Category: Dyeing

Pretending to be calm

11/3/2020

And when pretending isn't enough--

Twenty Tiny House Series:Willow Wand #1; hand woven tapestry; willow wand warp; willow bark, hand spun paper, indigo, natural pigments 3" x 2.5"; frame: cardboard box, used coffee filters, flour paste

there is always tapestry.

Willow-wand warp anyone?
It's weirdly compelling
(doesn't even require a loom).

And though Rebecca doesn't cover
these materials in her wonderful new book
The Art of Tapestry Weaving,
(officially launching today!)
she does provide instruction
on all of the techniques I used.
(well, not the clamp and scrap wood support part,
but maybe I"ll talk about that
some other day on this blog).

Twenty Tiny House Series:Willow Wand #1 (detail); hand woven tapestry; willow wand warp; willow bark, hand spun paper, indigo, natural pigments 3" x 2.5"; frame: cardboard box, used coffee filters, flour paste

Today --

Magic Medium --formerly white, now pinky red thanks to cochineal and madder

well today--

all I knew for sure--

Cochineal dyebath

is that
color is marvelous--

weld + indigo

and nature is generous--

magic medium with madder and cochineal; somewhat slanted with cochineal

(when we let her do
the things she does so well)--

and that however things unfold--

self portrait with laundry and suspenders

I'm grateful
that my pants won't
fall down.

Backstrap Blankets; backstrap strips sewn together; hand spun wool; walnut; indigo;

Also,
perhaps even more important
than the coverage of my derriere--

I'm so glad
that as we move through this time
and into a future
in which simple tools
are essential--

and the boxes we need most
are not even close to square
(thank goodness)--

Twenty Tiny House Series: Willow Wand #1; hand woven tapestry; willow wand warp; willow bark, hand spun paper, indigo, natural pigments 3" x 2.5"; frame: cardboard box, used coffee filters, flour paste

that we go forward
together.

blue-struck

10/6/2020

Indigo; willow bark; coffee filters; milkweed

Though not a truth
universally acknowledged--

willow bark: dried (right); dried then boiled in washing soda water (left); dried, boiled as above then dyed with indigo (center)

it sometimes happens
that here in the studio--
(or just outside
where drips can be ignored,

giant balls of willow
serve as handy
oxidizing racks,

and days unfold
at the whim
of whatever materials
place themselves
in my hands),

willow oxidizing ball-- inside view

those self-same materials,
now and again,
find themselves
in want
of the color blue.

So blue
is the thing
that happens.

Milkweed cordage -- two values of indigo (multiple dips).

Now a few phrases back
(somewhere in the midst
of a lengthy parenthetical aside),
I used the word whim,
as though flax, milkweed,
willow, walnut and wool
are full of caprice,
individually and collectively
leading me this way and that--

boiled willow bark; indigo

-- a cohort of cheeky puppeteers
tugging at my hand
and heart strings,
as I,
the marionette,
dance to their tune.

And it might well be so.
The materials don't feel
even remotely passive,
and I have no idea
where this is all heading--
or why, suddenly
(in the midst of other plans),
everything needed to be blue.

Wrist cordage (right to left); boiled willow bark after two months on my wrist; milkweed after two months; boiled, indigo willow bark after one day.

Indeed, after decades
of thinking myself in charge
of the materials I select
and the stories I tell--

Milkweed cordage, (green gathered and winter retted) approx 1700 - 2000 yards per pound; indigo

it feels past time
to acknowledge--
or even more,
to relish--
the reciprocal nature
of these things that I do--
that we all do--

and to put whatever
knowledge and skills
I have gathered
(ever noticing
to my delight and chagrin,
how very little I actually know),
in service to
this cooperative venture.

So, blue it was.
And now?

"Now,"
says the Praying Mantis,
"you can go away
and make some more cordage
with those busy busy hands of yours
while I return
to admiring the view."

familial filter focus

2/25/2020

What a treat it has been--

indigo dyed coffee filters, oxidizing

my sister here for ten days--
a lovely time-out-of-time--
almost a retreat for us both--
each immersed in her own obsession.

Every day
Lyn went to a local coffee shop
to write about compost,
while I focused my research
on the pile of coffee filters
she had collected from said compost,
washed and brought with her.

What could be better than new material?

