Dyeing with Japanese indigo

I've been growing Japanese indigo plants in my garden this year. This is the first time and I've been very nervous about it. We've had drought conditions here, like much of the U.S., and these plants like to be kept moist. I ordered my seeds here, and started them indoors about six weeks before planting them outside in the spring. They've been doing relatively well and it was finally time for my first leaf harvest.

I have about fourteen plants. You can harvest about 1/3 of the leaves from a plant every couple of weeks once they're ready (around midsummer). My husband helped me and between us we gathered right around 16 ounces of leaves.

I rinsed them and put them in my smaller dye pot:

I covered them with hot tap water and them placed the smaller pot inside my larger pot, which had water in it, so that the smaller pot was in a water bath. I slowly heated the leaf/water mix up to around 160 degrees F and kept it there for about two hours:

After straining the leaves out, I added about 1 1/2 tbs. baking soda and then poured the dye bath back and forth for about five minutes. It turned a nice, deep blue color:

But it wasn't ready to dye with yet! Now I added a reducing agent, which takes the oxygen out of the dyebath. I had one ounce of thiourea dioxide on hand for the occasion. I added about 1 1/2 tbs to the dyebath and waited for about 15 minutes. The deep blue is supposed to become light yellowish, but nothing happened. I added the rest of my reducing agent (about the same amount as before), waited, and still nothing happened. I remembered that I had a package of color run remover with my laundry stuff. That's also a reducing agent, so I added about half to my dyebath and presto! It began to change color!

While this was happening, I had been soaking my handspun yarn in hot water, waiting for the dyebath to be ready to take it. The yarn needs no mordant for indigo, but it should be wet. Here are some of the skeins I had on hand to dye. On the left is polwarth wool, the middle is superwash Bluefaced Leicester, and on the right is a BFL/silk blend. The roving at the top is babydoll southdown, but it didn't go into the dyepot this time:

I forgot to take a picture of the dyebath after the reducing agent was added, but you can see the color of the dyebath in the liquid at the bottom of the bowl in the picture below. These are the three skeins from the picture above right after being plucked out of the dyebath after a 20 minute soak. They are light, yellowish-green at first, but when they hit the air, they start to turn blue right before your eyes:

I squeezed the excess liquid out and laid them out to air and watched them turn darker blue. I ended up dyeing a few more skeins and some roving before the dye started to become exhausted. In all I dyed 8 ounces of polwarth yarn, 8 ounces of superwash BFL yarn, 4 ounces of BFL/silk yarn along with 4 ounces of BFL/silk roving, and one 4-ounce ball of baby alpaca yarn - all with my 16 ounces of Japanese indigo leaves:

I'm so happy that my Japanese indigo was a success! And I can repeat the whole process every two weeks until the growing season is over!

Now I have my fingers crossed that my flax experiment will also meet with similar success- more on that at a later date...

The sweater project: step three, knitting

I spent a couple of weeks on the knitting, and here is the finished product. It's the first sweater I've ever knitted ( if you don't count a sweater for a small Teddy bear). My daughter dyed the fiber, I spun it and knitted it, and now she has a sweater.

Discounted books in July!

Smashwords is having its sitewide discountpalooza in July and I've signed up with two of my ebooks - Rose of Par Kluhnd and The Witch of Starmont will be half-price for all of July with the coupon code that will be provided on the books' pages.

"What is Smashwords," you say?  It's a place where you can buy ebooks, all of them conveniently downloadable in any format you need for any and all of your ereading devices.

Here are the links to my books on Smashwords - My Twelfth Christmas will remain at its regular price (which is already very low at just 99 cents).

Rose of Par Kluhnd: A Fairy Tale

The Witch of Starmont

My Twelfth Christmas

The discount starts in July - be sure to enter the coupon code at checkout. The code will be provided on the book's page near the price starting July 1st and ending at the close of the day on July 31st.

The sweater project: step two, spinning the wool

The sweater project continues. When spinning, my default yarn seems to be a two-ply with a gauge from fingering weight to sport weight. However, I want to follow the sweater pattern as written and not do a lot of calculations. Since the pattern calls for a gauge of 4 1/2 stitches per inch on size 7 to 8 needles (which is more like a worsted weight - thicker than fingering and sport weights), I'll need to change my default ways to spin a different weight of yarn.

Now, there are a lot of ways to spin yarn. Some of the basic ways are spinning it woolen or worsted, but then you can also ply it. Will it be a two ply, three ply, four ply? Or maybe not ply it at all and leave it a singles?

