mullein

Dye Plants

Mullein in a nearby hedgerow- I have never seen one there before . I hope it can flower and seed before the dreaded council hedge trimmer comes along.

mullein moth caterpillars on the mullein

Ignore the lupins and grass.! Dye plants are Weld ( Reseda Luteola) Dyers Chamomile ( Anthenis tinctoria) about to come into flower. Elderflower (Sambucus nigra) and to the right and back Mullein (Vebascum thapsus). This is a native plant but although we have been growing it in the garden now for three years I was very surprised (and pleased) to find it in the hedgerow where I walk my dog not 1/4 mile form the house. Could it have spread from me I wonder.? Mullein is also home to the mullein moth and the other day we found ours crawling with the stripy caterpillars. The following day there was nothing, absolute nothing! Had they all been eaten by hungry birds we wondered.
I have dyed with mullein leaves and copper and got a very nice green which after a year in the solar pot and a month exposed to light has not faded.

hallelujah! Success with the Fructose Indigo vat

2011-05-31T22:36:00.004+01:00

You can see that one half of this little vat is thick yellowy solid deposit. The liquid half is a deep orange almost red. I took 100ml out of this yesterday which is why there appears to be a cloudy blue bit in fact is empty with a bit of a deposit on the glass. .

Today thanks to help from Debbie and Jane and Leena I managed the fructose indigo vat.

I heated 3 litres of water to 80 degrees C, tipped the contents of the little 400ml vat in and stirred. Within 30 seconds flakes of blue appeared on the yellowy looking surface then a thick blue indigo flower. After ten minutes the colour of the water under the filmy surface was a lime green then a orangey yellow. ( the colours of this type of vat seem different to that of the chemical reduction vat using thiourea dioxide.

The vat was at pH 10 and dye dyed well the temperature dropped to 45 degrees,d dying cotton velvet then a length of merino tops a pale blue. . I dipped the cotton velvet into the vat 3 times and got a slightly deeper blue but I don't seem to have photographed it. You don't seem to need to dip the fibres for very long. Quite literally in and out. The colour change is either very slow or the stuff comes out blue and I need to go back to this vat and see if I can work out why this is. Is the stuff coming out blue in the vat longer? And as you can see there is a yellowy scum on the surface which washed off which I assume is the deposit form the bottom of the vat. I wonder if these fibres will crock.
Nb It would seem that you can make a stock solution just as we do with the thiourea vat which could I think be very useful

Fructose Vat -almost there.

2011-05-30T22:42:00.001+01:00

I made up a 1:2::3 vat
15g indigo, 30g calcium hydroxide and 45g fructose
I made it up as as a small vat only 400ml and put it in a hot water bath to keep warm

It started off a pale blue colour with the indigo mixing with the calcium hydroxide and gradually reduced as you can see over about 15 minutes. It dyed a piece of linen a pale blue then some silk also a pale blue. I added 100ml of it to my vat of yesterday and got a very pale greyish blue but nothing else. Yesterday's vat was pH 9. The little vat was pH11+
Thanks to Leena and Debbie for suggestions.

calcium hydroxide , fructose and indigo

2011-05-28T21:06:00.003+01:00

This is really there for myself to clarify my thoughts but if you can make head or tail of it do make comments.

According to the information Michael Garcia gave us at ISEND this is a vat that should works so today I decided to have a go.
For some mad reason I mixed 25 g of natural indigo into a paste-I should have mixed up 10 g.
I started at 12 noon
I put about 6 litres into a small stainless steel pot at 50 degrees and 1 tablespoon of calcium hydroxide . This gave a pH of 10-11. I know Michael started off with a high pH
I also heated the vat as I think he started off with a hot vat and cooled it .
I added 2 tablespoons of fructose
1pm.
After an hour the vat showed signs of slight reduction but dyed some cotton a very peculiar green .
The temperature rose to 65 degrees but the smell of a vat coming into order went and it had an odd smell. The vat looked milky with grains of undissolved indigo on the surface.
by 3pm
I tried removing some of the vat and adding thiourea dioxide which reduced the vat very quickly and dyed a sample a nice blue so I knew the vat was okay I just need to make the fructose work,.
Indigo grains had disappeared there was film on the surface but the ph dropped to 8-9.
a piece of cotton dyed a very pale blue. Hooray I thought I am cracking it!
I left it for a bit and went back but the pH had dropped further to pH7
At 5.30 I added 1 tablespoon of calcium hydroxide. I added 75g of fructose , there was a film on the surface the vat looked a slightly murky yellow and gas was coming off the surface. I dyed some cotton a very pale blue and some linen a patchy green with some very pale patches.
However then the vat seemed to go off.
I finally upended the remainder of the fructose into the vat so I had altogether added 250g (meaning all this was very expensive vat) and left some linen in. This dyed a dark green oxidizing in the air but not to a full blue.
hmm!
I am puzzled.

Weld or is it a triffid?

2011-05-19T21:52:00.001+01:00

!

Its been growing in the greenhouse till Enys's long suffering DH turfed it out to make way for the peppers. It has started to seed so should be bung full of dye. I am going to have one very big dye bath!

Michael Garcia Organic Indigo Vat Thoughts on Lime

2011-05-09T16:35:00.002+01:00

I am getting more and more puzzled about this vat.
Michael Garcia apparently used oyster shell to make his vat alkaline. Oyster shell s are 95% calcium Carbonate . When I asked him about this he said it was a joke! He said he wanted to use mineral lime but was told nobody would think it was an organic vat. so he used crushed oyster shell, but he told us to use lime. Gardeners lime rather like Oyster shell is mostly calcium carbonate and will only make the vat mildly alkaline. I have just made up a vat suing it and the vat is pH 7-8. Builders lime on the other hand is what is known as slaked lime or calcium hydroxide and what is used in a zinc lime vat,. Michael Garcai said to use lime as it was very active ( and technical formula h wrote down was calcium hydroxide) and the whole time at the back of my mind was the thought but how can oyster shells do this but the thought stayed at the back and never came to the front of my mind! It is a long time since I did Chemistry!
Lime (apart form being a fruit) can mean:
Calcium Oxide- unslaked lime
Calcium hydroxide -slaked lime.
Fine but where do the oyster shells come in?

Isend 2011 Colour Past Present and Future A very Personal View

2011-05-05T13:31:00.003+01:00

Auditorium Isend 2011.
Large Comfortable and well lit.and the hangings were naturally dyed

Harbour La Rochelle

On arrival we were given screen printed bags in natural dyes mine in Genista Tinctoria and alderbuckthorn which for me set the tone for the conference which had a principal focus of commercial production of naturally dyed products and of commercial production of natural dyes.

The first two days seemed a little too full of scientists describing how they found out what dyes were used in ancient textiles whether these were ancient Andean textiles or old European ones, interesting but a bit dry although leavened a bit by people like India Flint. The Round table on Indigo day was principally the two commercial woad producers Woad inc and Blue de Lectoure and others and there was controlled and a very limited discussion about moving natural dyeing into industry which I found frustrating and annoying. In particular I would have liked the problem of indigo dyeing being consistently misrepresented as resulting in crocking and fading to be addressed. Someone else asked for a discussion on vats and given that Michael Garcia was mobbed about his organic indigo vat in the demonstrations it was shame that that was not there nor the description of the indigo dyeing by the Naga tribes which surprisingly came later and which was quite stunning with a description of the extraction of indigo from strobilanthes flaccidfolius from which they achieved a wonderful midnight blue. One group of tribes steamed their indigo after extraction and the shade went from mid blues to dark blues.

Finally the last two days were for me the most interesting ones with A talk on sustainable dyeing processes with dyestuffs based on renewable resources , slow dying, colour therapy for learning disabled artists-a very moving and appealing account from Karen Urbanek-. We heard about the revival of cochineal dyeing in Lanzarote as I had some of this cochineal to test and which was excellent I enjoyed this . I warmed too to the speaker who described using discarded flowers from Culcutta market to dye with.

There were a lot of speakers and they all had only ten minutes to speak. The time keeping was rigidly controlled so that the conference ran like clockwork-it was very organised but oh! how we some time longed to see more. There was small wails of despair as Ms Angelina from Pisa University on being told she only had a few minutes shot through a series of fascinating research projects in Italy

MIchael Garcia with blue from his organic vat using crushed oyster shells and fructose.

Below Block printing

Purple from the root of lithospermum erythrorhizon

The demonstrations, labelled workshops, were a bit chaotic as by the time you got out from the afternoon talks and had a loo break the demo's were thronged and the popular ones were impossible to see. A booking system or a staggered timing would have helped here. Michel Garcia's organic vat was the one that I most wanted to see but it was sadly all in French and he was thronged with eager dyers although was kind enough to give us an English talk later on. His vat -organic because it came from organic natural ingredients and not artificial ones was fascinating. Michael Garcia used lime from crushed oyster shells and fructose or hennas to reduce the vat . Fantastic! And as soon as I have the ingredients I will start experimenting with it.

Another lovely vat was that of Mr Gasali Ademayo a Nigerian living in Mexico demonstrating Adire using indigo from balls of the native indigo plant of Nigeria. His balls looked like just woad balls but contained wood ash as well. Ian Howard of Woad Inc explained to me that there was view that adding wood ash to fermented balls increased the production of indigotin from the plant material.

A variety of outing were offered on Wednesday with a picnic and I went to a madder farm where we had a fascinating visit to the only commercial madder grower in France but even he only had a small percentage of his farm down to dye plants, -madder, & coreopsis .The farmer explained that madder was difficult to germinate that he was experimenting with regenerating a harvested field as madder even when harvested as he does with a converted potato digger comes back. The newly seed area had huge gaps between the plant. These are problems anyone growing madder knows and I felt sad that he seemed to have to reinvent the wheel.

Newly madder field, not only was germination difficult but the young seedling were attacked by worms/

The trade stalls came form all over with the UK represented by amongst others The Mulberry Dyer ( officially France but I reckon we can claim her)! And who probably has the busiest stall on the market and Judy Hardman with beautiful hand knitted fair isle sweaters and her books too. There were a lot of stalls selling made times and a variety of scarves and stoles abounded. My DH treated me to wonderful patterned and stitched scarf form the Weavers Studio from India quite yummy but predictably I bought dyes including some fabulous indigo from Bangladesh , hopefully some from El Salvador and some Cochineal from Lanzarote.

Judy Hardmans stall + her DH

The Weavers Studio . The scarf on the left was the type like my 60th birthday present form DH ONLY MINE IS NICER! Centre piece is sampler of shibori used.

I loved it -had a fabulous time and met lots of lovely people and really enjoyed the really outstanding leisurely lunches although if they had catered for my food allergy diet there was no sign of it, . I adopted the policy of sitting wherever there was a seat at lunch and met some fascinating people who I really enjoyed chatting too and it was meeting the other artisan dyers from all over the worls and renewing friendships that was one of the most important parts of the conference.

ISEND 2011

2011-05-01T10:37:00.001+01:00

I know is long time since I posted I have been incredibly busy , partly making three jackets to wear at ISEND 2011 the International Symposium Exhibition Natural Dye Conference in La Rochelle In France
I will be writing more but here is a photo of the Indigo Ladies . We all met up while visiting a madder France and I am the second to last on the right wearing an indigo dyed felt jacket . Gill Burbridge made the jacket and I dyed it.

Madder

2011-02-12T12:40:00.003Z

Have a look at these wonderful pictures of madder dyeing

A small Success with the Mohair Art Yarn

2011-01-20T17:27:00.002Z

I rang up my friend Anne who has been mentioned on this blog more than once. and had a bit of a whinge. "I can't seem to get on top of these new yarns I want to spin" I said full of misery and moans -talk about the January blues. "I think" said Anne, expert spinner and generally a wonderful crafts woman "that you need to concentrate on one and practice till you get it right" So I went round to visit and practised and came home and did a bit more and here is a lovely white mohair yarn on a fabulous mohair and silk core yarn. yum It reminds me of snow and ice
Now the challenge is how to describe it to Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers for whom I running a workshop in the rear future

And
snowdrops
are just starting to appear

and now I am feeling a bit better

A very little blog about Yarn maker

2011-01-15T23:39:00.001Z

Yarn maker arrived about a week ago, but it was a few days before I sat down with it, with a cup of fabulous fragrant fresh fair trade coffee - anything better than a cup of good coffee on a grey January day is hard to find and with the wood burner burning, near perfect -and read it cover to cover. Articles that I particularly enjoyed were Leslie Prior on Cashmere, Leslie has the only breeding flock in the UK and is very knowledgeable not only about the fibre but also about world trading conditions. Amanda Hannaford explains how to blend cashmere with lots of other fibres and spin it. There was a most fascinating article about the White Faced Woodland, which despite being a hill sheep has a fine fleece. It is a new one to me so ........ memo to self get a fleece. This is the third edition of this new publication printed on recycled paper and celebrating the spinner's craft but I think the best yet. What else can I say? Get yourself a copy.
To subscribe:
Contact Dorothy Lumb
Dorothy Lumb Publishing
Roundhill
Start Lane
Whaley Bridge
High Peak
Derbyshire
SK23 7BP
01663 719497
editor@yarnmaker.co.uk

Spun Mohair

2011-01-09T15:34:00.001Z

This is the first spinning of the carded mohair I dyed in my previous post. I carded it with a little-just a little glitter, used a glitter thread as a core thread and then plied it with yet more of the sequined yarn.
mmm!
Am I happy?
It is okay but not quite the cloudsof mohair I wanted.
I shall have to try again

To Scour or not Scour that is the question.Or is it?

2011-01-07T18:06:00.003Z

.Maiwa's blog describes how you need to scour -ensure that fabric is free of all natural oils and grease before dyeing-the conventional view. Cotton needs a prolonged boil with washing up liquid and washing soda, silk just a gentle wash in washing up liquid to remove dressing and wool a scour with washing up liquid either cold or hot depending on your preference. .India Flint on her blog as she often does takes an original and thought provoking point on the issue of scouring
India points out that Japanese mordant methods which features many dips with drying in between before starching and says ...".and if it's so strongly attached to the cloth that you have to boil it off with dangerously strong chemical assistants then you might as well leave it there......"
hmm
but then it is not starch added after mordanting being removed by boiling cotton in washing soda and washing up liquid it is the natural oils in the cotton being removed so you can mordant.
Do we need to remove the oils from cotton? The sericin from silk and the lanolin form wool?
.Anything which has been washed a lot is going to be okay for dyeing and DOH! stupid of me - the point that India has made that washing powder often contains sodium carbonate which will act as a mordant had not occurred to me. So well washed cottons linens and silks may not need scouring or indeed mordanting. You can check for the first with cotton by dropping a drop of water onto a dry cotton. If the water beads the cotton contains natural oils and so the water does not penetrate. If it goes flat and soaks in the cotton contains no oils.
My thoughts are like this:
If water cannot penetrate new cotton then nor will the mordants or dyes .
Many years ago when I first I tried dyeing cotton with natural dyes I was very disappointed at the pale patchy colour. Then I discovered JN Liles The Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing. It was a light bulb moment for me and an "aha! That's what I am doing wrong" . He emphasised the importance of preparation and tells you how to prepare all natural fibres. by scouring.
When I read the two blogs more carefully I realise what I had thought was a debate about scouring was two people talking (mostly) about two different things. Maiwa about ridding new fibres and fabrics of oils etc and India Flint mostly talking about using recycled fabrics and washing silk (which had previously been dry cleaned) However her point that her steaming of bundled fabrics really pushes the dye into the fibre is something really worth worth thinking about and trying. All the fabric bundling I do is is setting the dye over a long period with solar heat.

