Using dried and frozen Japanese indigo leaves for dye

 

Last year at the end of the gardening season, before the first frost killed off my Japanese indigo crop, I harvested a bunch of stalks to save. I hung some to dry; I took the leaves off of some, bagged the leaves in a freezer ziplock, and stuck them in the freezer; and I took the leaves off of some, laid them out on a flat pan, put the pan in the freezer, and left them to not only freeze, but to dry out (freeze-dry).

  

About a month ago, I tried brewing up a Japanese indigo dye pot in the usual manner (like I would for fresh leaves), but I used some of the freeze-dried leaves. It didn't work out. I meant to toss all of my frozen and dried leaves but couldn't quite bring myself to do it.

 

I'm glad I didn't because I just came across the book, A Garden to Dye For, by Chris McLaughlin. In it there is a recipe for using dried Japanese indigo leaves in an ice-water preparation to dye silk. Yippee! Of course I tried it right away.

 

The recipe calls for 4 ounces of J. indigo leaves, half air-dried, half microwave-dried. These are blended up with ice-water in a blender, the mixture is strained through a cloth (like a flour sack towel) and a strainer, and then the pre-wetted silk is placed in the thick mixture for 10-20 minutes. This is supposed to yield a light, turquoise-like blue on the silk. I didn't have any microwave-dried leaves, but I used all of the dried and frozen leaves I did have on hand. They totaled about 3.5 ounces.

 

The author of the book left her silk scarf in the liquid for 40 minutes. I didn't have any scarves, but I have lots of silk hankies, so I used some of those. Although I did see the blue color on the hankies at about 10 minutes, I left them in for 40 minutes. I also tossed in a small knitted swatch of wool I had on hand. After soaking, the silk should be rinsed and left hanging to dry.

 

I rinsed my hankies, and although I caught glimpses of that pretty turquoise for a moment, what I ended up with in the end was green. I don't know if that's because I left the hankies soaking for too long, because of the chemistry of my water (well water, run through a softener), or because some of my leaves were frozen, but not dried. The color is pretty, nonetheless.

 

Here are the hankies soaking in the thick liquid:  

 

And here they are after drying overnight. The turquoise ones on top are some hankies that were dyed in an actual J. indigo dyebath last summer. The little woolen swatch is to the right of those hankies, and the green hankies from last night's experiment are below those:

 

 

 

It's a nice color, especially on shiny silk, but not the pretty turquoise I was hoping for. I've used up all of my leaves from last year now, but fear not! I have another crop growing in the dye garden as we speak. I will, of course, repeat the experiment again in hopes of attaining that wonderful turquoise in the future from dried J. indigo leaves.

A cat on a nice day

A New Map for my book, Rose of Par Kluhnd, and trying a new experience with going KDP Select

Rose of Par Kluhnd has a new map at the front of the book. The original was my own, but the new one is professionally done and looks terrific! I'm so pleased with it:

 

The map was created for me by Anna-Dawn at adawndesigns.com.

 

 It is already available in the eBook version exclusively at Amazon, and soon will be available in the print version, also available through Amazon. I'm so excited about this new map!

 

I am also trying a new thing. Thus far my books in electronic form are available pretty much through all eBook retailers, but for the next 90 days my book, Rose of Par Kuhnd: A Fairy Tale, will be available exclusively through Amazon. 

 

Amazon has a program for authors called KDP Select. In order to participate in KDP Select, your eBook must only be available through Amazon. My sales numbers have been stagnant so I've decided to give KDP Select a try. I don't like the idea of my books not being available for every type of eReader, but if no one is buying them from all of those other retailers anyway, why not give KDP Select a try?

 

So for the next 90 days, we'll see what, if anything, happens with Rose of Par Kluhnd. After being enrolled in the program for 30 days, I can do some nifty promotions through the program - discounts, etc., so that will be fun to try in about a month.

 

It'd be nice to see something happening with those sales numbers!

Processing and spinning Qiviut

 Qiviut is the warm, soft undercoat of the musk ox. It keeps the musk ox warm in its native habitat of the arctic regions in places such as Canada, Greenland, Sweden, Siberia, Norway, and Alaska. It is a rare fiber and expensive.

 

I recently purchased 1 ounce of raw qiviut fiber from the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Large Animal Research Station. You can watch how they comb the shed qiviut from their musk oxen here.