Also, what ratio will the yarn be spun with? I have three whorls for my wheel and they each have two different ratios, together they range from five twists per inch all the way up to 20 twists per inch.

After a lot of experimenting, spinning up different small samples and knitting gauge swatches, I decided upon a single ply, spun worsted at a ratio of five twists per inch. At the gauge I need, this seemed to give me the softness and amount of drape I wanted in the knitted samples.

And so the spinning commenced, and as of today, all two pounds of the dyed, superwash BFL has been spun into eight skeins of worsted weight singles yarn. I'm hoping the gauge is consistent enough throughout all of the skeins so that the knitting proceeds without hiccups. Fingers crossed! As I've said before, this is all a learning process.

Next step; begin knitting!

The sweater project: step one, dyeing the wool

I have finally begun a project which I have been looking forward to for some months. I found a really cute sweater pattern in this book (which I found in my library), and have been itching to make it for my daughter. The other day everything was in place: 2 lbs. superwash Bluefaced Leicester wool roving, check; dyes, check; daughter, check; time, check. So we began.

First phase: Dyeing the wool.

We set up the tables outside and got the dyes ready. We are using weak acid dyes, which are set with vinegar and heat. The heat can be supplied in many ways, but we used the oven and the microwave. Here is our setup (click on any of the pictures to see them larger):

I left the mixing of the colors to my daughter so that she could get the colors she wants for the sweater:

Here is the first batch of wool getting its color. This batch is all one color, so it was dyed all together in an aluminum roaster:

Ready for the oven! This batch will go into the oven at 400 degrees F for about 40 minutes:

What a gorgeous color!

Now, on to the next batch, four 4-ounce lengths of roving which need to be handpainted in mutliple colors:

My daughter had lots of help:

Some of which took breaks in the shade or sun, according to species:

A length of colors:

Ready for the microwave! The roving is encased in cellophane, rolled up, and microwaved for about 4 minutes to set the colors:

Here is the dyed roving, after heating and setting the color, laid out to dry in the sun:

And here is the dried roving, it's so soft!:

Next phase: Spinning the wool into yarn.

I will have to spin it all a consistent gauge, hopefully at 4.5 stitches per inch on size 7 or 8 needles (US). That's the tricky part. Wish me luck!

Here is a picture from the Yarnplay book of the sweater we are aiming for (but ours will be in my daughter's colors).

My knitting skills are only so-so. I'm hoping that I'm up to the task, but I've been wanting to delve into this project for a very long time and I'm excited about it. It's all a learning process!

Hanging herbs to dry

I have lavender, lemon balm, yarrow, hyssop, and calendula hanging to dry now on my drying rack. The first batch of many, I hope!

This is where cranberries come from!

At a recent trip to Triangle Bog in Kent, Ohio, I snapped a picture of a cranberry blossom. They're pretty small (click on the picture to see a larger version). If you want to see a picture of cranberries in the same bog, click here.

Dyeing with red cabbage

I decided to try dyeing with red cabbage. It's one of those dyes that may not be particularly light-fast, and different colors can be achieved by raising or lowering the pH of the dyebath. I'm a little leery of those types of dyes, but I was curious to see if I could get  nice blue out of the process, so I proceeded.

I bought a nice, red cabbage from the grocery store, cut it up and put it in a pot with water to make the dyebath (click on any of the pictures to see them bigger):

While the cabbage was simmering away, I mordanted the fiber, which consisted of 4 ounces of superwash BFL wool, and about 4 ounces of white, handspun, baby alpaca yarn. The mordant I used was alum and cream of tartar:

Here is a picture of the cabbage starting to give its color to the dyebath:

When the dyebath was ready, I strained the cabbage leaves out and separated the liquid into two pots. One pot I left with its nice, blue color, and the other pot I added vinegar to until it was a pink-purple color. I put the alpaca yarn in the blue pot, and the roving in the pink-purple pot.

Here is the handspun baby alpaca singles yarn in the dyebath:

And here is the superwash BFL roving in the dyebath:

After dyeing for about an hour, I covered the pots and took them off of the heat. I let them sit overnight, and in the morning, both pots had changed to a green color. Here is the color that I got on both the roving and the yarn - the yarn is in rinse water after being taken out of the pot:

And here are the results after drying and spinning - the alpaca is the green, center-pull ball, and the superwash BFL is the green skein. This picture was taken with a flash, but the following picture is without a flash:

The other yarns in the picture have also been dyed with natural dyes, pokeberry, marigold and cleavers root (from left to right), with the soft greens from the red cabbage. Again, this picture is without a flash:

I actually really like the green that I got from the red cabbage, but I'm not sure how light-fast it will be. It may fade to gray over time, which will be sad.