As I said
Interesting
Provided you are natural dyer :)
Incidentally I go into scouring in all my dye books Currently on offer with 20% off on my website (Till the end of January) but both blogs are worth reading for more on the subject. And India Flint's Eco Colour is one of the great classics of the natural dyeing world.

Muslin and silks on the line.

The sentence of death for weld

2011-01-05T22:59:00.009Z

These fabulous-well to a natural dyer they are fabulous- lovely weld plants are under sentence of death- the reason? They are growing in Enys's green house. She tells me she tried to germinate some weld seed a couple of years ago, they failed, she cast them on the greenhouse floor and her DH dug the ground for his tomatoes and .....Weld! Enys says she will try and transplant them but they have very very very long roots.

For some time now she has been nurturing madder in pots. Amazing to think these rather uninspiring looking plants can produce of the greatest of dyes. These plants are two years old and so only really need another year or possibly two. before they can be used . Enys is going to give them a haircut this is, she tells me, to encourage growth.
The other plant is Coreopsis sp one of my favourites as it makes a lovely vibrant orange with ammonia.
If you have clicked on the links to see the colour you can get get from these you can see why I am really keen on them all. I hope the weld plants survive being transplanted I had very little weld last year and I really missed it.

Oh! and Happy New year to all my readers followers and friends .

May you be fulfilled

and happy

Creating colour to combat the Christmas blues and two reviews of books.

2010-12-29T13:02:00.004Z

At last time to write a blog. Well that is not strictly true what I really mean time to do something and write a blog about it. Somehow Christmas and a frozen world had blocked all my creativity

This is what the dye garden looked like after heavy snow and -10degees C . Most of the UK and now half of he US look like this not to mention many European countries but I like to have a memory of what is a very unusual event for us.

I waved off the family yesterday and immediately fell down into the dumps, the post Christmas blues hit me right between the eyes. This required emergency action so after a token stripping the beds and dumping sheets into washing machine I began to think. Although we have had a thaw here my studio still has all the water turned off as I have one burst pipe and all the dye pots and also my mordant pots are all frozen up. However I did manage to pull out some mordanted carded mohair. Aha! This has a history, Years and years ago our local bargain store that sold bin ends had some of this . As spinners we were very snooty about it as it spun nothing like spinning mohair from fabulous high quality mohair fleece. . However it is just the thing for Pluckyfluffs clouds of mohair yarn. page 139 of Intertwined by Lexi Boeger aka Pluckyfluff ISBN 13-978-1-159253-374-9 Here carding fabulous mohair results in too heavy a result so rather than light clouds I had lumps. Now I didn't have this mohair but a friend of a friend had bought masses and being a hoarder there it was in a huge sack in her loft which she now wanted to clear out so this is what I dyed in preparation for a lovely exciting spinning session. January is such an ideal month for sitting warm and cosy and spinning.

So quietly while DH was out with the dog and no one could see I crept into the kitchen and dyed carefully on the kitchen table. ( I feel guilty only because I have a studio, an office and mostly a summer house for my own use not to mention two spinning wheels, a drum carder and related baskets in the sitting too) but actually DH only laughed at my sneaked in little dyeing corner)
I mixed up lac, cochineal, logwood, logwood and fustic and Jazz (an Earthues dye that gives a reddy purple) If you are going to do this don't forget to wear a mask and gloves and never use for dyeing something you might later want for cooking

I put some cling film onto an old baking tray more to contain the dye than for any other reason

I poured some of the dye in and then covered it with cling film and pressed the dyes into the rest of the mohair.

Then I added a silk cap to mop up the excess dye. Although my mordanted pot was full of them I could only free two and even these had to be defrosted in my studio microwave

Then I microwaved the lot for 5 minutes ( in my studio microwave )

You know it is ready when the cling film is crinkled and sucked in slightly. Ideally leave the dyes overnight to set at this point -which is what I always tell my students but what the hell! Laws are made to be broken and I wanted a result. So I rinsed and spun in the washing machine and put the stuff to dry by the wood burner. By this time even outside the camera flashed when photographing it so the colour are not quite as dark as they in real life but although the cochineal gave me a little too much pink I was pleased with the resulting colour.
Tonight I hope to sit and spin . In Pluckyfluffs instructions she says to card mohair interspersing it with some sparkly stuff and colour and then to ply with sparkly yarn. Hmm! I am not to keen on sparkle bur a yarn I had plied with some sparkly stuff went in a flash at Trefriw Christmas market so maybe I need to be a bit more relaxed about it. Besides I have some bought at a stall when I did Lexi's workshop on Bristol in March

I am still reading Respect the Spindle. This not a new book but one I came across recently so new to me. I found this a most inspiring book and it really got be going on spindle spinning again so much so I sat on the sofa for two nights spinning watching television and spinning by rolling down my thigh. This meant I was sitting slightly twisted and the following morning I could hardly move and then I developed sciatica . Two months on it is still giving me a bit of a problem . This is hardly an advert for the book but in fact it is the best spindle book I have ever read and I loved it . Especially the story of how Abby learnt spinning a child in the Andes and of leaning over the Inca ruins to spindle and see who amongst her friends who could spin the longest yarn without breaking. It was usually her she says who had to hurtle down the mountains side to get her spindle. The book is full of photos of spindles with beautifully spun cops of wool and she tells you how to do all sort so different spindling as well as having projects in the back. Now I have a thorough dislike (normally ) of books which are full of projects but these are in fact quite gorgeous and I have started to spin (cautiously) for the neck warmer .

The second book I have had on my shelves for a while and used the freedom of having time for a concentrated read to get into it although I found it hard going.

The Root of Wild Madder by Brian Murphy ISBN-13 978-0-9432-6421-1
This is a book about Brian Murphy's love affair with Persian carpets
I nearly threw it in the bin following a snooty comment about western natural dyers being hobbyists on the level of someone milk churning at a country fair and I struggled too as he writes rather too much about politics and history of Iran and Afghanistan . Slowly however I began to see how he was trying to set Persian carpets into context but he also went off on a mild spiritual journey inspired by a mediaeval poet and Sufism so he could find a carpet that had meaning for him. He describes the best carpets as a form of poetry. However and infuriatingly he had very few photos of the carpets he talked about even the ones he bought. Verdict on the book? Interesting yes, would I recommend it to a friend -hmm- not really it seemed to fall between a lot of stools for me. It told me nothing new about natural dyes, not enough about carpets and too much about politics and history.

The last Dyes of the season

2010-11-09T09:15:00.000Z

I have just been harvesting the last of the dye plants from the garden.
Persicaria Tinctoria which had been slightly hit by the recent frost had a lot of dark blue leaves . I harvested these and put them into a kilner jar and into a hot bath where it was heated for about 24 hours . The water in the jar is a deep sherry colour and I will hopefully dye with the result today.

Dyers chamomile and Coreopis tinctoria gave double handfuls which went into little pots ready for a spot of rust dyeing on silk. Frost had killed the marigolds. Much to my surprise my Genisita tinctoria was in flower so I cut those and put them into a convenient tub that had been collecting rainwater for me. Enys ( pictured above) dug up the vipers bugloss -Echium vulgare. Reports form the Natural Dye Online said that you could get blue from the roots- so at last I get to try it. I normally extract the blue from alkenet Alkanna tinctoria roots with acetone so I may have to wait a few days to get some.

Duchy Square Textile Fairs and Moors

2010-11-02T19:19:00.000Z

DH and I stuffed the DOG in Kennels and zoomed off down to Dartmoor in Devon to the newly built Duchy Square for Creativity in Princetown ( where the prison is ) in the centre of the moors. I have moors near me and I am fascinated by both the similarities and the differences. Denbigh Moors and Dartmoor North Wales and Devon respectively feature the same upland bleak look of hills with heather grass and rocks( and sheep) but Dartmoor has piles of stones called Tors and trees growing on top of stone walls. and the light is different. Did I have my camera? Did I heck- I left it on my stall . Now I want to go back because I have gone all painterly and artistic and want to paint it and then do a felt picture.( If you want to see pics of Dartmoor look at Dyeverse)
The reason was a Textile Fair organised by the Duchy Square but very much the idea and inspiration of Jane Deane spinner dyer weaver and Reviewer of My Books (and now also a friend) who has a studio there. It has a gallery and shop and lots of large light studio's with huge sinks in them and has got lots of artists and crafts people working there. So DH and I think "good" we can visit Son no 1 in Bristol and son No 2 In Exeter. which are en route. However a variation of Sods law ( if anything can go wrong it will) applied and both sons were off on courses.
People arrived from 10am on the first day which is always a good sign and I met lots of lovely people many of whom came and said nice things like " You are such a source of inspiration to me " and other equally nice things which made me feel very happy and warm inside. Gill Burbridge came to see me wearing the most fabulous nuno felt jacket and I am now planning to go down to do a two day workshop with her ( staying hopefully with son no 2 although he does not know it yet) as I tried her's on and it it was fabulous, comfortable, warm, well felted and light and I want to make me one. Gill makes then from one piece without cutting and stitching something that really appeals to me. The second day was quieter than the first and people were not such enthusiastic shoppers but Jane had done a good PR job on my inks and I sold quite a few as well as fibres and kits but not any of my lovely stoles.or picture.

I bounced around the centre taking photos but few are very exciting so I have only posted a few, my lovely next door neighbour who lent me a mirror and then gave it to me as gift and Handweavers stylish studio on the other side and my stall with a happy looking DH who enjoyed the whole stay.
We zoomed back picked up sad DOG who hurtled out of dog prison with every sign of falling hysterically on our necks sobbing "I thought you would never return "so we have decided not to put her into Kennels again.
Now we are having a rest and break while North Wales Suffers a sever weather warning and as I write rain and wind are pounding down.

Rust Dyeing

2010-10-26T23:02:00.000+01:00

I have been having fun with rust dyeing. So simple-just rusty nails , silk and dye.

Half the fun is opening the packages.

You never know quite what will come out

and despite the expression on my face I am really pleased with this one.

I love them and they are quite my newest passion !

.

And they are lovely to felt with.
The one on the left in the picture is felted with some of my fabulous 15 micron merino.

.I am taking these to the Textile Fair at Duchy Square Centre for Creativity this weekend 29th and 30th October . Ok an unashamed plug but it looks to be a fantastic event with some very interesting stalls so get there if you can.
See you there I hope.

Life and Jenny Dean's book Wild Colour

2010-10-01T22:37:00.000+01:00

I am madly busy. I keep trying to write a blog and not getting it finished.
Here is some of my busy stuff.
Open art Studio (known here as Helfa Gelf art Trail)- the first bit being Welsh for Art treasure hunt

Very successful please note my new till ( top right hand corner and now I can also take credit cards wow! That really made a difference to my sales) . The pictures were in the summer house as was my shop except for the stoles hanging up on the left. ( I sold two) The dog is my dog's doggy friend Rosie saying "what are doing and why are you not throwing balls for ME"
And here is the fun I have had with patterning silk with rusty nails or tieing flower heads in.

I meant to write a review of Jenny Deans Wild Colour. But what can I say . It is a dyeing classic,it is superb, get it and just make sure before you read the recipes you understand the symbols and you will have a reference book for life It is the best dye book available for anyone wanting to dye their own fibres and fabrics safely and get fabulous colours. She has a really good mixture of the major world dyes such as logwood and madder and garden plant dyes such as coreopsis and dyers chamomile which she also tells you how to grow.

A lovely day in the Dye Garden Frogs and Solar pots

2010-09-01T16:27:00.000+01:00

On Monday, bank holiday Monday here in the UK and the last bank holiday before Christmas , the skies cleared and the garden was full of dappled autumnal sunshine.
We got up late. So we had Breakfast in the Dye Garden
Lythrum salicaria - purple loostrife behind

Lunch in the Dye Garden.

Lythrum salicaria the other way outside my studio -the original lot. The stuff by the pond planted itself there but I love it and so do the bees.

The Solar pots got to about 35 degrees C
and we heard a little splash and saw the Frog in our dear little pond.
He/she eyed us up without concern and went slowly under an overhanging ledge form where we heard a soft croak .

Many of the solar pots have ceased to develop colour much so soon I shall have an Opening and see what is there.
And finally my little fermentation vat is going at full steam ahead! Here is some teeswater I dyed in in it I stir it daily and add a teaspoon of washing soda if needed and it is fine.

fermented indigo vat

2010-08-27T09:44:00.000+01:00

Madder/Bran Fermentation vat ]
I started this on Tuesday night. as I want it for my Dyeing the Blues Workshop on Saturday.
Recipe
The recipe calls for 9 litres of water but I filled up a small stainless steel pot- I think it might be 6litres
60g madder
30g bran
500ml of wood ash lye at pH 14. ( This is the last of my oak ash lye). I put this as even though in proportion it might be too much but somehow I thought it would be okay. and as it turned out the final pH of the solution was 9 verging on 10 which was fine and in fact the one important and critical measurement (along with the temperature)

25g of finely ground indigo.stirred with hot water to a paste. The recipe called for 22g but I had a packet of 25 g so what the hell! It all went in. Would 3g really make a difference?

I boiled the madder and bran , wood ash lye ,and water for twenty minutes, allowed it to cool to 40 degrees C before adding the indigo paste, covered and placed on the heating pad to keep warm. pH was 9. Incidentally a scientifically minded friend though the boiling was to get rid of the alizarin in madder. Certainly the froth goes a fabulous purple or dark red colour.(I have had both colours). On this occasion it was more a dark red.
Wednesday am. The vat was 38 degrees, a few bubbles on the surface. pH 9. Stirred . The vat is starting to smell that characteristic slightly sweet smell
Wednesday pm The vat was 42 degrees pH had dropped to 6. I added 2 tablespoons of sodium carbonate ( washing soda). The pH drops because of the lactic acid produced by fermentation and at this stage you need to check the vat twice a day as pH can drop rapidly as you can see. If the vat becomes acid the vat is described as going sour and the indigotin is lost.Vat smelling
Thursday am The vat was pH 7 I stirred added 2 tablespoons of washing soda, stirred and checked again. pH was now 9.
Thursday pm about 5. The vat had dropped to about pH8 and was nicely warm at 42 degrees C.
I checked it again at 7 ish and it had dropped to Ph 6-7 so I stirred , and added 2 tablespoons of washing soda. I used to make a solution and indeed used to use wood ash lye but this either means adding cold liquid which cooled the vat down or heating it up and now I find adding washing soda works fine. If in doubt as to howmuch to add add a little like a teaspoon , stir and check the pH.
Friday am
Ph7-8 37 degrees C!-it seems to have been really cold overnight as the studio felt really cold this morning to the extent tha\t I discussed with DH lighting the wood burner to take off the chill.
I stirred, added 1 tablespoon of washing soda to pH 9.
The vat had an indigo sheen this morning as well as a slight froth and the sweet fermented smell . I added some newly washed teeswater ( about 25g) down the side of the vat. At first I thought they went an olive green then perhaps a more yellowy colour. Anyway I have left them in till this evening or possibly till tomorrow when the workshop starts.
Friday pm
pH 7-8

Stirred added 1 tablespoon of washing soda. Forgot to takethe temperature.

I have changed the title of my blog- this morning it seemed funny tonight feeling down it seemed offensive. .
I have lost a follower I wonder why?

