Natural Dye - Day 4, Blackberries

Day three of natural dyes consisted of washing the wool and letting it dry. Not super interesting.

So ya know how I blended the blackberries and then DIDN'T strain it, cuz it felt like a lot of work?

Learn from my mistakes and laziness. There's a really good reason to do it. Because I didn't I now have bits of blackberry skin and seeds stuck all over my wool. I suspect a lot of it will flake off when I spin or knit/crochet with it, but still.... should have strained it.

In the meantime, it dried it a soft pinky purple colour - not the blue-ish purple one blog suggested I might get.

Before

After

Before

After

The non-mordant wool turned out the same colour, maybe a shade lighter, but not by much. I suspect tho that over time the non-mordant wool will fade back to something closer to this original colour. 

So there you have it. Some experiments in natural dying. 

Now to make something with it...

Natural Dyes - Day 2 Blackberries - part 2.

not guts, not guts, not guts

Um, so, yah... I figured out what they use for rotting entrails on the Walking Dead.

Otherwise known as soggy wool and chunky blackberry juice.

It smells pretty good tho and that's nice.

I soaked the wool in the blackberry dye for about 3 hours - what can I say I fell asleep.

On a whim I tossed in some unmordanted wool as well. I'm curious to see how the colour changes/colour stays when I rinse the wool.

As it dries and the berries (I assume oxidize) this entrail red should (fingers crossed) change to a blueish purple colour... kinda like the parts of this wooden spoon that's dried out a bit.

Colour gradient on the spoon is pretty cool 

White unspun wool,
(mordented) 

After the wool dries. I'll rinse it and then let is dry again... and eventually I'll be about to do something with it. I was going to keep aside some of this wool for my cedar dye, but I had a lot of the blackberry dye and it felt like a waste, so cedar dye it going to have to wait until I get more wool. (darn)

Natural Dye - Day 2 - BLACKBERRIES! (part one)

Blackberries!

Look at the size of this berry!

Today I get to make dye! I'm following the instructions from this site.

I'm using some fresh berries I picked from my backyard this morning and some frozen ones I picked last year. Right now I've got them all simmering in a pot and waiting...

waiting...

waiting...

The instructions say to heat, but not simmer or boil the berries for about 45 minutes... which means not leaving the pot - because of course even on the lowest temp it'll boil the moment I walk out of the room... and just waiting...

This practice takes patience, something I have been known to have little of - especially when I'm excited about something.

It smells pretty good...

Update: the frozen berries have thawed and I've blended all the berries with a hand blender. The instructions suggest straining out the chunky bits and while I've like to have seedless wool at the end of this process - I really don't see how I'm going to strain this smoothie out.

While we wait... once at Guide camp we tried to make blackberry dye. We dyed bandanna's. They turned out a pale pink colour. I suspect the fabric wasn't 100% cotton and I'm pretty sure we boiled the berries - having no idea what we were doing. It was fun tho and I'd forgotten all about that camp until I started reading about making dyes from berries and other local plants.

This "local" thing is why I've picked blackberries - I pick them in my backyard. They're about as local as one can get. Sure the wool isn't local, but theres something kinda cool about being able to say: I spun this wool and dyed it with berries from my backyard.

In the end, I don't think I'll mind what colour the wool turns into - because I'm using a variegated wool anyway I'm sure it'll look interesting whether it is pink, purple, blue or doesn't work at all.

It's about the adventure of trying it out, for me.

30 minutes later... so now that I've let the berries heat, but not boil or simmer I need to wait for them to cool back down to room temp...

... more waiting... but at least I can leave the room now and do other stuff...

Wool that's also waiting... 

Natural Dyes - Day One

I like to learn new things - I have decided to try out some natural dyes with wool that I've spun, or will spin. I have lots of blackberries in my yard so that's one.

Indigo, Alum, Cream of Tartar

And I've also been reading about Western Red Cedar as dye too. So that's the second one I'm trying.

Day one of this experiment involved picking up - Alum - for a Mordant. (read about mordants here, cuz I don't need to rewrite stuff already been done). I bought the mordant at this awesome shop on Granville Island: Maiwa Supply

The basic purpose of a mordant is to make fibers hold colour better - makes natural dyes brighter and not fade in the light.

While at the shop, I decided to pick up some Indigo dye as well - because -  

INDIGO!

To get fibers ready for the mordant they need to be soaked for an hour or more in room temp. water.

The Western Red Cedar
in my backyard

While I'm waiting for the wool to soak I got started on the Cedar dye.

Squirrels peeled this part of the tree

I have a big, beautiful Western Red Cedar in my back yard.


She's got plenty of bark to spare and she's a lovely tree.

I've watched squirrels strip bark off this tree and run up into the high branches. They come back down after awhile and get more, some squirrel has a very cozy home!

I striped some bark and then broke it up into small pieces - and now I'm sneezing, I think I have an allergy.

After breaking it up, I added water and I've left the bark to soak. Most websites I've read say to do this over night. So that's the end of day 1 for Cedar bark dye.

This tree is huge!

In the meantime... onto mordanting wool...

I followed this website's directions to mordant the wool:  Wild Colours Natural Dyes

And I used this website to figure out how to change grams to teaspoons because I don't have a scale: Chymist.com Yah SCIENCE!

This is a really boring process... and there's a vat of cooling water on my deck that smells like a wet sheep.

Tomorrow when I make some dye should be more interesting... while we wait lets watch cedar bark soak in water... about as interesting as watching paint dry...

Cedar Bark soaking in water, wahoo!