 

Below is the one ounce of raw qiviut that I bought:

 

 

The long hairs have to be pulled out by hand. They are soft, but stiffer and not as fine as the qiviut undercoat. What you want is just the wonderful, soft undercoat. Below is the same one ounce, now a bit lighter, after it's been dehaired:

 

 

I kept the hairs that I took out of the qiviut, carded them and spun them up. I got about 24 yards of yarn. It's very soft to the hand, but prickly up against the neck. Here it is with the unspun qiviut:

 

Below, I'm holding a segment of the unspun, dehaired qiviut fiber. I spun it right from these segments of the dehaired blanket without washing, carding or combing:

 



It spun up wonderfully, here is the singles on a bobbin:

 

And here is the two-ply yarn:

 

It is a wonderfully soft and light yarn with no prickles. I got approximately 84 yards, and, after washing, it weighed in at approximately 0.7 ounces. It reminds me very much of the paco-vicuna I've spun; it's got the same heavenly softness and cloud-like weight. And the same high price-tag. I used to think that qiviut was very much the same as yak, but it's not. Yak is also very soft and warm, but it's not as fine and cloud-like as qiviut. Yak is a lot more dense, but still a very nice, soft fiber, and a lot less expensive than qiviut.

I really like the qiviut, I only wish I could afford enough to make something like a sweater - we all can dream, can't we?

Processing, spinning and knitting milkweed fiber

 

The milkweed plant produces a fiber that can be used by spinners. Fibers from hemp, flax, dogbane, milkweed and nettle have been used for thousands of years to produce textiles, cordage, netting, etc.

 

I've been wanting to try my hand at getting fibers from milkweed, processing them, and spinning them. I finally had the time to give it a try, so I went to glean a few stalks from an area that I know had milkweed growing last summer.

 

I gathered around twenty or so stalks that had been sitting in situ after dying off last fall. If you gather milkweed and nettle in the early spring, after the dead stalks have been sitting out all winter, it saves you the trouble of retting.

 

The stalks have a pithy core, with the fiber and the 'bark surrounding it. At this stage, after sitting out in the elements, the stalks break easily and it's easy to dislodge the pithy core from the bark/fiber layer. There are several YouTube videos that show this process for nettles.

 

Below, you can see the core to the left, and the bark/fiber layer peeling off to the right. The fibers are shiny and white: 



 

After peeling the outer layer off of all of my stalks, I had a small pile of fibery bark:

 

So here's the problem, how to release the wonderful, white, shiny fiber from the thin layer of bark? I don't know. I'm sure there is a way. It might involve breaking it in a manner similar to breaking flax. I do have a flax break, but I wasn't sure the milkweed would stand up to the flax break. I may try that next time. What I ended up doing was carding the bark/fiber. Most of the bark is broken up and falls away, but the fiber is also broken, and not all of the bark is released. It was heart breaking to break all of that wonderful, long shiny fiber up. I will research/experiment with other methods next time.

 

So here is what the carded milkweed fiber looks like in a rolag:

 

 

I ended up with about 0.7 ounces of carded fiber from those twenty some-odd stalks:

 

 

I split that up so that I could spin two bobbins and ply them together. The spinning was challenging, it's not an easy fiber to spin in this condition, but I got it done. Here is the two-ply on the wheel:

 

 

 

I ended up with about 17 yards of sport-weight, two-ply yarn:

 

 

I washed the yarn vigorously with hot water and soap. I know that linen yarn benefits from washing in hot water, and even boiling with washing soda (which I've done with my own linen yarn). I'm sure that this would clean up and lighten up even more with such treatment, but after just a couple of vigorous washings, and letting it dry,  I wound it into a center-pull ball for knitting:

 



 Like linen, it's a bit on the stiff side, but softens up with washings, and I'm sure with wear, too.

So I ended up knitting a little swatch, about 2.5" x 4" in size:

 

I'll probably fold it over, add a crocheted edge while binding two sides together, and keep the top open to make a small pouch to hold my stitch markers.

 

 

This was an interesting process. I hope to find out how to extract the fibers without breaking them all up with carding. As it is, I think this yarn is not very strong - certainly not nearly as strong as linen. Hopefully, if I can figure out how retain a nice length on the fibers, I can make a prettier, stronger, and finer yarn from milkweed in the future.

 

Okay, here is the finished pouch:

 

 

 

It's small, but a nice size to hold stitch markers:

 



 

 

From plant to pouch took about a day and a half. Looking forward to repeating with hopefully even better results in the future.





Book Signing!

I'll be signing books at Old Trail School, nestled in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, this Saturday, March 22, from 10 AM to 1 PM. The indoor farmer's market will be in full swing, so there's plenty reason to drop by, do a little shopping, and stop at the book signing table to meet some local authors!