Madder bran vat day 3.5 sheen of indigo flower on surface

Rather surprisingly the fibres have quite a green cast. Was it the teeswater being a bit discoloured? I don't know.
very gradually the fibres turned a darker green but not really a blue.
Saturday
Vat was 35 degrees C PH was 8, so Iadded a tablspoonof washing soda to bring it up to 9 and the little vat dyed all the day coping with 6 students putting two lots of stuff in each. A lot of the fibres still had this strange green cast and my other thought was that there was some yellow dye in the pan left after dyeing otherwise I really cannot account for it. In the evening I just stirred it and left it.
A tidy studio ready for 6 students!

The Blue Table

The results on the airer. The students had 100 g of merino, half a silk cap, some silk chiffon, and could pick from teeswater, silk cocoons, carrier rods.and some yellow merino dyed with Gensita Tinctoria as as well as dyed teeswater. I think everyone had to work quite hard but they all dyed everything in their packs and some managed repeated dips for a darker blue

On the Dyeing the Blues Day. We dyed with fresh woad leaves, fresh Persicaria Tinctoria for blue and in acidulated water for turquoise-hanging at the further end of the airer. We made up a Chemical reduction vat and the students were able to use a fermented vat. The woad was better than I thought but the persicara-grown in Enys's greenhouse - was superb. We did not have time to use the persicaria vat made form my home grown leaves so I am going to use that this morning.
Sunday
Much to my surprise this morning the fermented vat had bubbles on the surface and the pH was 9 Temperature was 36 C.

Two New Pictures and Helfa Gelf Open Studio

2010-08-25T08:18:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I picked up my other two new pictures from the framers ready for Helfa Gelf Open Art studio event in September. . When I picked these two up I felt excited and I am so pleased with them both. The Slate Fence is probably my favourite but the Snowy Fields done one afternoon in the kitchen (because it was too cold to work in my studio) while looking at the snow covered hills is probably the nearest I get to painting at location. It is has a slightly different frame from the other dark brown and woody looking with a slight texture and is a very quiet picture. Chanel (one half of the picture framing team -the other is Tim) and I both feeling very tired fantasised about a little quiet minimalist room with a cup of coffee a book and my picture. Not got time to write more I have got 6 people coming for a Dyeing the Blues day on Saturday and my studio has to have a major tidy to fit them all in

Natural Dye GArden on TV

2010-08-16T15:20:00.000+01:00

My dye garden along with Enys and me is featured on a programme called " A little Piece of Paradise" about gardens open in Wales for the National Garden Open Scheme tonight 16th of August at 8pm ITV Wales. Here is an article about this programme and about my garden in the Daily Post.

You might like to know that I have raised about £230.00 pounds for charity showing about 80 people around my garden this summer .

I started this garden for my own interest and pleasure and I am still bemused that so many people find it intersting.but in fact we have had a huge positive response form many people form all sorts of interests-gardening , artists, embroidery, local WI and Chapel groups .

Stand for my naturally dyed merino

2010-08-12T10:01:00.000+01:00

Dyeing with plants from the garden and making a gorgeous range of colours is one thing packaging and displaying well to sell is another and one of the challenges about having a stand at a craft fair is making good use of the vertical space. If you hang things from the tops of the stand they don't sell but if they are on something that stands up they do. My merinos and hand spun yarn are particularly hard to display and although I have tried all sorts of ways I finally asked John Stoker the partner of the Mulberry Dyer to make me two stands one for my hand spun yarns (on the left) and then one large one for my merinos which at Woolfest and Wonderwool occupied one side of the stall. Then having got got used to hanging my merinos up I was frustrated as I could not take this large stand to many of the smaller events I do. For example next week I am off to teach at Malvern Hills Summer School where I will have twelve students in a small classroom (Incidentally there are a few places left I believe on the Felted Collars-where we will be using 15micron merino.) . After a table for samples this leaves me one table for the "shop". So. a few months ago .........from the back of my studio I stumbled on a rotating stand made many years ago and found it useful for hanging merino only a little small. I tried it out when I taught the North Wales Embroidery Guild and the Fiesty Felters in Shrewsbury and found I seemed to be selling more merino despite a price increase. So I decided to ask Michae l Williams who made the stand to make another one only a bit bigger. Efficiently he still had the design for the first one although it must have been a few years ago and made me a new one and here it is it arrived yesterday .

New PIctures

2010-08-06T22:52:00.000+01:00

Here are two of my new pictures -just back from the framers.
Night Sea and Rocky Stream.
Naturally dyed fibres and fabrics and machine stitch

Visits to the dye garden, the BBC and Hopi Red Dye Plant

2010-07-28T09:57:00.000+01:00

Last night DH said with a huge sigh of relief. " Good! We can have a lie in tomorrow" This is because over the last few days we have had a textile group from Iceland visiting the dye garden and having a two hour workshop in the summer house and then two days later the BBC came to film the dye garden and what the director insisted on calling the " Dye Lady" for a Children's science programme called Nina and the Neurones. Hence DH's sigh of relief as it is he who rushes around mowing the lawn and setting up tables as well as removing dog particularly from the filming day (Because of unwanted woofing) while I work hard but get all the glory. I was too busy to take many photos but I have put one up of the washing line. Everything on this line was dyed using either plants in the garden or if not quite that by plant material that I also grow. (Except I realised belatedly the red on the extreme left had some cochineal in). This was in response to the BBC wanting a rainbow of colours on the line and was filmed a lot so it was worth the work. The yellows are Rhubarb root,Rheum spp, Gensita tinctoria and Tansy Tanacetum vulgare . The greens are Genista tinctoria and woad Isatis tinctoria. The blues are either woad Isatis tinctoria or Persicaria tinctoria (which also dyed the blue silks) . The mucky greens are a patchy pale indigo overdyed in rhubarb root. The really dark almost black fibre is somewhat surprisingly alkanet which I left on too high a heat so it boiled.( This is following extraction of the dye in alkanet by acetone) . The fabrics are silks dyed as solar dyed bundles .

Well I am here typing, because while DH is snoozing peacefully down stairs with dog, I am upstairs in my office having -and this is sod's law- woken up early! So I thought I would share with you my experiments with hopi red dye plant. Amaranthus .whatsit I have been told by a friendly comment that this is A. cruentus x A. powellii,which is just as well as every time I ask Enys she looks vague!
Enys tried to grow this two years ago, The seeds did not germinate so she threw the compost onto the greenhouse floor in disgust. The following year she noticed she had lots of little red plants growing on the green house floor. So she planted loads in my garden and in her own and in the green house.
When it came to dye with them I could find out very little. None of my dye books -even the one Enys bought back from the USA on native North American Dye Plants contains any information beyond the fact that the Hopi Indians used it for dyeing corn in ceremonies. A quick search on Google was not much help either resulting only in that the Aztecs also used it in some ceremonies around blood.

So I picked a large handful of leaves and flowers chopped them up covered with water and added some pre-mordanted silk and teeswater fleece and heated in a slow cooker. The teeswater went orange and the silk pinks as you can see but the pink washed out. I added some more fibres to the dye bath and everything went a deep vivid pink. About an hour of heating it all went orange and then another hour ) the colour had almost gone and all I was left with was a beige.
Aha! I thought to my self, this plant is a candidate for long slow dyeing , along with red cabbage and others where the dye seems to be destroyed by heat. (the only information I could gather was that the dyes are anthocynanins).

I had a friend here for the afternoon who often gets pressed into helping me and she suggested that we split the plant. So we made up three solar pots one of leaves, of stalks and one of flowers.
These are now sitting in my sunny place waiting for some really hot sun to get going. All the pots have now dyed the fibres a deep pink.

Browns

2010-07-18T09:34:00.000+01:00

Not a colour I often get asked for but earlier on this week one of my regular customers emailed me to ask for 200g of brown . I had some rhubarb root with iron but not much else so enjoying the challenge I set to soaking and mordanting.
I decided to go for the boiled madder brown, cutch and logwood (chocolate brown) and because I had had a brown recently with eucalyptus leaves and iron (when I was trying to get black) I decided to try that. (Why did I not do just cutch?I haven't an idea just trying to be too clever by half I think plus the fact that cutch on wool is not a strong brown)
Natural dyes are perverse, maddening and never do what you want . The boiled madder refused to go brown -now how often have you seen in dye books "be careful not to raise the temperature of the bath too high as you will get a brown"! Over dyed orange madder in indigo normally gives a wonderful warm brown but this time gave me a fabulous purple. If I had been trying for purple I would have got brown. The eucalyptus which gave a wonderful warm brown with iron is giving a soft greens browns and almost creams ,but here the difference must have been in the soaking time as previously it was soaked for at least a week after boiling. The cutch and logwood came out a wonderful dark grey. I added some fustic extract why I don't know I think that morning my brain was a bit addled and I suppose because until I rinsed it I thought it was purple) and it went green so I added some madder extract and that is still in the pot waiting to be rinsed. All these" not browns but something else" is partly because I tend not to keep enough records-mea culpa- and also because I do just tend to dye rather than dyeing for particular colours but it would have been infuriating if I had not got such a fabulous grey and also the purple from madder and indigo which is lovely. I can use all the colours and sell them so it is not a problem really but dyeing for specific colour is not my forte.

Here are some of them hanging on the line.
Above a very exhausted madder giving beige, Cutch/logwood/fustic. Eucalpyptus and iron (also on right). Madder overdyed in indigo. Cutch/logwood first bath. Next to it just out the bath so very wet is madder and iron. A lovely dark red not really a brown. Hiding shyly under the dark indigo-incidentally at least 8 dips- is a brown.Orange madder overdyed in indigo second attempt.

In more detail.
The over dyeing in indigo is patchy because I was using quite a small vat. Now wouldn't you think I would know better!
Now I will go and rinse the remainder out. Also I shall be rinsing out to day some of the hand painted 15micron merino I dyed yesterday with extracts. They are looking fabulous. I am teaching the way to felt with this fabulous fibre at Malvern Hills Summer School in August in one day workshop.

Bits and Pieces from the Dye Garden

2010-07-11T09:01:00.000+01:00

Just to cheer the spirits- a view from our little pond across the grandly named patio or terrace -really a piece of uneven paving stones to the studio. Not many dye plants as such although the lilies are a pleasure however in the immediate foreground is Purple Loostrife Lythrum salicaria just coming into flower, on ne of the plants high in tannin. The pond is thronged at the moment with birds having sips of water and visiting dogs prefer the pond water to nice clean bowls of water any day.

I had been getting ready for a workshop with a lovely group of ladies known as the Fiesty Felters in Shrewsbury making and painting fine felt with extract dyes. Here on the line are samples of the ten dyes we used.
Logwood purple, Bodfari green, , Fustic, Annatto, Madder,Pomegrante Lac.Cutch waste,Cochineal and Logwood grey.

The Silk caps were painted with all ten dyes. I didn't have time to take photos of the workshop -but it seemed to go well. They were nice and very talented bunch who bought a lot! Particularly my inks . I sold all I took bar a few bottles and am now completely out of bronze and blue so will need to get going on those. Both are complicated and take time.

I said this was a post was a bits and pieces! Here are some of the flowers I have picked to dry.
Top:marigold ( tagetes spp), Coreopsis spp, Cosmos spp.
And finally a pot of yarrow. The fibres were a pale yellow. I added a bit of ammonia to brighten the yellow and left it overnight and now it has gone slightly green. I will rinse it out to day and see what the colour is then but it looks an intriguing greeny yellow.

Books Reviews and Money

2010-07-07T08:45:00.000+01:00

Every now and again I review books. Normally dyeing books , sometimes related one such as textile embroidery books. Yesterday for example I mentioned Jill Goodwin's A Dyer's Manual, my first dye book and still after 30 years a valuable source of information on colours to expect from a wide variety of British Plants. Somewhat dated I said on the level of mordants. Now if you buy this book I will earn a little money . I feel a little uneasy that I may have compromised my self on this but on the other hand I write honest reviews -and will go on writing them and I don t see why I should not earn a little from my expertise. I had been planning to write a list of dye books for example that I recommend. However I find that the link is to the American Amazon site not the British which may make a difference. Hmm!
A Dyer's Manual A Dyer's Manual, First Edition.

Recovering and new solar pot

2010-07-06T08:39:00.000+01:00

I have had a peaceful couple of days-pottering around and amongst other things making a new solar pot. To do this I had to empty one in use and I chose my birch leave pot which has been on the go since May 5th and does not appear to be changing. So I removed the fibres-some teeswater and some prefelt and washed them and hung them on the line.
One of my first dye books- I think I have mentioned before- is Jill Goodwins A Dyer's Manual published by Batsford 0-7207-1327-7 . Jill, still, her daughter tells me spinning and dyeing in her 90's , has a fantastic list at the back of her book of all the plants she used and the colours with various mordants. The book itself is a little out of date particularly on the level of mordants but I still use Jill's method of dyeing with woad and I think it is still worth getting if only for the list at the back .
Very slowly I get round to trying some of the plants on her list. It was here I found that could get green with Mullien Verbascum thapsus and copper and also with horsetail (Equisetum spp).
I now make a copper mordant by submerging copper piping in water containing vinegar and leaving till the water goes blue with the copper acetate-Ipresume that this is what it is. I add copper piping and some solution to the pot so it is a very hit and miss affair, quantity wise .I picked 200g of equisetum from the hedgerow as I walked the dog, chopped it up , added some alum mordanted prefelt,and some unmordanted fleece, hot water , copper solution and my pot was done.
Left to right they are
Madder, Eucalyptus with iron , Golden rod with iron, new pot.

Dye Garden in summer (and going down with crash!)

2010-07-03T08:17:00.000+01:00

The Dye garden has n ever looked so good and many of the dye plants are now in flower.

Saffloweer Carthamus tinctoria just opening leaning against Hopi Red dye Amaranthus whatsit-must ask Enys for the correct Latin name as it is in none of my dye books, ( she has the one on North American Dye plants) . Behind it is Cosmos and the green is Persicaria tinctoria
Vipers Bugloss -Echium vulgare. It is a huge attractor for bees and so I managed to get one with a bee on it . This is a member of the Boriganacae family many of which give purple or blues with the roots. Someone on Natural Dyes Online mentioned a couple of years ago that they had got blue from the root. This is why we grow it ostensibly but really because Enys adores it and because it attracts bees. ( And I love it too) I haven't tried it yet. Why? Because you have to dig it up and although I always tell visitors to the garden that Enys won't let me dig it up really I couldn't bear too either. It is such a fabulous blue too.
In front the Vipers bugloss, behind Genista tinctora just opening ,with common yarrow Achilleia millifolium in full flower. You can't really see it but the Staghorn Sumach Rhus typhina is in full flower. I have never seen so many on it before and I wonder whether the flowers give any colour. Has anyone tried them?

Behind the bears is dyers chamomile Anthemis tinctoria , which is what the children will use when the BBC come to film a children's science programme in a couple of weeks. It is called Nina and the Neurones.
And the crash
A Chest infection -out of the blue not preceded by anything but an itchy cough which I put down to hay fever . So now I am on massive doses of steroids to keep my lung function from dropping to hospital admission level and antibiotics. The trouble with the steroids is that make you disinclined to sleep and to want to eat and eat and eat because you never feel full. OH woe!
Still the dye garden is lovely and DH loves doing the routine jobs like weeding and watering. And my poor student who was coming on Monday has had to pull out because of an injury to her wrist so in some ways it is all panning out. We are hoping she can rebook when she starts to recover.
I am going to have to slow down! sigh.
I keep forgetting to welcome new followers. So welcome lovely to have you all. Please do drop by and leave a note. I love getting them.