Lavender and roses

I wish you could smell them.

Yum!

I just ate a strawberry off of my hanging strawberry plant. Yum! The plant was a Mother's Day gift.

Pond life

Here's what the dog and I saw on our jaunt around the pond today:

A successful book signing at the indoor farmer's market

My book signing at the indoor farmer's market yesterday was fun. I brought my drop-spindle along with a finished skein of yarn to show anyone who was interested in my spinning.

I ended up selling not only several books, but my finished skein of yarn, too! I also got to eat a warm breakfast pie from the Gaelic Imports table, and I brought home some ground bison from the man who sells pasture-raised, grass-fed bison, and made a big pot of bison chili for dinner last night. Yum!

I love farmer's markets!

My latest project

I really like my new drop spindles. Here's what I'm working on now:

Cleavers tea

There's a small patch of cleavers growing along the fence in my yard. I plucked a little bit and brought it inside to make some tea with. It's one of those things that people use as a spring tonic.

I've also used it in salves to calm irritated skin; for example, it's one of the ingredients in my bug bite balm.

The roots, when you've got enough of them, can be used to dye with. They'll give you a range of reds. I've used cleavers roots to dye with and gotten a really pretty salmon color on the wool, which I spun into a pretty, salmon-colored yarn.

This little plant has a lot of uses and  these are just a few that I've touched upon.

It's easy to mistake Lady's Bedstraw for Cleavers. They look very similar and are related (they are both in the madder family). To tell the difference, all you need to do is touch the plant. If it 'cleaves to you', then it's cleavers. If it's content to let your fingers go without clinging to them, then it's lady's bedstraw.

A celebratory, half-off coupon for The Witch of Starmont!

I finally put The Witch of Starmont up at Smashwords.com, and within a couple of weeks it will also be available at Apple, Sony, Diesel, and Kobo ebook retailers.

Before now, it was availble only at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, but, as of right now, you can  purchase it through Smashwords and download versions compatible with just about any ereader device! And to celebrate, I have a half-off coupon for you to use at Smashwords!

Here is the 50%  off Smashwords coupon code for The Witch of Starmont:

DK36X

It's for use only at Smashwords, and only for The Witch of Starmont. Use it at checkout and pay only $0.99!

The coupon is good through this Sunday, April 29th, so hurry to get your half-price ebook! 



A homemade basket for washing fleece in the tub

I've been contemplating an easier way to wash raw fleece in the tub. I decided that some sort of basket would be the best thing. The fleece could be put into the basket, the basket and fleece submerged in the tub's soapy, hot water and left to soak. The basket could be lifted out of the tub to drain the dirty water and refill the tub with either more hot, soapy water, or hot, fresh rinse water, and then the basket re-submerged.

I went to the hardware store to scope out materials, and came home with a 3x15 foot roll of plastic hardware netting, the sturdy, yet still flexible kind that can wrap around tree trunks to protect them from deer, not the really flimsy netting that goes over berry bushes:

Here's the resulting basket along with the materials used to make it, netting, twine, and scissors:

 It was really easy to cut the netting to the right size and then fold the ends up to make a basket:

 The extra material at the corners was folded to the outside of the basket so that fiber wouldn't catch in the fold on the inside, and then tied in place with the twine:

I braided a length of twine and used it as handles, but I think I'll remove the handles and add loops along this edge for dowels to slide into. This will make it easier to lift the basket out of the tub to hang, resting on the dowels which will in turn rest on the edges of the tub, when changing the water in the tub:

Here is some Icelandic fleece in the basket, waiting for the tub to fill with hot, soapy water:

Here's the fleece soaking in the tub. It's so easy to place it into the water and let it soak this way. There's no agitation to felt the fibers:

I lifted the basket out and placed it on an old screen resting on the edges of the tub while I drained the filthy water and refilled for one more soapy soak. Again, very little agitation was induced:

After two soapy soakings and one rinse soak, it was easy to lift the fiber out of the tub. I let it drain overnight sitting on the old screen over the tub, and this morning it's drying outside in the sunshine:

This basket is super easy to make. The roll of plastic netting cost something like $16, and the hemp twine cost about $2. There's plenty of netting left to make more baskets, or use in the yard. If you wash raw fleeces, I'd recommend using a basket, it really makes things easy.