If you're in the area, hope to see you there!

Almost two pounds

About 1 1/2 pounds of merino, washed, dyed-to-order, and  carded into bats. Next up, grouping it for spinning, and then... Spinning! It's taken a long time to get to this point, whew!

Spinning flax into linen yarn

 

So, this past summer I grew some flax for fiber. After rippling, retting, breaking, scutching and hackling, I ended up with 6.9 ounces of fiber, ready to spin (see a picture here.) I finally had a chance to spin half of the flax fiber up into a two-ply laceweight linen yarn:

 

 

 

I got 425 yards total. The other half should yield about the same, so I should end up with between 800 and 900 yards of laceweight linen yarn.

 

I'd love to weave it into a kitchen towel, but I don't have a loom yet. I'm not sure how much knitted fabric it will make, so I'm searching patterns. I'd love to get a small apron out of it, but don't know if that's possible.

 

The yarn is a bit rough, but not as bad as 2012's crop. I'm hoping it will soften up nicely with washings and wear and do fine as an apron, if I can manage get one out of 800-900 yards.

Flower Fairy Doll

 

A couple of years ago I found a pattern in a magazine for knitted flower fairy dollies. I thought they were so cute, and then one of my nieces became pregnant - with a girl! I searched and searched for my magazine and couldn't find it, but then found the back issue in my library, hooray! I photocopied the pattern (since I'd already bought the magazine, but lost it, I figured it's okay to photocopy it).

 

I made the little doll, but she sat without hair, face, or wings for months. I finally put hair on, and then a few weeks later, the face. Over the weekend I got serious, with Christmas coming, and gave her wings and her little flower purse. Now she's waiting to be wrapped up and sent off in a brown paper package all tied up with strings (figuratively speaking, really just taped up with the address written in Sharpie).

 

Here she is sitting on her little flower purse: 

 

 

 

Closing the petals:

 

 

Tucked inside:

 

 

And here is a view of her hair:

 

 

 

She's made out of all handspun, except for her hair - I used mostly scraps of some colorful Malabrigo yarn I had on hand, and a few snippets of handspun as well. The handspun is all hand-dyed, some of it with natural dyes.

 

I got to use up bits of stash yarn on this project. The pattern is a Susan B. Anderson design and I found it in Knit Simple Magazine Holiday 2011. You can find the pattern online here.

Now to finish wrapping things so I can send this off!

I have a new wheel!

 

An acquaintance had a friend who was ill and asked her to find a good home for her spinning wheel after she passed. My acquaintance tried to find historical societies, schools, or arts and crafts places that might like the wheel, to no avail. The she found out that I'm a spinner, and, voila, I have a new wheel! It will certainly have a good home here, and if I decide I don't need it, I know lots of people who would love to give it a good home after me.

 

My original wheel is on the left, a Kromski Fantasia, which I love. My new wheel is on the right:

 

 

It's a Lendrum single treadle folding wheel. I've already spun a small skein on it. My daughter says that now I can teach her to spin since we have two wheels - she claims that I hog my original one and never have a chance to teach her, lol! (she's right)

Excited to get the hang of my new wheel!

This year's flax crop, all processed and ready to spin.



 

This year I grew about twice the flax that I grew last year. It was a good year and the flax grew well, it seemed a bit taller than last year's crop. After pulling, retting, breaking, scutching, and hackling, I've got about 7.2 ounces of flax to spin. that's a lot better than last year's 1.4 ounces (you can read about last year's experiment in growing flax for fiber here).

 

Here's what I have to show for this year's effort:

 

 

 

The little blue bit is a small amount that I tossed into one of my Japanese indigo dye pots. It was only in there for about 10 minutes. I wanted to get a sense of how the flax would take up the indigo dye.

 

I did a much better job of retting this year, and the flax turned out much nicer and much softer than last year's small crop. There's still room for improvement, but I'm excited about spinning this up over the winter.

 

And I ended up getting about 8 ounces of seeds  for next year's crop. That's what I planted last spring, 8 ounces. I'm happy that I don't have to buy my seeds again. The seeds I had been getting were pre-treated with things to help protect against certain flax diseases. I wasn't too happy about that, but couldn't find any other sources that weren't also pre-treated. But now I have clean seed from this year's crop. Hopefully it'll be enough to keep the flax plot going.

On my wheel now

Getting purple with Hopi Black Sunflower seeds

EDIT: Please read to the end to see results and colors, I've included the not-so-successful results of this dye session, and added results of other experimental methods. 

