Next round of natural dyeing using Empire 2 ply and maroon lily petals and some autumn leaves

 Here's an update on the latest dyeing episode. i have been doing more than this, but haven't got the colours in the photos quite right yet for the malabar spinach berry pinks (Basella alba). And with a bit of work i did achieve 1 small hank of very nearly black from liriope berries last year. YAY. 

For this round i used my usual favourite Empire 2-ply for the best colour intensity and some more Lovestory to expand the shades as it takes up less dye and is paler overall. This time i used a mixture of soft white, chalk and i think it was the french grey (a light grey). I didn't notice any significant difference with the first 2 but the grey did produce different tones so i plan to use it some more!

If i haven't mentioned it, i use an alum mordant usually heated to near simmer for an hour and left to cool overnight at least and left for longer if i am organised enough......

left to right: olivey greens from a small batch of purple-red autumn leaves from Young: Empire 2-ply; light green: Lovestory. Light bluey green from maroon lily petals: lovestory; murkey grey-blues: Empire 2-ply (the darker ones are the grey original and the others are soft white and chalk original).

Natural Dyeing with camellia petals Empire 2 ply superwash

 Sydney is in an ongoing lockdown......so to entertain myself i have started a round of dyeing.  i'd read somewhere a while ago that someone had dyed wool with camellia flowers so i've been planning to do this for a couple of years. It's now towards the end of the camellia season here, so i realised i had to get a move on or have to wait another year....

I collected a small pot's worth of the strongest coloured red petals i could find on foraging trips  near where i live in Sydney, all within the allowed excercise parameters of lockdown-lite (a big thank you to the house holders whose trees overhang the fence). i froze them to destroy the cell structure and then heated them a few times in tap water to about 50-60degreesC over 2 days. the local tap water is around pH7. Quite a reasonable amount of colour came out, so in went four hanks of the the alum + cream of tartar -mordanted -Empire-2ply-superwash-merino that i am using as my favourite go-to option. It handles my mistreatments with tolerance and aplomb! I've tried a few other wools sourced here and Iceland but i find the Empire takes up colour the best and usually retains a lovely softness. I've also tried the Morris and Sons alpaca and it's lovely but never developes the deeper colours like the Empire. 

 The pH of the coloured liquor had dropped to around 3.7 at this stage and the heat to around 60 degrees at least at the start......

Empire 2 ply (Morris & Sons) wool dyed with camellia petals

the first three hanks from right to left: 10mins, 20mins, 50mins. nice graduations of bright lavender blue to a medium greyish lavender. Then by accident i let the pot reach boiling and the fourth hank was taken out at 2 hours and is this most delicious dark blue-green. The camera just won't give the right tone but it does give a hint. Also popped in the bits of wool blanket which was a chopped up an old pastel striped type and the two pieces show different colours based on the original pale blue and pinky colours.

There was still colour left in the pot, so i decided to raise the pH by adding some carb soda: i got to pH8.7 and then added the 5th hank and got a paler steely bluish-green with some brown bits dotted through. a bit dull & boring, but still an interesting experiment. I rinsed the hank in pH8.3 water so the colour would stay, but it did change a bit. If i ever get enough petals i could investigate this further but that will have to wait til next year now as the camellias in question have finished.....*

i finally put the last 2 hanks in as an exhaust run and got tan:  the colour was all pretty well used up by then. How much tan can a girl need? i recon i have more shades of tan than anyone could need. That's the last two hanks on the left showing the tan.

*my night rider camellia is a late flower type just coming into bloom in august and it has beautiful deep blood-clot red coloured flowers; I'm collecting them but it will be only enough for one hank, maybe two, as the bush and the flowers are small!.

Using my dyed threads at last for embroidery

 Finally getting around to posting something again......the real problem has been the photo quality: getting colours right is not so easy so i tend to give up. And colour is important! especially for embroidery.

Anyway here is my first go at embroidery using my dyed wool threads.  It's based on my own  photo of Buðir on Snæfellsnes.

you get an idea anyway of my slapdash methods.  