Update

2010-07-01T08:21:00.000+01:00

I am coming to after a hectic time. First we had ITV Wales filming the garden as part of National Garden Open in Wales. For those of you not from the UK this is a uniquely British event where people open their gardens sometimes just for one day sometimes for groups visiting . All the gardens are listed in a famous yellow book. The visitors fee goes to Charity. Most of the gardens are absolutely stunning and often very grand stately homes but also little tiny cottage gardens too. My parents were very fond of visiting gardens and when my father moved up here he and I went round gardens together although mostly I think because my father was very partial to the home made cakes that so often feature! Quite where I found the courage to propose the dye garden to the organisers I don't know. I think it came from the day when we opened the garden last year as "Shopping for Colour" and it was so obviously enjoyed. Someone said to me you should open under the National Garden Open Scheme and here we are. We are open to groups visiting when Enys and I talk about the plants and I talk about dyeing and then conduct them around the garden. The solar pots have been a very good way to introduce people to the colour of the garden especially the madder , birch and golden rod pots.
So last week -was it really only last week?- ITV filmed. I forgot to ask Enys to take pictures of me demonstrating woad dyeing and I only took a few of her but it gives you the flavour of the day. We both enjoyed it it very much and it was a fascinating experience. I picked woad leaves six or seven times while they filmed it from different angles-amazing that the woad leaves held up. I kept finding another little plant hiding under something else as it has self seeded around the dye beds.
Two days after that we loaded the car, squeezing an unhappy dog into one tiny corner and set off for Woolfest. "Don't buy anything will you" said DH "there is no room even in the top box". Not buy anything! Go to the Woolfest and not buy anything. The poor man obviously had sun stroke. Fortunately a good friend with an empty car came to the rescue and took back my two fleeces and a swift and I sold some big bulky items such as all my new solar pot kits complete with 2 litre Kilner Jars which took up a lot of space. We could have sold these twice over they were all gone by 10.am of the second day. Another great success of the Woolfest was my inks of which I sold a lot. These inks designed by me for painting and writing turnout to be excellent fabric paints too. I painted some pre-mordanted silk with them steamed and rinsed. No colour came out at all

In between ITV filming and setting off for the Woolfest my new Aura wheel, the fantastic new spinning wheel from Majacraft, which had arrived but was sitting tantalisingly in it's box was set up. My original vision was that I would sit spinning some fantastic textured yarn at Woolfest to advertise both my fibres, my packs and my new Beyond the Twist Yarns. A good friend ( I am very lucky in my friends) recovering from a hip replacement carded me some batts to spin and some batts to sell. Did I get a chance to spin? Well I expect you are smiling as you read this . Of course not- except for a few minutes here and there. Plus the fact that people bought the batts which were meant me to spin so at the end I had no batts at all! The wheel attracted a a lot of interest. I directed them all to poor Martin of PM Woolcraft who imports them and from whom I bought mine. I say poor because none of his ordered wheels had arrived. I was very fortunate to have mine as it is at the moment one of only three in the UK. What is so good about it? Well it spins like a dream. The huge flyer and fantastic threading system (no hook pulling the yarn through a tiny orifice) means it will spin from laceweight to bulky yarn. A hugely versatile tensioning system with two different tensions means it is very flexible. In the picture you can see some fine yarns ( some of my cashmere and silk plied with a laceweight merino) and an over the top yarn with teeswater curls spun in whole.
What am I doing now?Getting ready for the student coming on Monday for two days. Which means tidying up my studio. Sigh! (And I still have not fully unpacked the car)

Getting ready for Woolfest & More! Fibres! Solar Pots !

2010-06-20T08:49:00.000+01:00

After two weeks of work experience Tara and I had amongst other things dyed 2 kilos of merino, handpainted 1 kilo and 20 silk caps.
New Solar pots are: Madder and Logwood, and Mullein with a copper mordant -made using copper piping and acetic acid. It is this which is dyeing the fibres turquoise at the moment!

Work experience and the Woolfest

2010-06-08T08:01:00.000+01:00

For the next two weeks I have Tara here for Work Experience. The idea is (I think) that Tara gets an introduction to working life as a school girl and I get the use of an extra pair of hands. Tara came to me because her mother (clever woman) brought two of my pictures and emailed asking if I might be interested in having Tara . I asked members of the Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers what they thought and they on on the whole thought it was a good idea provided I met Tara and liked her (which I did). Most butnot all of them had had a good experience of having someone for work experience.
So
Here is what we did.
I am getting ready for two days of workshop next weekend, the dye garden open to visits ( two next week) and in three weeks time I shall be having a stand at the Woolfest. There are three areas I really need to work on. Inks-I was getting down to just a few bottles. A good range of colours on the 23icron Merino. And my hand spun "Beyond the Twist Yarns". I had 24 different hanks at Wonderwool now I have ten which barely fill my yarn stand. All the knot yarns, , all the multicoloured single yarns, and all the very textured slub yarns have gone and all the Lesley Prior's Devon kid mohair and silk. This leaves me with some teeswater and silk and one of the welsh kid mohair . I am trying to spin for the Woolfest and none of the things I will get Tara to do is to drum card batts for me.
Yesterday Tara wound off 2kilos of Merino into 20hanks. and labelled them, and did the same for about a half a kilo of cashmere and silk and then we made up 5 different dye baths of complex dye mixtures to give red purples,blue purples, violet, terracotta, and reds. After lunch I started a stock check on my stock but did not get beyond the inks which were low. I sold quite a lot at the Natural Dye Day on Saturday and found I had only one green, and no purple . So I made inks and Tara stuck the labels on.
Today we will start to mordant and to get the dye baths ready. This will take up all my electric rings. In the afternoon Enys will be coming round and provided we can get into the garden we will be planting out the Japanese Indigo and the Chinese Woad But as I write this it is raining so I am hoping we will manage it.

More On Solar Dyeing

2010-06-03T08:24:00.000+01:00

From Left to Right the pots are birch leaves with added alum , rusty nails and copper piping

I have added more pots to my array. This is partly because my dye garden is open to visitors this month and it is something else for them to look at, partly because I am demonstrating and exhibiting at The Natural Dye at Trefriw Woollen Mill Conwy on Saturday June 5th. This is a day of dyeing with indigo and coreposis by me , demonstrating of spinning and felting, talks on dye plants , and solar dyeing demonstration. This leads me onto my pots. When my friend Anne was here (who is demonstrating the spinning) I told her about birch leaves and what a good dye it was. Off we went withthe dogs, and picked birch leaves. We half filled her 4 litre pot with birch leaves topped up with hot water, and then decided to try and add rusty nails as a mordant. DH joyfully pulled rusty nails out of planks from our newly demolished shed, we added them to the birch leaf pot and the water in the pot went black almost immediately, indicating that the leaves were high in tannin and the the iron had reacted with tannin to give grey to black. To the next pot we added a piece of copper piping and a tablespoon of the copper mordant I had made by putting copper piping into acidulated water (made by adding vinegar to water). This used up all the birch leaves we had collected but by this time we felt the pots would clearly illustrate colour modification by the different mordants so when DH next took the dogs off to the woods he picked some more and this time I added alum only to the pot. All of the solar pots had some unmordanted fine prefelt added which I had wetted out and some unmordanted mohair. As sod's law ( what ever can go wrong will go wrong) would have it we had no sun for a few days so yesterday was the first day the alum pot really got going and this morning is quite yellow.
This pot was started on May 5th. On the bottom layer is annatto seeds which I had soaked in vodka for 5 days to extract the dye. I added about 200ml or so of water and onto this I pushed down about a metre of pre-mordanted cotton muslin ( mordanted in 5% alum acetate) and added a tablespoon of a logwood dye bath as well as some logwood chips. This experiment was inspired by the new yahoo group I belong to, sustainabledyepractice, where we are investigating dyes month by month. The first one in May was Annatto and the second starting in June is Brazilwood. So yesterday I stuffed down some more premordanted muslin and added some brazilwood chips to the top and little water. It will be fun to see what has happened by the end of the summer!

A few people have asked me how to make solar pots. The most usual way I do it is to start with a glass jar, put in a generous handful of dye stuff if dried and about half the jar if fresh, add premordanted fibres, top up with warm water and leave in a sunny place. You can add unmordanted fibres and put in some mordant solution which is mostly what my friend Anne does. I leave my pots all summer befor emptying them out and seeing what has happened.

Solar Dyeing

2010-05-29T08:44:00.001+01:00

Chopped dried goldenrod from summer 2009
Eucalyptus leaves and madder with a view of annatto seeds on the right hand side.
My sunny place

Annatto seeds and logwood and cotton
An article on solar dyeing that I have written has just been published in the Weavers Spinners and Dyers Journal so this spurred me on to do some solar pots this year especially as we have been , until today , having quite a lot of hot sun.

Wonderwool 2010

2010-04-28T19:49:00.000+01:00

My stall: I am better pleased with this year than last but you still have to contend with the feeling you are setting up inside a shoebox. Sales were okay-just- but odd. Saturday was dreadful and I took most of my money on Sunday afternoon.

I am on the right and Carys is on the left. Carys is one of two who make the most fabulous unusual and interesting clothes from recycled garments , although they say they are upcycled. Below is me and Hayley the other one of the two girls -snapped by Enys when I wasn't looking.

You can find Cary's and Hayley's work here and here Every year Enys and I ransack their stall. Enys bought two summer dresses but I brought the cream top with a bustle to go with the dress I bought last year. It is great fun and of the things I most enjoy about Wonderwool
I am sure why this photo is at an angle. Enys this one is down to you! It shows off my bustle cardigan. I just love the quirkiness of these clothes:)
Here is Enys but wearing her gorgeous coat over her dress so you can't see it!

and my fibres.
What did I sell? Well bits of everything but what thrilled me to my heart is lots of my new Beyond the Twist yarns . One customer said there was nothing like them elsewhere in the 150 stalls.Very heart warming and my favourite customer moment. I sold lots of inks too which as they are are very much my babies I feel really thrilled about. However sales were overall poor. I was not alone with this . Will I go back next year? Not sure.

Cochineal from Lanzarote

2010-04-16T07:58:00.000+01:00

Earlier on this year Isabella Whitworth , sent me 100g of cochineal from Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, where efforts are being made by the Milana Association. to revive the cochineal industry which originally started in 1835. Lanzarote was one of the first places that successfully grew the cochineal bug outside South America. and certainly you see the cactus that is host for the bug everywhere in Lanzarote and I spent one very frustrating day about ten years ago trying to track down cochineal without success.

The producers want to know how good the cochineal is so I volunteered to try it out. Recently I have been experimenting with different ways to dye cochineal. I have tried extracting the colour from the whole bugs by boiling in distilled water but in the end I reverted back to the way I have been doing it for a while which I found originally in Trudy Von Stralen's book "Indigo Madder and Marigold". ( Still one of the best introductions to natural dyeing around I think) . For me with soft water this seems to give me the best colour, but if you have hard water you might want to use distilled to extract the dye as cochineal does not like hard water.
So I ground 50g of cochineal bugs in a coffee grinder kept for that purpose. Trudy Von Stralen says to grind it till it is like flour and I do grind it several times. The photo looks quite gritty and grainy but in fact the fine powder has clumped a bit.
I put the ground cochineal into soak with a teaspoon of cream of tartar and left it to soak for 24 hours. Then I heated it- I used an electric casserole on the low heat so it takes about four hours to come to the boil and then boiled for about an hour and left to cool overnight.
At the same time I soaked my fibres overnight before mordanting them in 12% alum and 5% cream of tartar. (For more information on mordanting look here.)
I added a 170g of 23 micron South African Merino tops , the fibre I use in my felting and for many of my workshops. This I heated on low till it simmered and let it simmer for about an hour. Both of the South American Dyes, cochineal and log wood, are the exception to my rule of low temperature dyeing as they fix better if simmered. The fibres were then cooled rinsed and dried. I used up the exhaust dyeing more merino, a 100g of tussah silk and teeswater. Altogether the 50g of cochineal dyed 970g of fibre paler and paler colours The first colour as you can see from the comparison photo was as good as my usual cochineal.It will be really good to have cochineal from a nearby and known source and with a lower carbon foot print too for us in Europe. I know that cochineal production gives an income to poor Peruvian farmers but I do like to know where my dyes come from and whether workers have been paid well for their labour too.

I still have 50 g left so now I plan to play around with the mordants such as iron and oxalic acid. Cochineal is polychromatic and responds to different mordants givng purples grey and pinks. The best book for this is Fred Gerber's self published classic booklet Cochineal. A mine of information but very hard to get hold of.

I have just been given this link to the Association Milana

Spring in the Dye Garden Frog spawn

2010-04-03T22:55:00.001+01:00

The frog spawn is developing fast. Now you can see heads and tails.
Enys and I pottered around the dye garden looking to see what is coming up, what needs to be done and what I want. Basically loads of blue, so woad (I.Tinctoria), chinese woad (I. I ndigotica) and Persicaria Tinctoria. Then I want lots of Dyers Chamomile ( Anthemis Tinctoria) and Coreopis Tinctoria as these go into my dye kits and the latter also makes my orange ink. Genista Tinctoria only seems to last two or three years, so this year we will have to plant some more. This year I only have one self seeded weld so I hope I find lots of wild weld! DG is going to dig over a weedy spot today so may I will sprinkle weld seeds there in the hope I will get plenty next year. I love cosmos too and holly hocks even though I rarely use then for dyeing-too pretty! This drives Enys mad as she would like to see me doing more experimental dyeing-so would I but production dyeing for the workshops and craft fairs (and for my pictures) has to come first. We will plant the black violas in the pots too so pretty even if the colour is fugitive. All the other plants seem to be doing quite well although with having had so cold winter and spring they are slow.No sign of golden rod yet, the iris pseudocorus is just beginning to sprout, buds are swelling on the rhus typhinus and a few madder spouts in one or two places. Lythrum salicaria looks totally dormant at the moment but indestructible yarrow is looking healthy. No sign of ladies bedstraw ( galium varum) however dyers chamomile and dyers coreopsis are both starting to sprout form the base. Goodee!

Review of a new Dye Book

2010-04-02T08:43:00.000+01:00

The Complete Guide to Natural Dyeing
Techniques and Recipes for dyeing fabrics,yarns and fibres at home
Eva Lambert and Tracy Kendal
Published by Search Press ISBN 1-84448-527-7

When Amazon first contacted me to tell me there was a new dye book about to be published my first reaction was “ Oh no not another one” as this will be the third in so many years. However not able to resist a dye book I have now added it to my growing collection. The first impact is colour-loads of glorious colour right from the word go -as the very first pages are pictures of samples of dyed fabrics with the page number of where to find how to dye that colour. In the first chapter there are photo's of quite outstanding fabrics by artists such as Isabella Whitworth whose fabulous scarves are shown and Kimberly Baxter Packwood's compost dyed fabrics. These would inspire anybody to want to try natural dyeing.