If you're having trouble getting purple from your Hopi Black Sunflower seeds, you're not alone. I've had a hard time getting purple from the Hopi Black Sunflower seeds I grew this summer. You can see my previous post here. So far I've gotten a very pretty dark teal and various grays. I was becoming frustrated, so I began to do some research.

First I tried searching for books in my library that might have information on Hopi methods of dyeing. I came up with nothing there, so I turned to the Internet. I searched for Hopi methods of dyeing and came up with a couple of sources. One is a book called "Hopi Dyes," and the other is a book which combines that book with another and is called "Navajo and Hopi dyes," compiled by Bill Rieske.

My library sources didn't have it, so I looked for it on Amazon. I found a copy for just over $3, and with shipping it came to just over $7. Of course I ordered it:

 

I was wondering what types of mordants the Hopis used and this book tells of a couple, one of which is a naturally occurring, low-grade form of alum which leaches out of the desert floor and can be found in chunks. And the recipe for the sunflower seed dye called for this - hooray! I substituted my own alum and used considerably less than what it calls for in the recipe, since I suspect it's higher grade.

 

In my previous attempts, I had been mordanting my fiber before putting it into the dye pot. I was mordanting it with alum and cream of tartar. The recipe in the book has you put the mordant directly into the dyepot. I nixed the cream of tartar and used only alum.

 

The dye acted exactly the way the book said it would. Here's a brief summary of what I did, but I recommend you get the book, it's a treasury of information:

 

I brought my seeds slowly to a boil and boiled them gently for about 20 minutes. The book says no more than 30 minutes, or until the seeds split. You will get a deep maroon liquid:

 

The color of the drippings at this point, after soaking into a napkin, were a teal-ish gray:

 

After straining out the seeds, I added the alum - 1 1/2 tablespoons (I was originally going to dye about 6 ounces of fiber, but ended up dyeing only about 4 ounces).

 

The dye liquid turned a deep, royal purple after adding the alum:

 

 

 

You can see the difference in the color left by the drippings on the napkin after the alum was added, it is a pronounced purple next to the gray pre-mordant drippings:

 

The recipe calls for you to slowly bring the pot to a gentle boil again and gently boil for about 30 minutes, then take the pot off of the fire and leave the fiber soaking in the pot for 24 hours.

In my failed dyes, the fiber turned to either the teal or the gray pretty quickly. The yarn with this dyepot has remained purple and is now soaking until tomorrow:

 

The notes at the end of the recipe say that for wool, the color is not wash-fast, and on cotton, the color is not light-fast and will fade to blue with time.

 

I happened to dye about 2 ounces of bleached white yak, and about 2 ounces of white baby alpaca. I'll add some pictures tomorrow after rinsing.

RESULTS:

 

Okay, it's been several days and I'm just now getting around to posting pictures of the results. I did NOT get purple with this method. I let the yarns soak overnight, and the next day, they were gray. The two skeins from this batch of dye are the two right-most skeins in the picture below. The light gray is what used to be white baby alpaca, and the dark gray is what used to be bleached-white yak.

 

I repeated this same method the next day with one more skein of bleached-white yak, but this time let it stay in the dye pot for only about 15 minutes. I took it out and it began to turn gray almost right away. Within about 15 or 20 minutes it was gray as well. This skein is the left-most of the three skeins pictured together in the picture below. It is a medium gray compared to the other two.  

So, pictured above are the range of colors I've gotten with the Hopi Black Sunflower seeds, shown on the various fibers I've dyed with it. From left to right:

Washed Bluefaced Leicester/Dorset cross fleece with a small, combed sample of the dyed fiber, which turned gray. The fiber was mordanted in alum and cream of tartar before going into the prepared dye pot.

Superwash merino/Tencel roving, mordanted in alum and cream of tartar before dyeing. It came out a beautiful dark teal-gray.

Washed BFL/Dorset cross fleece with a small combed sample of the dyed fiber. I mordanted this sample with vinegar, and added vinegar to the dye pot, too. It came out a sort of grape purple.

Skein of bleached-white yak, dyed with the method outlined above, but removed from the pot after about 20 minutes. The nice lavender purple color turned gray right away.

Skein of bleached-white yak, dyed as outlined above. In the morning, the color was this dark gray.

Skein of natural-white baby alpaca, dyed as outlined above. In the morning, the color was this light gray.

Washed Border Leicester fleece with a small combed sample of the dyed fiber. I let this fiber soak in a warm pot of left-over alum and cream of tartar mordant water that had been used to mordant yarn for a different dye project. I added a bit of vinegar to this water before putting the fiber in. I then followed the method to prepare the seed dye outlined above, but I also added some vinegar to the dye pot after adding the alum. I then dyed the fiber for about 20 minutes. I took it out and rinsed it with the left-over mordant water before a final water rinse. It came out a slightly gray-looking lavender purple.