On my end, I found that
the commercial filters
are bigger in diameter
and ever so slightly thicker
than those I'd been using,
and that they required careful handling while cutting
lest the layers get off-kilter in my hand.
The extra diameter, of course
added yardage:
approx. 10 yards vs 7 yards
for every filter cut.

twisting coffee filters into yarn on an Ashford Charkha

They are also a different color:
evenly brown from center to edge
which leads to an evenly hued yarn,
in contrast to the heathery variegation
I get from Jodi's domestic filters
which shift from brown at the center
to creamy white at the edges
(unless they have been filtering pigments of course,
in which case they are every color of the rainbow).

That Jodi washes her filters indivudally
as they are used
and the commercial filters
are dumped in a bucket
to absorb the color from the
rest of that day's spent filters and grounds,
as they wait for Lyn to collect them for her compost,
probably accounts for this difference.

Needless to say,
my work will happily accommodate--
indeed is better for--
having both.

2 ply coffee filter yarn; indigo

Anyway,
after a morning of immersion
in our respective explorations,
Lyn and I met for lunch:
needles clicking
as we chewed on ideas,
raw carrots,
my husband's fresh sourdough bread,
and other such delights.

That Lyn was knitting
was particularly thrilling for me
as, though she had not picked up needles for years,
she decided to break her fast
with my Somewhat Slanted Sweater pattern--
which she later said
had a particularly easy point of entry.

Well, those may not be exactly the words she used
but since the pattern starts with a single stitch
and forms a pointed triangle to begin,
I couldn't resist the pun.

At any rate,
it was a huge treat
to walk into the Yarn Underground (my LYS)
and say,
"Pick some yarn,
any yarn, any weight
(lace to super bulky),
in a color you want to wear,
no gauge swatch necessary,"
and watch her go almost instantly
to a warm reddish pink
reminiscent of sweaters knit for her
by our mother and grandmother
when she was a little girl,
and watch her take off.

Indeed, her hands remembered
so well that by the second day she was
knitting and reading at the same time-
one of my favorite things to do
and the opportunity for which
I build into everything I design,
just in case.

And such was the pleasure of this
(and knitting lunches with me, of course),
that in the week she was here,
while still writing for hours every day,
she finished both front and back,
joined them with the shoulder straps,
and started the first sleeve,
which she knit all the way home.

What more could a designer/sister ask for?

And now I'm all agog with ideas
so might have to use some of the yarn
from the coffee filters she delivered
to knit a paper Somewhat Slanted
for myself --just because.
Think it'll work?

Just In Time Spinning

12/3/2019

After the weaving/knitting confusion
of last week's post
I was pretty sure that today
I could stick to the point.

The trouble began
when I began to gather
photos--

for no sooner had I found a few decent pictures
--of fleece prep and spindle choice,
--of knitting and ripping out and knitting again,
--of the three-needle-side-and-sleeve-seam-bind-off,
--and of the joys of putting a mock turtleneck
on what I had previously considered
a square-necked garment
(making it a square neck that looks round,
to riff off of Roald Dahl),*
*see chapter 23, Square Candies that Look Round

than I got completely distracted
by the other three (or is it four now?)
sweaters I've knit from this same fleece
(a Targhee/Debouillet from Nancy Ortmann).

What caught me up
was thinking about how,
though I used the same Hepty Spindles
and spun virtually identical singles
I treated the final yarn making process quite differently:

--dyeing and carding the fleece, spinning all the singles, then plying and knitting
vs
--chain plying each spindle full of singles, then dyeing and knitting then all
vs
--chain plying each spindle full and knitting it right away.

Before long I was all bogged down
with gathering pictures,
covering my computer desk top
with images to explain my choices,
and trying to describe why each approach
suited the mood and project of the moment
(and also getting sucked into inspecting old projects
with the wisdom of hindsight)--

and soon I'd totally forgotten
that your patience for such nonsense
(at least all in one blog post)
would soon be exhausted--
especially when what I REALLY wanted to do
was talk about the third choice,
the one I used for the most recent two:
-the Somewhat Slanted I'm wearing as I type
-and a Magic Medium
that I've worn like crazy since July
but don't think I've blogged about
because I hope to revise the magic Medium pattern
and figure it'd be better to talk about it
when I've got the new, more versatile version done
(though of course anyone who has bought it on Ravelry
will get a revised version if/when I get
a round tooit).

So in the name of sticking to the point
I deleted all that historic nonsense
so that I could say
that
though potentially filled with imperfections
(each skein slightly different
due to my spinning mood
and the weight of the spindle
from one end of the cop to the other)
just-in-time spinning
with a plying stick/wand
is my current absolute favorite.