The book is very easy to use, clearly laid out and the instructions are good. I love the addition of colour theory, the emphasis on the importance of record keeping as well as the really excellent introduction to tie dying, batik and other resist techniques. The dye recipes are good too although I found myself wondering if you really could simmer water at 60 degrees C . Criticisms? Well there are more than a few- it seems odd to me that a book describing itself as the complete guide to natural dyeing should have nothing in it about the extracts of natural dyes. For example Eva Lambert describes at some length how to random dye yarn in different dye pots a laborious process of tying, un-tying dipping into different dye pots that led me more than ten years ago to greet the appearance of the extract dyes , which allow you to hand paint fibres, with enthusiasm. As I read through the book I also went backwards and forwards in puzzlement as nowhere could I find a difference in mordant recipes for protein and cellulose fibres whether as yarn or as cloth. This I don't understand as alum bonds to protein fibres in an acid environment, to cellulose in an alkaline. The chapters on indigo dyeing is comprehensive,and the picture of all the different fabrics and the different way they have take up indigo quite superb, but the chemistry of indigo dyeing is not fully understood. I am intrigued by the addition of salt to an indigo vat-something Sandberg also does- but I do not like the heavy use of caustic soda( sodium hydroxide) in the indigo vats throughout.

I found the lack of a bibliography more than a little surprising and while I really appreciated the down to earth unfussed approach I also found having the health and safety chapter at the end disconcerting. That said the vibrancy of the colours and the clarity of the instructions makes this book very definitely the best of the new books published in recent years and will start many an eager dyer off on a journey of discovery , inspire others to experiment and me … I am off to try putting salt in an indigo vat something I have never got round to trying.

(if you want to read another review of this book go here for Debbie Bamford's take on the book).

A Working Studio,Organised Chaos or What the BBC saw!

2010-03-25T08:21:00.000Z

Dot Lumb in her blog Fibre 2 Fabric mentioned the state of her studio saying that the place that had been immaculate two years ago was now almost too full to move in. It set me thinking about my studio. One fellow artist just says "Oh my God" whenever he sees it Early on in the week I taught 7 people Felt Beyond the Boundaries-incidentally one of favourite workshops- in a beautiful pottery studio ( Ceri Pottery) high in the hills near Newtown in Powys. Her large studio with two pottery wheels and lots of working space was immaculate and really put mine to shame. My worse enemy could not describe mine as immaculate and here it is in all its organised chaos glory with photos from the doors at either end. This is what the BBC saw when they came interested in running a children programme .
I thought it would be fascinating to have a show of working places. What does your studio look like?
Mine I realise is going to have a face lift before the Open Studio event later this year Helfa Gelf. sigh.When?I don't know and where will everything go while I wash down the walls and paint? I know it needs to be done and I will feel better for it but ..............................arrgh!

Spring has come to the Dye Garden

2010-03-20T08:22:00.000Z

Spring has Come!

As well as crocuses miniature daffs, catkins and the fabulous delicate dwarf irises spring means other things to the dyer! Yesterday for example I was able to work in the studio without having to light my wood burner, I could hang my fibres to dry on the line and finally something , which although it has nothing to do with dyeing , excited DH and I somewhat -we have frog/toad spawn (I not sure which) in our little pond. Last night we heard the gently croaking call of an amphibian-. The little pond had been around for four or five years and over the last two we have spotted an increasing number of frogs and toad although they are very shy. Last summer when we had been away for a week they had obviously colonised the pond and I saw a frog squatting on a lily pad but sadly the pond which is in our battered flagged patio (all the flags are uneven) is probably too near the house for them to lounge around at their ease. So we are delighted to see our spawn .
Other nice things happened. Last year my studio was open for an Open Art Studio event Helfa Gelf ( meaning Treasure Hunt) .The organisers ran a raffle, the winner having £500 to spend on art. The winner has chosen four artists who she wants to look at in more detail and she chose me as one. She came out yesterday and to have a look although she wanted either something like Tree against a Red Hill ( which you can see on my website) or a Waterfall both of which I have sold.

Then the BBC rang up to see if I was interested in a (very) cameo appearance dyeing with children on an children's programme.

On the dyeing front I am dyeing like a women possessed as I have so many workshops coming up for which I always provide all the materials in natural dyes. Increasingly in recent years I have been booked up by groups and this year I am really busy . On Monday for example I am teaching a small group of artists in mid Wales a workshop of mine called Felt beyond the Boundaries. A week today one I am running one called Felt Collars, here for the first time I will be teaching the students to felt a fine felt collar with lacey edges using the incredibly fine ultra fine 15 micron merino. Dyeing this without felting that been a challenge! Up and coming is another Felt beyond the Boundary for a group on the LLeyn Peninsular and Felt and Fabric Tote bags and Asymmetrical Bags in Gloucester both in May. In between is Wonderwool so the dye pots are constantly on the go and you can see why being able to hang stuff upon the line outside is such a relief.

The dark pink fibres on the line are cochineal extracted from the whole bugs similar to the recipe described by Leena on her fantastic blog on cochineal which you can find here. It saves the grinding but I am not sure that it gives such a bright pinky red colour as does grinding the cochineal bugs and soaking with cream of tartar. This is the method I have used in the past and comes from Trudy Von Stralen's book Indigo Madder and Marigold. I plan to grind some today but it will be Tuesday before I can dye with it

As revenge for me saying Spring has come the changeable British weather has now clamped down with a hill mist and heavy rain. Oh well at least the frogs and toads will be happy as the pond fills up.

Weld (Reseda Luteola) -yes actually some dyeing!

2010-03-03T20:59:00.001Z

I was checking back on some old posts and was amazed how much I wrote in 2007 and feel somewhat abashed at the contrast with now. I am dyeing most of the time and making inks ( which are selling very well) but don't think to blog about what has become routine(ish).
Kev, a fellow member of the members of the Online guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers, sent me some of his own weld extract which he had made himself, I am not sure when but probably about 18 months ago. Here is his website with the information on how to do it. A couple of weeks getting ready for a couple of big workshops I needed some greens in a bit of hurry and realised I had still got Kev's extract. You know what it is like when someone sends you something a bit special you put it on one side to use for something special. Then, months later, when you are tidying up you find it again. So this time I thought I will use it instead of waiting for this mythical special event!

He had sent me a small pot of the weld extract- but did I weigh it -did I heck :( . I tipped the small hard dull yellowy brown pieces ( probably about 20g or so) into a small jug and poured over hot water. If I had checked Kev's website I would have seen he said to dissolve it in ammonia but dissolving it in hot water worked well although it took half an hour or so. I poured the resulting liquid into a slow cooker, topped up with water and added 200g of merino tops mordanted in 8%alum 7%cream of tartar. See here for more about mordanting .
The fibres came out a bright yellow but I added a drop of ammonia-if I do not when the wool used in felting the fibres go a bright floresecent yellow with the pH of the soap.
rinsed the fibres, partially dried them and then immersed into an indigo vat . Look at the absolutely gorgeous green in the top right of the top photo.
Altogether the weld extract dyed 600g of merino tops in strong to pale yellow and overdyed with indigo I got some yummy greens .
Thank you Kev - this was infinitely better than attacking my pile of dried weld which needs to be chopped up outside as it make such a mess.

More on Art Work to Yarn

2010-02-02T08:36:00.000Z

I spent a weekend with my friend Anne. It was her birthday and she is possibly the only person I know who, on receiving three carded batts as a birthday present, utters a cry of delight. She spun them all that evening and we both felt so inspired that the following day we decided to card and spin some more.
For starters we choose as design source one of Anne's husband's pictures. I adore his work and DH and I have no less than 5 of his but this one is one they kept, and so we picked out as many colours as we could to match from Anne's fibre stash. We carded them on her carder which had fine teeth which was unlike my coarse tooth one on which o ne could add lots of texture so the rolags were different, fine and delicate as you can see. It took all morning to card four rolags-it is a time consuming process- and then we both spun them. I had my lendrum with the jumbo flyer and the band set on the biggest whorl, Anne wwas using her versatile Louet also on the biggest whorl. Possibly because the rolags were so fine much to my surprise I found myself spinning a relatively fine yarn while Anne spun a thicker one.
Here is mine after a dunk in hot soapy water . I love it. And I enjoyed every step of the way!
Welcome to new followers.

Art Work to Yarn

2010-01-24T17:45:00.000Z

I am only doing routine sort of dyeing at the moment , getting purples and greens for some up and coming workshops in February but nothing of note. However I suddenly yearned to create colour so while renewing bonds with a textile group Chameleons I indulged in translating a photo by Linda Jones- a member of the group- into a painting. Linda takes fabulous photos. A textile artist herself she has an eye for pictures that will translate into textiles. This one that I used is a photo of water moving into a mossy water weedy surface so is full of whites dark greens.turquoise wit the odd flash of pale terracotta. unfortunately my photo of her photo not very good nor for that matter of fact is that of my painting which is a shame as neither show clearly the colour or texture. I had fun painting with my natural dye inks and then putting pastel over the surface although I had no particular plan in mind which is the way I like to work however the following evening , on my own and deciding to watch a film I decided to card some fibres for spinning.. Three or four trips ( because I kept going back for more colour or more texture) to the studio resulted in dark green, blues, purple merino, white and dyed silks: laps, throwsters waste and textured wools. I used a wide coarse carder, and put the fibres though once and spent an happy evening making three large rolags. Each one represented an area of the picture.
The following day I started to spin a singles yarn on the top whorl of the jumbo flyer of my Lendrum pulling strips off the rolag and spinning from top to bottom of my picture.
I gave the hank a very hot soapy wash at the end and was pleased that there was little colour loss and gave the fibres a tug to straighten the fibres out.
I really enjoyed the whole process and I love my yarn.

Waterfall 3 framed

2010-01-16T12:17:00.000Z

I got the picture back from the framers done in double quick time-just 6 days. Tim and Chanel of of the Cathedral Framers St Asaph Denbighshire ( in case you want some work done-strongly recommended by me) normally like 3 weeks so I was really grateful. It is hard even to believe that we were in such desperate straits, snowbound and with freezing weather as now we have had a thaw and there is only a little snow on the hills and we are back to a green world again.
I am really really pleased with it.
Just to compare here is Waterfall 2 done in 2007, Waterfall 1 my first piece done in 1997 I have no good photos of unfortunately

Indigo:natural versus synthetic

2010-01-07T09:19:00.000Z

Leena has just pointed me to a site that aims to explain the difference between synthetic and natural indigotin( commonly called indigo). This is an translation of a Japanese paper and in summary say that while the synthetically derived Ai ( Japanese Indigo) is chemically the same as natural ai the bonds between the natural are shorter. Someone adding acomment says that the natural ai aggregates. This has an impact on the way it behaves while bonding to textiles and means that natural ai bonds better , is less likely to be washed off and less likely I think to crock. Interesting piece of research!

DYe Garden in snow and waterfall 3

2010-01-05T23:28:00.000Z

Heavy snow today, a most unusual event in this part of the world and my most recent picture Waterfall 3

Cold weather felted collars and starting to knit

2009-12-30T18:30:00.000Z

This time of the year my studio feels very cold when I first go in. Today I rushed in and lit my trusty wood burner, a stove pipe type one similar in design to second world war ones. It heats up very fast and after an hour the studio is warm enough to work in. However I have to dress up for it and here is me with about four layers on three pairs of socks ( the cement floor is cold) and my felt boots on a rare outing. They are so warm I don't usually wear them
I needed to make a felt collar for my January workshop having stupidly sold my other
one without a decent photo so I braced myself to get out into my frigid studiol However I thoroughly enjoyed making it and listening to an excllent play on the radio too, and when it is dry I post a picture up. In the meantime here is a picture of my knitted scarf for Isabella- we seemed to have started an informal learners group on the Online GuiId after Isabella confessed to making it her aim for 2010 to learn to knit. I can knit in the sense I can do garter stitch. When I tried before I tried to go too fast and got thoroughly exasperated at my failure to be able to follow simple patterns and gave up in despair but I really do want to learn to knit and now I am taking it slowly and steadily. So I started this scarf for DH but after advice from a member of the online guild I am going to unravel it and knit it longways.

Some dyeing after all

2009-12-22T13:22:00.000Z

Just to show that I am dyeing here is some of my latest stuff.
At the moment I am playing around with dyeing merino pre flets-a lovely soft flexible needle felt that has all sorts of possibilities. It takes the dye beautifully. I have tried it with extract dyes and also a logwood bath which is really violet although it looks blue in the picture.
Underneath that is a Christmas present, 16 micron merino, some tussah silk and silk caps also dyed with extract dyes, logwood, cutch waste and chaste tree, while finally on the bobbin is some of Lesley Prior's kid mohair from her Devon farm being spun for a scarf for DH who may get it in the New Year rather than Christmas. I am going to ply it with indigo dyed tussah silk.

Allergies

2009-12-14T19:29:00.000Z

I have just been to see the doctor with a face that you don't want to see! This morning my eyes were so swollen I could only just see and my face looks at if it is on fire. The culprit? We think the initial reaction was when I mopped up some spilt wheat bran in my studio as I did so the skin on my face started to prickle and irritate. This was then followed the next day by a response by my skin to my shampoo. I have known for about ten years that I am allergic to the thickener that is in nearly all shampoos but haven't had massive problems however evidently this time it was a challenge too far and I had a serious reaction. At least I think that is what it is. I shall have to get Dh to remove all the wheat bran from my studio and bang goes one of my favourite fermented indigo vat -the madder bran vat.

Handspun Beyond the Twist Yarns

2009-12-13T11:47:00.000Z

A few people have asked me where they can get my yarns if they are not locals. So this is just to say that I have uploaded my Beyond the Twist Yarns to my website soooo if there is anyone out there hankering for them have a look.I am spinning most evenings so I will be adding to them too. I have put my new felt kit with my new method of felting on the website as well. It contains not only fibres but also grated soap and plastic sheeting.

Back from the Textile Market

2009-12-07T08:36:00.000Z

I am just back from the Textile Market at Trefriw. This being on my home stamping ground (well an hour away) has been great fun as so many people I knew popped in. People who had been on my workshops, someone who had been to an open studio event as well as all my old spinning friends . All but one of the local spinning guilds from Cheshire to the Lleyn peninsular came. A fellowblogger Artis-Ann from Snowdona came and bought some of my fibres. As she is a beautiful spinner and knitter I am expecting wonderful things and as we had "met " via our blogs it was good to meet in the flesh. Thanks to Debbie's John who has made two stands for me I sold more merinos than usual especially the handpainted 18.5micron and 3/4 of my hand painted cashmere and silk -recession what recession! The Beyond the Twist Yarns marched off the stand into people's bags. Imagine a trumpet fanfare at this ! Anne (who taught me to spin) had written a dear little pattern for a neckwarmer which I printed on sheep poo paper (made in Snowdonia)and this went with the handspun kid mohair and tussah silk . Nearly all of this went-apart from the one which was a cochineal pink -people found it too pink! As I am now out of Kid Mohair it is fortunate that some of Lesley Prior's kid mohair is on it's way as I write. I don't Knit -at least I can knit garter stitch but I don't knit as some people knit ( steeks and complicated patterns and things) so questions throw me. What thickness's are your yarns for example sent me off at great haste to Anne to ask. Chunky to aran weight in case you are wondering
Sunday was a quieter day but I had a delightful customer in the morning - a mature lady (but not as mature as me) - who had started a fine art degree now her children had left and she was on her own. She bought a full set of inks and was very excited about them. So was I as seeing someone really inspired by something I produce - it gives me a most fantastic buzz. In between customers and visits from people like Alison Daykin who popped in enroute (?!!) from Derbyshire to South Wales Debbie- the Mulberry Dyer- and I propped up the wall and put the textile market to rights and discussed dyeing (well what else!).
I made enough money to keep me happy. I sold lots of my new yarns which not only gave me a thrill but means I can spin more! Now I am free till Mid January -apart from a small commission or two. ( And I am g0ing to spin some cashmere and silk too as there were two hanks left)
Welcome to new followers-pop in and say hello

Marriage of Indian and Japanese techniques

2009-12-03T09:19:00.000Z

I have just seen this fascinating article about the Japanese Fashion Designer Ryoko Haraguchi' textile fabrics which marry together Japanese and Indian dyeing techniques. In particular I picked up on her use of fermented persimmon on paper which is then thrice crumpled before being stitched into. (I first read about fermented persimmon when I heard about Chris Conrad who introduced into into the the US from JApan) and have since brought some fabric made in south west China coated with fermented persimmon-it is the most fabulous and difficult to describe colour-A dark iridescent green. I also liked the sound of fabric being clamped tightly between two carved blocks before being lowered into the dye bath. I wish there was a magic way of transporting myself immediately to India to see it all.