The blacks and darkish greys for the building and basalt walls are from liriope berries (a very lucky dye lot! usually get prussian blue shades from the liriope), the grass is purple onion skin caught early so it is quite an acid chartreuse green. 

Most of the threads are the Empire 2 ply (Morris & Sons) which works really well for embroidery. i used some thick sewing thread for the fine lines of the the church wood panneling. I've used a linen seviette from an op shop as my base fabric. There are lots of them to be found for around $1.

dyeing with crowberries while on holiday (dye with krækiber)

Last minute i packed some of my favourite yarn (Empire, a 2 ply merino from Morris & Sons) with the idea that i maybe  could get a chance to do some dyeing while i was in Reykjavik. So when i went berry picking for the wild blueberries i also picked a pot of crowberries. Nice and black the berries.....i was hoping for something quite dark to come out.......
                                                                krækiber 

into the pot with the lot:

looking lovely and purpley and getting darker and darker......

actually what went into the pot was a bit more than the empire 2 ply. I bought some local wool:  'lovestory',  made from icelandic wool which has two fibres (and is a bit scratchy next to the skin, but it very light to wear as it is super warm)

The long coarse hair of the outer layer,'tog', repels water. The inner layer is 'þel' which is shorter, softer and fluffier.

Love story is lace weight (1 ply) made by Hélène Magnússon, (check out her web site)

so here is what i got:the photos are pretty close to the real colours too

blues through to lavender

from the left the darkest denim blue had the longest time through to the lighter blues that had shorter times in the pot. I put a couple of hanks from the pot in a plastic container and tucked it under the bed for a week and then reheated them over night to get the darkest blue. The blues are really lively and vibrant.

(the lighter lavender blue on the far right is the lovestory sample)

from my dyeing experiments i have realised that the superwash treated wools take up the colour with greater intensity and as i am obsessed with lace weight wools i've found the Empire 2 ply merino really suits my aim of creating an extensive set of colours and shades of colours suitable for embroidery.

i made a pie with bláber

bláber & krækiber

here it is, the pie-tart that i made from wild blueberries picked on the hills near reykjavik (on the way to seltun geothermal patch). I was airbnb-ing at Konni's place in sept last year.

• butter & a cup of flour & dash of water to make pastry (i just guessed the quantities), crumbed together by hand
• rolled with a bottle and pressed into a flan tin
• blind baked 'til light golden on edges
• meanwhile, cooked some jonagold apples with some cinnamon
• lightly cooked half kilo blueberries with 2 teasp brown sugar

then put it all together, sprinkled a few fresh berries on top and cooked it some more 'til pastry browned nicely on the edges

it tasted FANTASTIC with some cream dribbled over. sweet & tart and really fruity. seconds all around and it was all gone!

i spent a couple of hours picking blueberries (bláber) and also the very abundant crow berries (krækiber).  sadly, the crow berries don't taste of anything very much but there are heaps of them every where. the blueberries are a little more tart than our cultivated ones, as you would expect, but nothing beats rambling around picking and eating them wherever you are in the country side.......

This was my main blue berry picking patch. A lovely sunny day to lie down in the heather and watch the clouds and the cars of tourists stop by the lakeside. No one else wandered up the hill at all, which was why there were so many berries to pick even though this place is only 10 mins from the main road on a popular tourist trail.

the blueberries went into the pie, (or directly into my mouth) and the crow berries were used for a dyeing experiment. This will be my next post, all about eco dying with the black crow berries in Konni's kithchen.......(he was away for this experiment, so was not alarmed!)

finally posting something again

Just to get started again, i'll post some pictures of drill rig pits with nice patterns. Haven't done any drilling work this past year, so these are older shots. Anyway, pits are being replaced by the above ground tank system, so viewing the action is becoming not so easy or interesting.

metallic sheen on the bubbles: we've hit a coal horizon

nice low angled sun effect

the bubbles look like ball bearings rolling on metal sheeting here

a nice blobby effect, i think the picture is sideways.....

coal horizon, in the runoff channel to the pit

out of the coal

more channel swirls

i kept putting off posting as my pictures of the dying experiments don't really show the right colours. So, i'' probably just start anyway and post a lot about the this and that of the last year to unblock the pipe....visited clare in auckland in autumn...... i went to iceland with karen and stella in september. And then to uganda in october to visit the school that we raise funds for. the kids are gorgeous of course.