And here's why:

A gal can even lounge on her bed
and pretend to take a nap
while chaining
if she really needs a break
but can't quite bring herself
to put down the yarn.

And what's not to love about that?

ps . For more about using a plying stick,
check out this blog post:
Cool Tools

pps And sigh.
I still feel compelled
to tuck a few photos of those other two methods
at the bottom
because there they are on my desktop
and I want to tidy it up
but will dispense with the descriptions
as I think I'm almost out of words.

Method One: spin all the singles and mix them up

The Diz is to keep all five strands even while winding, prior to adding twist (though this can all be done in one step with a spinning wheel)

Method Two: spin and ply, then dye (Henry's Shop Shirt)

And Bonus for reading this far:
The Proper recipients for both these last two garments:

the lure of color and paper

11/19/2019

Do you ever find
at the end of a medium-big project
that your mind is particularly vulnerable
to the enticement other ideas?

Well, that's how it was for me anyway,
As I finished weaving
the Digestive Biscuit Tapestry last week,
the pile of multi-hued coffee filters
my friend Jodi had collected
in the process of making
her amazing watercolors--
a pile of luscious color
that I had carefully stored in a cupboard
to avoid just this problem--
would not stop calling to me.

Handmade Watercolors by K. Jodi Gear made from foraged rocks and plants.

Clearly,
the out-of-sight-out-of-mind strategy
is only temporarily effective.
Ignore them though I did
as I cut the tapestry from the loom,
no sooner had I set down the scissors,
than I put the tapestry aside to rest,
dismantled the loom,
and made a tiny indigo pot.

Indigo-dyed pigment-stained coffee filters oxidizing on a willow and grape vine sphere.

And why not?
The sun was shining,
the chickadees were chirping,
and I could take the drips outside
(wearing two sweaters and an apron),
to turn some of those
yellows (from rabbit brush),
pinks (from Cochineal),
and vaguely off-white ones (from coffee???)
into a range of greens, purples and blues.

It didn't take long
and was hugely satisfying--
for what's not to love about a stack
of naturally colored paper?

Then I thought --
"The tapestry
surely would like
to rest a little longer--
which leaves me time
to cut a few of these into strips
and add some twist."

It was kind of like creating
my own box of crayons--
unsurprisingly addictive.

It was also,
I noticed,
a great way to avoid
the inevitable finish work
on this fringed tapestry
(my first in a couple of years
that was not warped
using the four selvedge technique).

As I twisted the linen warp ends
and sewed slits,
I wondered how long
I could I gaze upon
those freshly spun coffee filters...

For not only did I want to see
that amazing color
neatly tapped into
weft-faced splendor,

I also wanted to examine--
on a tactile level--
whatever it was that had led me
to make the mid-tapestry leap
from linen to wool
a few weeks ago.

Color Card; Hand Woven Four Selvedge Tapestry; 3 1/2 " x 3" ; hand spun linen; hand spun paper/kami-ito; natural pigments and dyes

Alas, this was not a large enough experiment
to come to any great conclusions,
so more experiments will hopefully ensue.

Here's, however, what I did note:

1. that weaving with wool
is familiar, forgiving,
elementally comfortable
and I LOVE it beyond words
(and in the midst of weaving words).

2. that I'm still super interested
in my ongoing cellulosic adventures--
in pursuing materials that come my way
friendly, familiar,
and easy to weave
or not.

Dan's Digestives; Hand Woven Tapestry; 25" x 19"; Linen Warp; Wool and Linen Weft; natural and synthetic dyes; hand and mill spun yarn.

3. That weaving tapestries
in whatever material
is an amazing thing
to get to do.

Wool, always.

11/27/2018

To blend, or not to blend -- that is the question.

At least it was the question a few weeks ago,
when, all of a sudden (isn't always like that?)
this marvelous collection of
Polworth, Cormo, Merino, Debouillet and, I think, Targhee.
from the Ortmann's flock in Wolf Point, Montana,
demanded attention.

(These eastern Montana range sheep cope with extreme weather and wild winter winds,
by growing amazingly soft, dense fleece--and the Ortmann's have bred for color.
I'd put in a link if I could find a website...Nancy???)

But back to blending.
I didn't have a plan at first--
just a strong desire to work with the fleece--
and with only a few hand fulls of each value,
teasing and carding each separately
seemed a good starting point.

While I was at it,
(and since I didn't know how I wanted to proceed)
I also carded the few ounces of
light brown something-or-other --
(not quite as fine but lovely and bouncy)
that a friend had given me a few weeks before.