Art Yarns or Extreme spinning! ( And the Textile market)

2009-11-24T12:39:00.000Z

I have been having fun! Early on this year when I was recuperating from Pneumonia I came across Pluckyfluff's book Intertwined , full of wonderful textured yarns. A light bulb moment came "Idid not need to spin for a project-which I find boring- I could spin for fun!" and as the mood took me and use up some of my stash into the bargain. This November after the dreaded horrible asthma and huge doses of steroids etc etc I suddenly felt as though all the energy had drained out through the bottom of my legs and gone somewhere. On top of which we now have a wonderful cosy sitting room with fantastic wood burner.
So guess what? Some ( but only a tiny bit really ) of my stash mysteriously moved into corner of the sitting room My lovely lovely lendrum spinning wheel took up residence and I was away spinning textured and very textured yarns in the evening when I am too tired for anything else . At first I thought I would just spin but everybody ( well nearly everybody) was so enthusiastic about the resulting Yarns I decided to sell them. I had a few at the Real Colour Show where I sold some but here are the ones I have spun for my Next Event
The Textile Market at Trefriw Woollen mill 5th /6th December

This a wonderful event-last year it was called The Artisan Market and there were only three of us selling but this year it is much bigger with Me selling fibres ( new range Beyond the Pale- merino's,cashmere and silk, teeswater) Beyond the Twist Yarns, natural dye inks ,brooches books& kits. Debbie The Mulberry Dyer, with dyes, books, yarns tools, my friend Anne with brooches, scarf kits superb designer knitted scarves and more more more!
I will be putting the yarns on my website in the next few days.

Fine Stoles in natural dyes

2009-11-15T09:57:00.001Z

Sunday 15th
When I was at the Real Colour Show at Llanidloes in mid Wales a local shop l'Amoire, bought all my fine stoles of which I had three, a fine felt collar and a fine felt scarf.,This means I have now sold all I have made which is enormously satisfying. So now I am starting to make some more! These are being made using 17.5 micron Merino that one of my students at Lincoln Summer School told me about-and which I got from Adelaide Walker in Yorkshire. Thanks to Bettina of Woolly Bits I have also bought a kilo of 16 micron merino from Germany. These are all Merino's from South Africa and so not from sheep which have been muled. Yesterday I dyed my first 100g of this -worried that being so fine it might felt-but it seems to be okay. Today however I am going to make a stole in terracotta using cashmere and silk as the first layer and 17.5 micron merino on the top. I dyed the cashmere and silk yesterday using madder, cutch, osage orange, and cochineal extracts of natural dyes. This is now hanging from a chair in front of a wood burner drying out. It is a still a little damp.The 17.5 micron merino I dyed some while ago as I have a commission to make a stole in terracotta. The 16 micron will have to wait-it is drying and I don't want to hurry it and perhaps felt it!
Thursday 19th
The fine merino stole is still sitting wet and damp on my table waiting to be further felted. It won't come to harm like this but I had to put it on hold as I had a commission to dye fine merino and silks. A welcome bit on money in a quiet month. Yesterday I decided to try spinning again with Abergele Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers which meets at a lovely village in Llanfair TH on a wednesday afternoon. However we have had a lot of rain and as I drove and saw the flooded fields Ihad mny doubts about my wisdom in going. If you click on the link you will see what met my eyes as I came down the long hill into the village.
This is the 16micron dyed and ready to be felted

Harvest!

2009-11-09T16:27:00.000Z

I haven't been blogging for a while- you may have noticed! There are lots of reasons some of which are being very busy and having severe asthma for six weeks but these are boring -the real reason is the combination of a brand new laptop and my springer spaniel. My springer spaniel, called Walnut because the brown of her coat is the colour of the dye given by walnuts, hates me being on the computer. Every time down I sit down at the computer desk she pats me commandingly with her paw which usually means "stop wasting time doing that and throw a ball" but sometimes means "feed me" but more usually just " I am a poor pathetic deprived and ignored dog give me some love ".

I love gizmo's, computer technology and all that and so have long hankered after a lap top consequently when I sold a picture while I was open for an open art studio event in Septmeber -Helfa Gelf definitely on next year- I brought a laptop. Hooray! One of the events I was also being busy over was the Real Colour Show, a ten day feast of natural colour, talks, workshops and lectures in mid Wales in October . It was a fantastic event-hopefully on next year- and as I had promised over six months ago to give a talk at it about how I paint with fibres via a laptop and digital projector, I had to get a laptop, work out how to use it, down load all the free share wear I use(thank you Leigh Tate who showed me how to do that) devise the talk, import pictures from my pc, work out how to do a digital presentation all in the first week of the event -hence not blogging about it -my original intention. I did my talk -to all of about 12 people which was a bit disappointing.However other demo's presentations and workshops were much better attended.

After all this I decided to take November off. Goody goody I thought I shall blog in bed first thing in the morning or last thing a night on my lovely new laptop. This is where the springer spaniel comes in. I start to blog- a nose appears then before I know what has happened a nose and a paw are laid on the lap top. That is why I have not been blogging.

We have been working hard on the dye garden or rather Enys son-in law, Jamie, has as he has a landscaping business. He has been clearing trees, trimming hedges and in the summer helped John put up a new summer house. (AKA The Man Shed) In the photos below you can see him and his brother demolishing a rather hideous raised bed and incidentally entertaining the dog who tends to think all this is being laid on for her benefit.

In the raised bed there is a madder plant visible in the foreground of the second photo. This is now three years old so after the wall had been demolished Jamie carefully picked out all the madder roots for me. All 2.8 kilo's of them. Some of the roots are 1/4 inch thick and are bright orange. If you break them and expose the orange root to the air they turn red.

The bed had a tendency to be a bit dry even in our wet climate and was overshadowed a bit by a large ash tree. Apart from the odd bit of organic chicken manure that is all the plant has had. However it was obviously very happy and healthy and rambled all over one half of the bed.The other half was full of golden rod which was not so keen on the drier conditions and flourished better in other parts of the garden

The new beds will be filled with dyers corepsis-it took my entire dried crop to make 8 bottles of a fabulous orange ink , and dye 200g of merino to a burnt orange, so I want more and persicaria tinctoria and chinese woad. I ran two dyeing the blues workshop in my studio last summer and could have run more if I had had more plants!

Welcome to the new followers- I do usually blog more than I have been recently and now things have quietened down a bit I shall be back to blogging form! The next thing is to dye with some of the madder and dry the rest and leave for a year. So hopefully next year I shall see whether it is worth drying madder. It is supposed to bring out the reds.

Sod's Law: getting red without knowing how or the lament of the toss it in and see what happens dyer

2009-10-04T08:59:00.001+01:00

I am always on the hunt for reds. Madder red is often elusive as I have very soft water, brazilwood goes a not very nice purple when felted and is not very light fast so that leaves cochineal.
Last week sometime I decided to do some cochineal dyeing. I tossed in some ground cochineal-how much? I can't remember-I think 50 g but I am not sure. I added some cream of tartar. How much? Possibly a tablespoon and then soaked the cochineal for how long? Possibly two days which was then heated in the electric casserole till it simmered (I think). When it cooled I tossed in 100g of merino mordanted with 12% alum 5% cream of tartar and left it -for how long?I don't know. I heated (I think till it simmered) but for how long I don't know. :(
Here is the result.
Yummy yummy crimson (it does not come out so well on the screen -another sod's law.
I will never be able to get this again. :(
Sold it all yesterday :( and :)
The exhausts are very pretty too

Welcome to all the new followers -nice to have you

Fermented Indigo Vat

2009-09-26T08:10:00.000+01:00

I have had a fermented indigo vat on the go now for over a month. I set it up for a Dyeing the Blues workshop in my studio at the end of August and it has been going ever since and students at my most recent Dyeing the Blues on the 24th of September were able use it. My visitors coming to visit over the past two weekends of the Helfa Gelf Open Art Studio event have been intrigued by it and a few have braved the label of "rather smelly" and asked for a demo. One male visitor who was studying, he told me, for a diploma in archaeology, lifted the lid to have a sniff presumably to get an authentic whiff of the past! I tell people that dyeing with indigotin (the proper name for the indigo blues ) is ancient, widespread and that for thousands of years this is how people have got blue and they are mostly fascinated.

This particular vat has been superb. It is a madder bran vat using woad ash lye-a 17th century recipe I originally got from Sandberg*. wood ash lye is easily made by filling a bucket with wood ash and topping up with water. After a couple of the weeks the clear water at he tops is a mixture of potassium carbonate and potassium hydroxide . During my reading for research for my indigo book (The Colour of the Sea and Sky, The Art of Indigo Dyeing) I found references to different types of woodash. It was said that woodash from oak made the best lye for fermentation vats and after that hardwoods. A local woodworker working in oak burnt all his scraps for me and made an oak ash from which I made a lye.This vat is made from that and whether for that reason or not has been superb.

The vat sits on a hotplate originally used for wine making which keeps the vat warm at between 35-to 40-degrees. Fermentation vats do like to be kept warm. The madder and the bran ferment and as they do so they use up all the oxygen in the water. At the start the wood ash lye made the vat alkaline with a pH of about 10. As fermentation proceeds it creates lactic acid and this makes the pH drop so every morning I stir the vat, check the pH adding washing soda if it has dropped . When the vat has no oxygen in and is alkaline the insoluble indigotin converts to its soluble form when it will bond to the fibres. Removing the fibres from the vat results in the oxygen in the air converting the soluble form back into the insoluble indigotin which is bonded to the fibres.

Every now and again ( such as once a week) I drop in an handful of madder and of bran and three times in the last month 10g of indigotin mixed with hot water to a paste.

The million dollar question is -why do I like the fermentation vat so much? The answer is it is so easy to use. You just put something and leave it -overnight more often then not. Oxidise and then put it back for a couple of hours for the deeper blues and you can see from the photo how dark some of my blues are. These are much more difficult to get with the modern chemical vat which has to be carefully balanced to make sure that indigotin is not stripped off as a fast as it is deposited. I also like the sense of being connected to thousands of years of history

Madder and Bran Vat

This vat has the advantage of being least smelly of the fermented vats and comes from a seventeenth century recipe. You will need:

9 litres water
60g madder
20g bran
22g indigo made to a paste
500ml of wood ash lye

Put water, madder, and bran in a pan, with the wood ash lye and heat to boiling. Boil for 15 minutes. The scum on the surface will turn pink then a rather gorgeous purple. Allow to cool to 40°C and then add the indigo paste. Maintain this temperature and stir daily.

At 40 degrees C this vat will come into order within two days but the pH will drop rapidly. Add a tablespoon of washing soda on the second day or if you see that fermentation is rapid with lots of little bubbles on the surface, and stir well. As it comes into order you will see a patina of indigo on the surface like a coppery blue sheen. The characteristic slightly murky green liquid underneath may be slightly masked by colour from the madder but experiment by dipping some fibres leave for half an hour and remove. You should then see the yellowy green colour on the fibres.

J.N. Liles The Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing: Traditional Recipes for Modern Use University of Tennessee Press ISBN 0-87049-0

Gosta Sandberg Indigo Textiles Technique and History Lark Books ISB9372274

You are most welcome to use this information on this blog for your own personal use but it is copyright Helen Melvin and the information is not to be used for commercial gain.

Ps I am still carrying on with some shibori (see previous post)

Shibori & Felt

2009-09-15T18:19:00.000+01:00

Th e Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers are running a shibori workshop. The tutor is Rachel Hardy and the workshop exemplifies, I think, how good an Internet group like this is as we can all use what ever we want to and do it in our own pace. Rachel has a very free and easy experimental approach which I like and some fabulous pieces. She talks about the techniques and we use what fabric and dyes we wish. Rachel dyes with procion dyes on cottons as she makes quilts. I am using natural dye extracts and fine felt. Sadly for us ( and for Rachel) she has been laid low with a malevolent dose of 'flu and we are all hoping she will recover soon. So far we are only looking at folding clamping tying but there is enough in these techniques alone to keep us very busy. Originally I intended to use what ever I had -bits and pieces of fabrics and silks, but a few years ago I did some stitched shibori on fine felt and have wanted to do more of it ever since so I have succumbed to using felt -whatt a surprise- and now I have to make my fabric before I start dyeing with it. This takes time so I have only a few pieces. One of the stoles I took to summer school, which I sold too, was tied around 2p pieces and I loved the effect.

The top picture is tied around two p pieces with a thick hessian thread and dyed in jazz -an Earthues logwood-and annatto. The picture below is the other side

This piece above was wrapped around a piece of dowelling , tied with linen thread, and dipped many times into a fermented indigo vat. I then united, retied and dipped again
This piece above was tied with fine linen threads and dyed in annatto,jazz and green extracts being retied every time. below is the other side.

This piece above was dyed in indigo after tying around a spaghetti jar with thick hessian thread which was then pushed down till the felt was very crumpled.The above piece was part of the demo I did while giving a talk to the Abergele Guild of WSD ( you can see more of that here) was folded in half, rolled around a piece of dowelling , tied with linen thread, and then using pipettes, I dropped annatto, lac and brazilwood onto the felt.

So above are my first samples. All are on 18.5 micron merino except the last two which are on fine pieces of 16 micron merino.

Helfa Gelf Open Studio Event

2009-09-06T16:43:00.001+01:00

I am open!

Come and Visit Me !
The Dye Garden
See My Pictures
Watch Demonstrations
Browse Through My Shop

Dates?
September
Friday Saturday Sunday
11th
12th
13th

Friday 18th with LATE NIGHT OPENING 7-9
Saturday 19th
Sunday 20th

Friday 25th
Saturday 26th
Sunday 27th
Times?
11am-5pm

What's On
Demonstrations
First weekend
11th-13th
Making a fine stole using 17. 5 Micron Merino
Indigo dyeing & fermentation vats
Natural Dyes

Where?
Find me just off the B5429 in Aberwheeler Just opposite the side of the white railings of the Chapel the Waen Aberwheeler 1/4 mile from the turning off the A541 Mold DenbighSt Asaph road at Bodfari.

I am 20 minutes from the Caerwys exit on the A55-take the road through Caerwys, down the hill turn right onto the A541 , go through Bodfari Village and turn left onto the B5429 and follow directions as above
I am just 20minutes from the St Asaph exit off the A55. Follow the signs for St Asaph then for Denbigh but turn right at Trefnant Traffic lights onto the A541 and then turn right onto the B5429 just before you enter Bodfari Village oppposite Gienas Farm
Find out More and see where you can go at
Helfa gelf/art Trail 2009

A Busy August- Fine Felt Stoles

2009-08-26T18:26:00.000+01:00

Jackie Jo and Dianne wearing their stoles on Gala night
Sally and Barbara wearing their stoles on Gala Night

I can't believe how long it has been since I blogged!