Below is a picture of that dark teal-gray color on that SW merino/Tencel roving. It's sort of hard to capture in a picture, but it's really pretty. I can't wait to spin this up - I'm hoping the spun yarn turns out as wonderful:

And here is a curious thing, also hard to capture with my iPhone photography skills - the medium-gray skein of yak was tied with yak except in one place where one of the ties was missing. I replaced that tie with a scrap of (sheep's) wool I had lying around. That tie actually came out lavender (maybe lavender-gray). You can sort of see it in the picture below:

 

 

I still have more seeds to experiment with. If I get any really wonderful results, I'll post about them, too. If anyone out there has any suggestions, or has successfully gotten purple with their Hopi Black Sunflower seeds, please let me know!

Dyeing with Hopi black sunflower seeds

[EDIT: For more information on dyeing with these seeds, please see this later post Here.]

 

I've been growing Hope black sunflowers in my dye garden this year. The Hopis grew and used them not only for the edible seeds, but as a dye source for basketry and wool. Apparently the Hopis were able to get a range of colors from the seeds, which are dark and shiny, including black, blues and purples.

 

Here is one of the flowers when it had just opened in the garden:

 

 

 

One of my flower heads was ready to harvest today so I brought it home. It actually could have stayed out in the garden a while longer, but I noticed that a few of the seeds had already been eaten by a bird or something, so I decided to harvest it now. All of the seeds were shiny and dark, which is all I needed them to be (I didn't need them to be totally dried out).

 

Getting the seeds out of the flower head stained my fingers purple. I read somewhere that the pigment was also used as body paint by the Hopis (don't know how accurate that is) so I wet my purple fingers and drew on my face and my daughter's face. It works!:

 

 

I took a picture of the seeds with a flash so you can see how shiny they are:

 

 

I got about 5 ounces of seeds out of that one flower head. There really isn't much technical information out there that I've run across about dyeing with these seeds, so I played it by ear. Lots of natural dyestuffs are used in a 1:1 ratio in weight of dyestuff to fiber, so I figured these 5 ounces of seeds would probably be enough to dye 4 ounces of fiber.

 

I put the seeds in one of my dye pots and added enough water for the fiber to float freely. I simmered them for about an hour. They made a very strong-looking pot of dye. Here are the seeds in the pot during the simmering process:

 

 

I chose 4 ounces of a 50/50 merino superwash/Tencel blend that I had on hand. I mordanted it with one tablespoon of alum and one teaspoon of cream of tartar while the seeds were simmering. After the seeds were strained out of the dyebath, I put the fiber in.

 

Superwash fibers tend to take dye up really well, and right from the get-go, the roving turned very dark. Much darker than the one or two pictures I've been able to find on the web of other Hopi black sunflower-dyed fiber. Those were a lighter, lavender color. Mine turned dark and stayed dark:

 

Here is the roving out of the dye pot and cooling off before getting a rinse - it's almost black:

I decided to try a second dunking in the pot. This time I used 4 ounces of alum and cream of tartar mordanted corriedale roving. Here it is in the pot, it looks like it will turn out much lighter in color:

This is the almost-black SW merino/tencel roving hanging out to dry:

 

If you click on the picture below, you can see a sort of poofy area about halfway down that has a greenish or very dark teal sort of tint to it:

And yet, overall, it really seems to be almost gun-metal gray-to-black in color:

It will be interesting to see what it looks like fully dry. I think it will be rather gorgeous because of the shine that the tencel will lend the fiber. Spun up it will probably be an exceptional yarn.

It's actually hard to get a color like this from natural sources. I don't know if I got this color because the fiber was superwash, or because the dyebath was really strong, or a combination of both, or... the list goes on.

I have lots more sunflowers out there that will be ready for harvesting in the coming weeks. I'll have plenty of seeds to experiment with.

Okay, here's one last picture - it's of the corriedale roving after rinsing:

It's much lighter, but gray instead of purple. This leads me to think the culprit is my water. We have well water, which runs through a softener, but the softener has acted wonky lately and we've gotten hard water out of the tap periodically. I'm thinking that the hard water helped turn the color from purples to grays on the fiber. It's really fascinating all of the factors that can affect the dye process and the resultant colors.

This lighter gray is nice, but I may spin it up and then overdye the yarn with something else - we'll see...