Also, why not add to the pile
by turning some white fleece
(Targhee/Debouillet also from the Ortmanns)
a kind of periwinkle blue?
I had an indigo pot going after all.

And as I dyed and carded
an idea began to form --
a new kind of idea,
an idea that, once acted upon,
could not be undone.
Was it worth the risk?

Since Discretion is the better part of valor
and caution preferable to rash bravery (sometimes anyway),
I reserved a small selection of all the greys,
blended one batt of the periwinkle with white
(to create another value range),
and set the whole works aside as a separate project
before doing anything drastic with the bulk of the batts.

But what did those batts want?
Once upon a time,
I would have spun each
into its own yarn
for weaving into tapestry.
This was, indeed, why I wanted
the collection of fleece in the first place,
for value has always been elemental to my tapestry practice

But ideas change,
and between spring and fall
this new (or maybe very old) idea--
charming, complicated and irresistible--
had wormed its way in.
What I now wanted was:
-fine, bouncy, heathery purple/grey yarn
-to weave on my backstrap loom,
-into yards of warm, flexible fabric
-with an easy drape,
-that I could stitch into next winter's jacket.
Really?
Well yeah -- really.

But clothing? Sheesh.
I haven't woven cloth for clothing
since... well...
since I wove my wedding dress fabric in 1989.

Well, maybe it's time.
And it's not like I'd have have to
buy, or even borrow, a loom.

(For those new to this blog,
I spent the better part of the time between June 2016 and June 2017
weaving on a backstrap loom --
at first I wove only tapestry
but eventually devoted myself
to plain, simple, luminous, open cloth.
It was a thrilling,
unlooked for,
and disconcerting
expedition
(especially for a tapestry weaver)
that began as a vague whim,
became an obsession,
grew into an exhibition,
and finally insisted on becoming a comic ).

And thank goodness I wrote the comic!

Not only did I rely on it
to make sure I wound my warp correctly,
but I also needed the tale
of Luminist and Storymaker,
to remind me that trusting the yarn is a thing--
even if it is a messy thing,
with no clear outcome.

So now I have it--
a mountain of messy blended batts,
a winter's worth of spinning,
and a new project to freak out about.

But hey, that's miles in the future.

Thanksgiving Hepty Testing in the Canyon

Right now,
the spindle awaits.
And oh golly, is this stuff nice to spin.

A Palette Jumps into a Lake

7/24/2018

So you might have noticed a slight shift
in the colors I've been using in my comics
since -- oh-- maybe May.

All I really wanted, at first,
was a slightly brighter green.
Spring had arrived, after all,
and though it often poured rain on Farmer's Market mornings,

the grass, the trees, the new lettuces, the tunes
seemed to call for something more exuberant than
the greyed green of the indigo/yellow ochre combo
from my beloved limited palette of last winter.

Weld dye extracted from dry plants, filtering through cotton cloth

Madder and Weld lakes precipitating after addition of alum and calcium carbonate.

Just a little bright yellow, I thought --
something like the weld with which I dye wool.
And then a couple of weeks ago
as I was messing about with madder,
I remembered lakes.

Madder and Weld lakes evaporating (easier than filtering I thought)

Some of the best known historic lakes
are actually made from my standard natural dyes:
madder (alizarin crimson)
cochineal (carmine)
and--ta da--weld,
which apparently is the source one of Vermeer's favorite yellows.

With the help of this site,
and some glorious photos,
I did a few rough experiments
the results of which have.... varied.
The madder turned out more orange than I imagined,
the cochineal leans toward purple rather than carmine,
and the weld is more than a little chalky.

But I still ended up with some photogenic pigment,

that blended easily with gum arabic and honey

and allows me to paint my
linen shift (a summer staple)
with some accuracy.

Also, the greens are definitely brighter.
Weld and indigo watercolors combine nicely on paper
as they do on yarn.

Palette-wise though, I am left in a bit of a muddle.
For even as I enjoy the new colors,
they can be overwhelming
(particularly the cochineal)
and it would not surprise me a bit
if I narrow back down---

once berry season is over.

madder red

6/19/2018

R. tinctorium from my garden- well aged

Frankly, I wasn't hopeful.
This grubby collection of hastily collected
mud-encrusted roots had been drying out in an old torn paper bag
for... gosh... 15 years? More?