Natural Dyeing with mistletoe and prunus leaves

On our playdays we have started experimenting with dyeing fabric and wool using leaves, flowers and twigs that we collect around about......mostly in Sydney but i have bought back stuff from my fieldwork area as well.

I've become obsessed with dyeing 1 & 2ply bought wool yarns, as i don't farm sheep or spin, (yet!). (The ply rating is an australian term, equivalent to lace weight and cobweb elsewhere, which i find too vague).

The wool and silk dye beautifully, but its all quite variable depending on the type of wool fibre, how it has been prepared, when the dye material is collected and how long the dyeing process is. This means that pretty much every batch is different to some degree.

                  Fascinating.
                                         Endless fun.
                                                                  Bucket chemistry.

I do label everything, but otherwise it's all slapdash at this stage because it's fun that way.

I have been trying to make good photos that show the true colours, but so far it doesn't work with the point-and-shoot very well. These photos are the best i've come up with.


Ist mistletoe experiment

Mistletoe, dry fallen leaves collected in autumn

The mistletoe is common alongside the road from Barraba to Bingara in NSW. Barraba is where Merlene has her Fibre Shop (see the earlier posts about that). At this stage in the experiments I'm only using an alum mordant, sometimes with cream of tartar. I'm also using rainwater from the parents' concrete tank, which might be neutral or ever so slightly alkaline, and doing the simmering in stainless steel pots. The mistletoe leaves were a dark red/brown like the colour of the wool, so this one worked very well! It was the 3rd simmer for this hank, with the pot topped up with some 'fresh' leaves each time. Morris & Son Empire 2ply, 100% merino.

2nd mistletoe experiment

I then collected more mostly fresh leaves in late winter/early spring. The leaves looked lovely - bright red in the sunshine, so i was very hopeful.......into the pot they went, but i got some different results!

Mistletoe, mostly fresh early spring leaves

Firstly note the change of colour in the bottom hank compared to the image above of the same. That's the problem with the colour reproduction. i think the real colour is actually somewhere between the two.

• the top hank is alum + cream of tartar, Beautiful Silks 1 ply merino, 1 simmer
• the middle hank is alum + C of T, Dairing 2ply merino, 2nd simmer
• bottom hank is the one from the first experiment to show the relative differences

Mistletoe samples showing the range of colours

 This picture shows more of the range of colours from all the various combinations of wools and leaves and simmers.....

• the one on the far left is Icelandic einband and the colour is a very clear bright yellow. it was almost fluro when it came out of the pot! i'll get more of this on my next trip, even though it is probably closer to our 4ply weight i love it for its texture.

Experiments with prunus leaves

The dark purple flowering plum is quite popular as a street tree in various parts of sydney. I've collected batches from 3 differnt places during the last spring season and so far and they all give different results...... sadly only a few reasonably representative photos so far. The colours range from the almost grey- prussian blue below, through the lighter grey-mauve to delicious bluey-greens that i haven't been able to capture yet in the photos.i'll keep trying.

Prunus, purple leaves collected in spring

• The outside hank is Empire 2ply with leaves from the trees in Sun Valley in the Blue Mountains were my sister lives
• the centre hank is the remainder of the einband in the same pot
• both with alum & C o T.

Other plants
I have lots of purple-leaved plants in my garden and have started using alternathera, ipomea, purple tradescantia and in September i collected indigofera australis from Mum's new native plantings.I'll try the recipe that can be found in the Turkey Red Journal.

i've also got some stunning very strong rusty oranges from a grey-leafed ironbark. The pale bluey-grey-green leaves give a really outstanding colour and a lovely smell to the wool. When boiling the leaves the eucalyptus smell goes through the whole house. yummy.

Other plants used include grevillea robusta flowers (gave a yellow), illawarra flametree flowers (vibrant red flowers gave only a very soft buttery colour). Purple onion skins gave a greeny colour.