Since the last post I have taught at the Association of Weavers Spinners and Dyers Summers School at Lincoln. This was a fantastic experience. The students on the course started with 18.5 micron white merino, silk fibres and fabrics and dyed them with extracts of natural dyes in the first day and half,then started exploring how to make fine felt, a half day learning in different ways to make felt and fabric brooches. Then started making a fine stole- a formidable undertaking that took them twelve hours of very hard work. Felting with two fine layers of this fine merino sandwiched between two fine pieces of plastic sheeting to start with is an amazing experience as the fibres transform from two layers of wool to a piece of fabric with a fine fold and drape. The students worked hard starting on the felting days at 8am and some went onto to 10pm.

What has been such an exciting experience for me was that as all the students knew about natural dyeing and had in all cases done some felting and in most cases done a lot it turned into a master class and that was a quite fantastic experience for me to teach especially so as all had good design skills too and colour sense so you will not be surprised to hear that the resulting stoles were quite outstanding. as indeed you can see- we all wore them on the last gala night
Classroom

Classroom from the other end
Fibres dyed with extract dyes hanging up to dry
The first of two layers being put down

Two layers ready tobe wetted out.

On the last day students put up an exhibition of their work samples and finished pieces
EvelynGillAnthea
Jill

Dianne
Barb
Amanda
Ann
Ineke
Jo
Carole
Myra
All of the students.
Welcme to the new followers-how I wish some of would stop by and say hello.

Instant dyeing the natural way

2009-07-31T19:16:00.000+01:00

Top Row Persicaria Tinctoria top left
Bottom Row Golden rod flowers first left, flowers with ammonia, stems and leaves, stems and leaves with ammonia
Top Row Centre Golden Rod flowers over dyed with Persicaria Tinctoria and on right golden rod leaves and stems overdyed with Persicaria Tinctoria

Posted by Helen
Written on the 31st of July

I am busy getting ready to teach for a week at the Association of Weavers Spinners and Dyers Summer School-which event I have been getting ready for for weeks if not months. But yesterday I loaded the car and today pottered around doing bits and pieces and Enys came round to garden. The garden is reproaching me, full of dye that is not being used. I have dried armfuls of weld,Gensita Tinctoria and yarrow. But the Persicaria is going blue at the edges showing it is ready for dyeing and the golden rod in flower. SO................
100g of damp ( because we had had a lot of rain) golden rod flowers into one slow cooker, 100g of golden rod leaves and stalk into another. Topped up with 4 litres of water. About 100g of damp mordanted (8%Alum 7%Cream of tartar) Wensleydale added.
Both on "Keep warm" facility -this is about 80 degrees.
one hour later the flowers had dyed the Wensleydale a bright clear yellow while the stalks and leaves showed no colour at all
The tops of three Persicaria T plants were chopped off leaves stripped and ripped up into a pan covered with cold water put onto the gas stove in the kitchen as my electric rings are packed. Heated till hand hot. Left to sit for about half an hour while Enys weeded the over grown veg garden because I think she despaired of me ever doing it . I squeezed out the leaves, added 1 tablespoon of washing soda so the water went from a sherry colour with a blue tinge to a dark green. I started to beat the water with a whisk and the water went turquoise. I added 1 teaspoon of thiourea dioxide-this is quite a lot but I always reckon that the water is full of oxygen after all the whisking to precipitate the indogotin and needs it. I had to heat the vat up again as it had gone cold but after another 20 minutes it had gone a clear greeny yellow and dyed 50g of merino 18.5micron a nice blue.

Within one hour of picking I had bright yellow, blue and green fibres. Not bad for a "slow" process. Not only was the colour pretty quick but it only took me a few minutes to prepare the dye baths.In both cases while Enys and I were having a cup of coffee,one at the start of her visit and one at the end!

More on Weld

2009-07-30T08:48:00.001+01:00

I have just been reminded that Jenny Dean wrote an excellent account of dyeing with weld in Anglo Saxon times on her blog. I am ashamed to have forgotten this -just to many things to think about I suppose but that is no excuse really. The importance of Jenny's contribution, aside from showing that Anglo Saxons were a colourful lot, is that you can get a good colour with weld without using alum. She used woodash lye as an post mordant. You can find her work here

Hi from Enys

2009-07-28T19:34:00.000+01:00

Wish time would stretch, so much to do, just been collecting the flowers of Coreopsis and Dyer's chamomile, they are on trays on the window sills hoping for sun. Today was rain and more rain, whatever happened to Summer. The Echium vulgare in the garden is full of bees, so I've planted two more and am now going to plant more seeds and overwinter in the greenhouse. The roses outside the front of the house are being ruined by the rain, I'm having a good moan so I guess I must be tired - I seem to have been running around and getting nowhere fast, just like Alice in Through the Looking Glass. Never mind, Helen usually revives me on Friday's with lots of coffee.
Can't remember whether I told you this but the other week growing amongst the green peppers in the greenhouse I discovered some Amaranthus -Hopi red dye plants,I'd grown them last year and some had germinated and some hadn't, so I threw the compost left in the tray onto the green house planting floor and now I've got 3 big Hopi plants growing, they obvious like the greenhouse better than the great outdoors, and I finally got a photo onto the blog!! So here are a few more starting with a view of a small part of the garden- it was supposed to start with a view of the garden but obviously I haven't quite got the hang of it yet, but at least I got the photos on even if not in the places where I wanted them. A limited success. I'll have to have word with Helen on Friday.

shanti
Enys

Weld: Dye from Leaves, Seeds, or Stalks?

2009-07-25T07:52:00.000+01:00

Posted by Helen
First Year Florette
Mature Weld

Where is the dye in weld ( Reseda Luteola) ?

Recently I have seen a comment that most of the dye is concentrated in the seeds, (Judy Hardman, Natural Dyes) . (I reviewed her new book a few weeks ago and you can find that here) Dominique Cardon says that the dye is mostly in the seeds,inflorescence's and leaves, although traditionally the whole plant was always used which makes it bulky to store. Sue Grierson reports a 19th century source (Rhind) saying that the thick hollow stems of weld have little dye in them and to use the thin stalks (along with the rest of the plant).
According to Cardon the dyes in weld are flavones: luteolin and apigenin although mostly the former. It is luteolin that gives the strong light fast yellow that makes and made weld such an important dye plant. Grierson describes the colour as primary yellow but that she sometimes had to add soda to achieve this colour (by which I assume she means sodium carbonate or washing soda). Cardon reports that the yields of dye from weld vary enormously and puts this down to different strains, but I wonder whether it is also due to harvesting times as harvest weld too soon and the colour can be poor whereas it seems to go on giving colour till the leaves are withered . Once the leaves are gone in my experience there is no colour.
My friend Debbie Bamford has written an informative blog about weld with a picture of a magnificent specimen growing outside one of the outbuildings. You can find that here

On Friday 24th July I cut all the weld in the garden during a rare period of sunshine following very heavy rain in the previous few days.I mention this as Dominique Cardon says that the yield is improved after moderate watering although I am not sure our cloud burst could be described as moderate! Most of it has gone to be dried some for my own use some for sale but one stand I kept for an experiment.
When I cut the weld ,the bottom leaves were starting to go yellow and most of the inflorescence's had gone to seed which is when I judge weld to be at it's best. The seed comes from weld that grows wild locally -on areas of disturbed ground in the village where I live in North Wales weld has grown wild for many years. After I ran my first dyeing workshop here in 1995, the sister of one of my students, a lady well into her 70's, came to tell me that she used to pick weld to take to the teacher in the school in the village for all the pupils to dye with and showed me where to find it . Near this site Ladies Bedstraw ( Gallium Varum) grows wild too. Since then I have often found weld particularly on some rough ground later used for building. Ever since I first brought back weld it has grown in my garden sometimes more sometimes less. This year I have had four stands of self sown weld.
So while DH and I enjoyed a glass of wine in the early evening sunshine we split one stand of weld. The inflorescence's /flower heads and seeds into one pot. Leaves into another and stalks into a third. The stalks were quite fine less than 5 mm wide with the thickness of the wall about 1mm
Seeds/flower heads: 137.7g +3 litres
Leaves: 116g+2.5litres
Stalks:136.3litres
and were soaked overnight
There was no discernible colour in the water after soaking overnight
Pots were put onto to heat at 10.39 and by 11.55 were:
stalks 90 degrees C
Seeds 60 degrees C
Leaves 60 degrees C
The colour of the dye liqour in the pots was a pale yellowy green and seemed to be the same.
I turned up the heat under the seeds and leaves and by 14.30 they were:
Stalks 90degrees C
Seed heads 85 degrees C
Leaves 85 degree C
Then I turned the heat off and left overnight.
The stalk bath had the characteristic weld smell.

There are a variety of ways to dye with weld. Cardon reports two methods used by French silk dyers. In one the weld was covered with cold water and heated for 15 minutes this was extracted before the process was repeated and the two extracts put together. In the other weld was covered with cold water and boiled for an hour.In both cases the plants were removed from the water. As you can see from my notes above I leave the plant materials in after heating and will also leave them in while dyeing but this is partly because I am not concerned with even dyeing as I shall be dyeing Wensleydale fleece. I have also,in the past, left weld soaking for several weeks when it fermented and gave quite an astonishing amount of colour.

I then checked Partridge who is a great fan of weld and he says to dye wool a fine yellow put wool previously mordanted in alum to boil for quarter of an hour and then let it lie all night . He adds pearlash ( wood ash lye-potassium carbonate which Liles says can be substituted by sodium carbonate).and tin to get a bright yellow.

10.08am Sunday 26th September
Added 2 litres of water to each dye bath
190gof wet mordanted (8% alum 7% Cream of tartar),Wensleydale to each dye bath -all I had. The dry weight was probably half that so I am using at a rough approximation 100% dye stuff to fibre.
The fibres in the seed head bath took on pale soft lemony yellow immediately. Fibres in the stalks and leaves bath look unchanged.
Started to heat.
12.pm
Stalks 97 degrees soft yellow
Seed heads 72 degrees bright yellow-this is the strongest dye bath
Leaves 65 degrees soft yellow-this is the weakest bath
by 1 pm the difference in colour is very noticeable. The seed heads are in the lead with a bright yellow, the stalks follow on behind with a softer yellow but the leaves trail in third place the colour being softer and not as bright.

I browsed through my old dye books to see how different people dyed with weld. Something I should have done before I started not afterwards! Jill Goodwin in "The Dyers Manual" -the first dye book I ever brought- mentions both chalk and salt. Many Dyers of old she says used chalk and others salt. I have tried chalk-don't think it made any difference but not salt. Although it might be too late I removed a sample of fibres from each bath and added 1 teaspoon of salt to each bath now with the heat switched off.Colours of the dye bath

Samples from each dye bath with ammonia added on the bottom row.
Leaves on the left, seed heads in the middle, and stalks on the right. Once ammonia was added the difference between the dye bath was not very obvious. Salt added made no discernible difference samples second row. It should have been added in the beginning.

My conclusion is that there is more dye in the seed heads then anywhere else but still enough from all the other plants to make gathering the whole plant advisable unless you are very short of space.
Welcome to new followers. Your presence is appreciated.

Books I have referred to in the text are:
William Partridge A Practical Treatise on Dying published by Pasold Research Fund Ltd
Jill Goodwin A Dyers Manual Published by Ashmans Publication ISBN - 9780954440107

Liles, J N Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing The University of Tennessee Press

Sue Grierson The Colour Cauldron Published by the Author ISBN 0 9510132 11
Judy Hardman and Sally Pinhey Natural Dyes Published by Crowood ISBN 978-1-84797-100-5
John and Margaret Cannon Dye Plants and Dyeing Published in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew ISBN 1-871569-74-5
Dominique Cardon Natural Dyes Published by Archetype Publications ISBN -1-904982-00-5

Dyeing the Greens

2009-07-19T08:41:00.000+01:00

The photo of my samples above also has dyed fibres from half a dozen leaves of Chinese Woad (Isatis Indigotica). The orange fibres were for Dyers Chamomile with a touch of ammonia. The colour was so fabulous none of us wanted to over dye !

Posted by Helen

These last two summers I have run workshops in my studio using dye plants from the garden. This year I could only manage two workshops as I am teaching for a week at the Lincoln summer school for weavers spinners and dyers. The first one which I ran last weekend was Dyeing the Greens (The other is Dyeing the Blues on August 29th) As all natural dyer know greens are rare and even where you can get them they are mostly olive greens and dark greens. So I had great fun devising different ways to get there. We achieved green by modification of yellows from Elderflower leaves ( Sambucus Nigra), Dyers Chamomile (Anthemis Tinctoria), Mullien (Verbascum Thapsus) Yarrow (Achillea Millefolium) Tansy (Tanacetum Vulgare)-this was at the last minute as someone said they had got some green from Tansy leaves -with either ferrous sulphate or copper sulphate made up by dissolving 2 g in 100ml of water (Jenny Dean's recipe). We overdyed Weld (Reseda Luteola) in Indigo, and used Indigo Sulphonate mixed with Fustic extract. Indigo Sulphonate is Indigo dissolved in concentrated Sulphuric acid and was discovered inthe 1700's and is probably one of the first chemical dyes. It is often called saxon blue and while it is not as lightfast as indigo itself it gives a fabulously strong blue with a slight green tinge. I use Jim Liles recipe in the Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing , but Trudy Von Stralen also has one in her book Indigo Madder and Marigold. Finally we ended up by painting some merino tops and silk cap with extracts using green, osage orange and fustic with a little logwood grey to make the green turquoise.
Welcome to all the new followers - I hope you enjoy the blog- do drop by and say hello

Natural Dyes by Judy Hardman and Sally Pinhey

2009-07-12T10:10:00.000+01:00

Posted by Helen
Just before I went off to the Woolfest I ordered this book-daft of me because I probably could have got it there. It has just been published so on the principal that a dyer can't have too many books I got it as soon as I saw it mentioned on another blog.

Judy Hardman writes about the dyeing while Sally Pinhey produced the beautiful botanical illustrations. Judy chose plants (I counted 59) that you could either grow in the garden or can find easily growing wild ranging from Agrimony to Yew. The book is similar in lay out to Margaret and John Cannon's " Plants Dye Plants and Dyeing" published in association with Kew Gardens and illustrated by Greta Dalby Quenet. In both cases the text is on the left hand side while the botanical illustrations are on the right. However Judy Hardman has also added some photographs to her text and pictures of some beautiful fair isle knitting scattered throughout.
The plants are listed alphabetically according to their English name with the Latin name underneath.
Judy then tells you a little about the use of the plant in previous times, some fascinating bits of ancient lore before telling you how to dye with the plant. At the bottom of the page are samples of dyed wool using the traditional four mordants: alum,copper, tin and chrome.
Judy's explanation of preparation are concise and mostly easy to follow although I found her instructions on cotton scouring and mordanting a little confusing . She is also very clear on the risks attached to using copper and chrome although I could not find any mention of the fact that chrome-potassium bichromate is a carcinogen. I was disturbed to find that on page 20 on the section on scouring cotton she says to use 24% WOF (weight of fibres) washing soda/caustic soda,the first of course is sodium carbonate the second sodium hydroxide and a powerful alkali. It is possible that boiling cotton in 24% WOF of caustic soda would destroy the cotton. However I have corresponded with Judy and she say unfortunately the editing failed and this should have read washing soda/not caustic soda. There are one or two other editing errors-elsewhere she mentions 8%cream of tartar and7% Alum as a mordant (the figures have been reversed) but she tells me she has a page on her website listing all the errors and that can be found here at www.somborneshetlands.co.uk/errata.html
I disagreed quite fundamentally with her comment that that yarn dyed blue with woad or with Polygonum Tinctoria (now Persicaria Tinctoria) is likely to rub off on your hands as you knit because the indigotin is a contact dye. It may rub off but if it does it is because of faulty dyeing, a very common fault caused mostly by either over reduction or over heating of the vat. In this case the indigo white, the soluble form of indogitin, is too soluble and converts in the air too rapidly resulting in faulty bonding to the fibres. Here is link to Debbie Bamford blog on this very issue to prove my point!.

I was also a little baffled with her division of types of dyes into direct, mordant or substantive. Her definition of substantive dyes is that they are the vat dyes not as is normally defined dyes that will dye without an additional mordant. These dyes she appear to define as direct dyes.
What I like about the book is that Judy has plainly dyed with all the plants she mentions, and for example she is the first person I know who got colour from the roots of Iris Pseudocorus.
I love all the information about the plants, but I would have liked references to the primary sources and more about the dyes in the plants. However I like the fact she talks about solar dyeing, about dyeing for felting, and about lightfastness. She also has a large section at the back of the book devoted to a variety of layout for different types of dye garden including one for container gardens. I showed it to students attending a dyeing workshop on Saturday and they all were very enthusiastic about it especially two who are planning to have a dye garden.
It is a lovely book, a pleasure to have on my shelf and I was very glad, as I was about to chop meadowsweet for a solar bath while I had a glass of wine, to discover meadow sweet contained prussic acid so I deferred the chopping till after I had had my wine. Shame about the typos and the editing but it is rare to find a perfect book and this one will be a welcome addition onto a dyers shelf particularly for dyers interested in growing and gathering plants.
Natural Dyes by Judy Hardman and Sally Pinhey published by Crowood ISBN 978-1-84797-100-5

Back from the Woolfest and awash with colour

2009-07-04T07:47:00.000+01:00

Posted by Helen
Just room for the dog-but she was not impressed
Nearly ready-the top box makes a huge difference to how much we can take
The Stall set up- under the front table was the space for the dog
My inks and new textile fabric paints.I sold most of the sets and some pots but not as many as I hoped
Merino tops in 23micron. I sold a lot of these which was very pleasing as the Woolfest was awash in fibres for felters and spinners. Everyone seemed to be selling multicoloured plaits often of blue faced leicester.
I sold lots of my pottery and slate buttons-intriguing as last year I sold very few-you can never tell sometimes which way it will go This time I heard someone screech in excitement to her friend "where did you get those fabulous buttons?"-then hightailing it to the stall to buy some. I sold books but not as many as I had hoped of my new book "Colours of the Rainbow"
Our sales were down on last year overall.The organisers said they were very pleased with the number of people coming but we felt it was quieter than last year but it could be that this is because there are more stalls and people are spread out a bit more. People attending had a fabulous time they told me with enjoyable workshops and talks.
I hate that customer moment: The twowomen who practically pulled a silk cap apart while one explained to the other what it was ( I think)then threw it down on the counter before walking off.
I love that customer moments: "your pictures are stunning" comment and the two delightful ladies who came and talked to me about natural dyes and brought a kit each.

DH, dog and I lovely few days after the Woolfest staying in a secluded static caravan, one of two beside a fishing lake, and going for gentle walks-we managed one of about five hours alongside Ennerdale where the happy dog swam as we walked.I spent one day spinning, having managed to fit my Lendrum into the top box, sitting on the big wooden veranda of the static caravan looking towards a lake and the hills in utter blissful quietness, disturbed only by the cows coming in for milking and then tearing up the grass in the field next to us.

We came back from the Woolfest to see the garden ablaze with colour. Dyers Chamomile Coreopsis Tinctoria, Yarrow, Gensita Tinctoria and magnificant weld as well as roses and Lilies. Grass a mile high and the pond full of toads and frogs . The sparrows have taken over our bay tree as a roosting space at night and argue furiously and noisily about who sits where

Hi from Enys

2009-06-24T19:40:00.000+01:00

Just been getting the plants all ready for their trip to Woolfest, I can never decide what to take and what to leave behind. The wonder dog, Cariad, is going to stay with her favourite people, she will have walked all over the Clwydian Range and probably a great deal of Snowdonia, and will be extremely fit on our return.
Daughter and partner are in charge of all the greenhouse watering of husband's tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and aubergines + all the dye plants left inside and out + all the cuttings and houseplants.
Must admit that the plants are looking really good - especially the madder, which is a real pain to pack, it all gets tangled up and it takes ages to untangle it when we are setting the plants out - my arms are covered in faint scratches from it, maybe it doesn't want to leave home!!
Back to the packing - it's amazing what you can get into a Discovery, but where we are going to put our rucksack is anybody's guess. See you at Woolfest.
Enys

Still to do for the Woolfest

2009-06-19T22:10:00.000+01:00

Print off Colours of the Rainbow
Finish formatting the label
Print label
Cut sheets of painted paper for book covers
Stick label
Stick photo on inside cover
Staple books
Print 10 copies Colour of the Earth
Cut book covers for Colours of the Earth
Staple Colours of the Earth in
Put all three books in box (including Colour of the Sea and Sky) and put to be loaded in car.
Finish another 10 Fine felt Key Fobs
Price tags for fobs
label for Key fob stand
Make 60 pots of textile paints-all Saturday is scheduled for this.
Label pots
Make up Red ink
Print labels for red ink
Stick on labels for red ink
Make up 20 Zip bags of teeswater
Label teeswater Zip bags
Make up 10 more small felt Kits
Label
makeup 10 " Necklace Kit"
Write Instructions for Jewellery kit-mostly written,just needs formatting.
Print label
Print photo for jewellery kit
print workshop leaflets
Print Helen Melvin A5 flyers
Sort out baskets
Sort out stand covers
Check that have all advertising posters
Get Float
Load Car
Pack suitcase
Check stall stand
Put top box on car
Put in essential food- coffee tea milk sugar cereal bread pepper salt, marigold buillion jam olive oil rice cakes chocolate biscuits rice milk WINE and dog food- we are self catering
Remember to take Dog-as this is the first time we are taking her-where will she go- in the top box?
Phew! set off

see you there
A28,29
Bye! Bye!

Woolfest. Panic! What Panic ! EeeeK!

2009-06-15T18:55:00.000+01:00

I am totally freaked out by another blog author saying she was ready for Woolfest bar a few bits and pieces. While DH decorates the sitting room following the installation of the wood burner & solar panels, clears a place in the garden for the new summer house, and plants our new Dye Trees ( Birch Betula Pendula....Wig or smoke tree Cotinus Coggrgria. .... Choisya Ternata Mexican Orange blossom .........I potter around with a furrowed brow trying to fit lots of different events together. For the Woolfest I have two major new products. One is my new book "The Colours of the Rainbow, Painting Fibre and Fabric with Extract Dyes." I have been trying to write this for two years and then decided that the only way to do it was to get up early and write every morning. It is not very early only 7.30am but DH is a dormouse in the morning and if he is not working he snoozes peacefully till 9 am. If he is working he does not get home till 10am so one way and another I have managed to write it. As I wrote it I kept identifying gaps in my samples so off I buzzed to the studio to do some dyeing. Mostly what I needed was what I call batch dyeing -dyeing lots of multicoloured fibre and fabrics in one go in a large pan. Well of course this is not only an opportunity to do some nice samples but I need to make more samples for summer school at Lincoln for the National Association for Weavers Spinners and Dyers where I am teaching ( along side extract dyeing) making a fine felt stole from 18.5micron merino So I took the opportunity to dye myself some multicoloured merino and also of course for Woolfest. Into my batch dyeing went fabrics- muslins,. chiffons and organzas-This is because I am involved in a very exciting event next October "The Real Colour Show" . (More soon)
Into my panic stricken brain zips the reminder of my other new product. These are my new Fabric Paints. I had these for the first time at my Open Day on May 30th I did not make many- just five pots of each colours but they all sold and of course I need to make a whole new lot for the WoolFest -phew! This means to make up the paints ,print off the labels and fill and label on the pots. Are you feeling tired reading this! On top of that is making more inks as they are generally selling well and although they did not sell well at the Woolfest last year they might this year. A college wants me to send details of my new course-you guess it-as a matter of urgency please. Someone asks me for a course next year-very gratifying as it means I am now booked up till next June- but they want a variant on my written workshops so I need to write a blurb and work out pack costs.
Why I am writing this blog! I don't know except it clarifies my mind to write it all down.
Back to the book. It needs to be edited,printed and given to DH who will go through it with a fine tooth comb and pick out anything I missed. As he is doing an OU degree in Law it means fitting this in with with what he is doing . Then I need to hand paint the covers, finish the design for labels, print them off and print the book and put together. I am very behind with my accounts Oh woe!
And get ready for the Woolfest
Ready ! You must be joking!

Photos are results of batch dyeing. They are in oranges greens and pinks and lilac and are a homage to Michelle Obama who wore a skirt in these colours while visiting Westminster Abbey. (and two cardigans as it was rather cold! I so admire her style)!

From Enys

2009-06-10T22:07:00.000+01:00

Finally found time to write something on the blog. I can see Helen has told you all about the fabulous open garden day we had, the sun shone and the plants looked great.
We had some lovely comments and compliments - so Chelsea here we come!!
Another month and the the garden will be really full to bursting point. I believe in close planting, gives the weeds less chance to get a grip. Fortunately what some gardeners consider weeds are also dye plants - this allows us to say that the 'weeds' in the garden are of the specially cultivated variety! At the moment I'm trying to re-plant various parts of my garden, putting in more dye plants in sections and mixing others up with the herbaceous perennials to give a mixture of striking colour e.g. Oriental poppy, Astrantia, Aconitum amongst many others. Last month I had to demonstrate how to make up a hanging basket, something I don't often do any more, used to make up lots, so now I'm stuck with it, but I must admit it does look very attractive. Unfortunately dye plants are no good for this job!
Have spent what seems like hours potting on Persicaria, Coreopsis, black pansy, Isatis indigotica, Isatis tinctoria, Rubia tinctoria, Tanecetum vulgare, Galium verum, Echium vulgare. The Woad in my garden has decided to make itself a bed of its own, it looks just like I had planted it special rows - something I've been trying to create for years.
Helen has explained how to put photos on the the blog and true to form I've forgotten, so will get it written down and next time I'll actually have photos of my garden to show you.
Back to work. Plants labels to write.

Addition to the Dye Garden Ascelpius Tuberosa Butterfly MilkWeed

2009-06-08T08:31:00.000+01:00

Posted by Helen
We have a number of additions to the Dye Garden lately, Asclepius Tuberosa or Butterfly milkweed is the latest and the one of which Enys is most proud as she has nurtured it and overwintered it and here it is in flower. This plant is a member of the Asclepiadaceae or milkweed family although it does not have a milky sap. It is a native of North America found in sandy loamy or calcerous soils of prairies and open woods and is a dye plant producing a range of yellows golds and light bright olives depending on mordant but we are also interested in it as it attracts butterflies which fill our other criteria forthe garden -that it is a garden for the wildlife. It was also used by Native Americans and early settlers for the treatmentof lung complaints-so defintely a good one for me to have- and it was at one time called pleurisy root. It was also used as analgesic, laxative, dermatological and gynacological aid
All this information about it comes from Dyes from American Native Plants A Practical Guide by Lynne Richards and Ronald J Tyrl published by Timber Press Inc ISBN 0-88192-688-X , which Enys brought back from the US a couple of years ago.

Dye Plants in Flower at the moment also include: Viper Bugloss in the picture below, supposed to give purple with roots-yet another one Imust try!

Iris Pseudocorus supposed to give black with the root but not by me

Cosmos Sulphureus flowers give yellows

Weld Reseda Luteola-this year we have had a a lotof weld but it is all self seeded and this large plant was at the edge of a a bed dug at the beginning of the growing season last year -it set a florette last year and this year has just grown and grown.This of course gives a bright lightfast acid yellow which with ammonia is almost florescent

Here is our u shaped foxglove it had fallen over got propped up again and this is the result.

and finally -the principal reason why Enys put mullein Verbascum Thapsus in the garden -it is the only place for the mullein moth, Cucullia verbasci, and here are the happy caterpillars

Jill Goodwin in a Dyers Manual says with copper sulphate this gives a good green but it is one of those plants I have yet to get round to trying.

More on the openday "Shopping for Colour"

2009-06-02T19:31:00.000+01:00

Posted by Helen
Solar pots in my sunny place

.

Looking across the garden from the pond.
Two pictures in process,inks and the last of the new paints on the front row
Enys and I had a fantastically successful Shopping for Colour day. We think we had between 25-30 visitors most of whom stayed about two hours and the garden was very much admired. Some on arrival said in tones of wonder" What a beautiful garden" Which comment blew me away as I am always too aware of the untidy corner, the rusty gate, the dilapidated shed. As Enys said "well real gardeners don't notice those! Our largest patch of nettles was labelled in English Welsh and Latin accordingly so looked official rather than a neglected corner. DH's favourite comment was " you have a secret garden!"-true as there is no sign of it from the the front and it is not overlooked at all..My favourite was the comment from more than one person "Enys is a wonderful gardener"-Also true- We were so lucky with the weather as it was a beautiful warm sunny day with all the birds on their best behaviour and singing. Lots of insects buzzed around proving our point that we think we have got more insects since we planted the dye garden The dog,rather surprised at all our visitors kept quiet , merely mutely offering her ball to be thrown. All our 60 dye plants looked good although few of them are in flower.
Photographs? What photographs- Neither Enys nor I had a moment and DH was busy serving tea and coffee and then forgot
I sold lots including my merinos hung over the washing line as I had had no room with everything else in the studio.This was heart warming for me as I had not sold much of my naturally dyed wools at Wonderwool. You can just see a flash of the newly dyed pinky reds hanging up to dry on the line replacing the ones I had sold.
I had my new fabric paints to demonstrate. Some of you who are dedicated followers will know that last year I developed a range of natural dye inks for painting on paper. When I have had these at craft fairs many people ask me if they would work on fabrics. The inks are stabilised with mordants so they don't change colour when painted on paper and are were not principally designed for fabrics although I have to confess red faced I have not actually tried them. I had said on my brochure for my open day that I would be demonstrating my new fabric paints so I worked flat out to develop them. I had a few hiccups, one of which was a mould problem which I solved by ensuring the gum tragacanth-the thickener was refrigerated as soon as it was made. After researching I also decided to add tea tree oil as an anti fungacide. All in all it was a bit of a rush especially as we had the builders in putting in solar panels,a new woodburner and who over ran by a week. The skip full of rubble was still on our drive as people arrived.
My Fabric paints sold out -well all but a few! I shall have to make more for the Woolfest.At the moment I have 1 each of Cochineal/madder, Cochineal/Logwood . Persian Berry Yellow, Turquoise, Green and Black. I am so pleased with them.:)
Welcome to the new followers,thank you for your interest.