I'd planted the madder seeds sometime in the 1990s--
the sticky leaves and stems scratching bare arms
and clinging to small boy clothing
when my 28 year old son was
a significantly smaller person than he is now--
and I remember being so impatient,
first for it to grow,
then with its unpleasant and voracious character.
Finally I dug out a few roots,
stuck them in a bag,
and forgot about them.

Freshly gathered madder DOES need to age --
or so said Michelle Whipplinger
at the 'RED' workshop I took from her in 2000
at the Color Congress in Ames Iowa.
"It takes time," said Michelle,
"for the Alizarin to reach its maximum potential"
(something about sugars turning to starches
that I could probably look up to clarify, yet won't right now...)
But
this pile of sticks did not look promising.

Still, I shook off the mud,
broke the big bits apart,
cut them into the smallest chunks I could manage
with my not very sharp secateurs,
and dumped them into a jar to soak.
Without a dye-dedicated blender to puree the softened chunks
the color would not be terribly strong.
But so what?
It was just an experiment.

R. Tinctorium from my garden - freshly gathered

And since these days
I'm a half-assed, seat-of-the-pants dyer--
and already making a big wet mess--
I might as well dig up some fresh roots
and try them too.

Now when it comes to fresh madder,
there are two things you're not supposed to do:
1. dig the roots in the spring/ summer in the midst of the growing season
2. use them right away.

But I am in the mood now
(well I was on Sunday-- two days ago).
The madder plants were encroaching
on the ripening raspberry patch
and raspberry canes are prickly enough without
having to push one's arms through sticky madder leaves.
I was ready to hack them back--
and why not make a few exploratory stabs with a shovel
at the same time?

Fresh and dry cut roots went into separate jars
(and a little dry weld into a third just because).
After an overnight soak they all went
into a hot water bath to simmer and soften.
Weld is fine being simmered more directly
but this double boiler-ish jar method
is an easy way to keep the temperature
of the madder from climbing into the 'brown' range.

Meanwhile, back at my work table
I filled just one more Kuchulu spindle with white yarn,
then plied it while listening to the A Playful Day podcast
(broadening my natural dye rainbow during Pride),
before alum mordanting my pile
of two ply "tea" skeins

Two fisting at my work table: Hepty Spindle in back, Kuchulu in front, Jodi Gear Tea Mug on the right, Simon Pearce coffee mug on the left.

I call them tea skeins
because most were spun
over cups of tea with friends.
This functional 10 gram Turkish spindle
(made by Ed Jenkins)
lives in my purse, it is also ever ready
for long lines at the Post Office
and to keep my hands
from the otherwise inevitable
napkin-shredding.

iced coffee and macaroons in Portland OR with my beloved sister and niece

But back to dyeing.

Photos of mordanting (or mordanted) yarn
are rarely interesting.
And anyway, I forgot to take them
so have none to bore you with.
Nor, alas, did I document the dye extraction process.
But both are pretty standard.

Mordant: Alum at 10-12% WOF and Cream of Tarter at 5- 6%

Dye extraction: soak, simmer, pour off, soak, simmer, pour off.
As mentioned, I try to keep the simmer temp about 160 F ish
to avoid brown tones in the red.

Instead, then, you get a foggy photo of jars in a pot
and then-- voila-- red yarn!

I kept the first and second extractions separate:
the skein on the lower right was the first extraction from the dry madder
and is significantly darker even if this photo doesn't really show it.
The other three are the second extraction from the dry madder
and the first and second from the fresh.
There was some variation among these,
but actually less than I expected.

What I also didn't expect,
was how un-orange the color is.

I've been dyeing with madder for decades,
always with purchased flakes
or extracts (once they became available)--
everything carefully calculated, weighed and measured--
and there have been some pretty spectacular colors.
How not with this marvelous dye?
But because so much available madder
is R. cordifolia rather than R tinctorium,
the color often leans well into the orange range.

But this yarn does not.
Half-assed, casually measured, fresh or dry,
R. tinctorium is something else again.

I'm dyeing as I write this,
pausing between sentences
to give things a stir, or a rinse,
to hang the skeins on the line to drip,
to oooh and aahhhhh,
or take another photo.

Just added the one below:
first skeins and the first exhaust from the same jars.
The main thing I'm noticing?
The colors on the fresh madder skeins
are brighter, clearer, and slightly less orange
than the dry.
Anyone have thoughts on this???

Two days ago I was about to start weaving,
and got distracted.
But I guess now I know
what this little four selvedge warp
has been waiting for.

And -- OH WOW --one more photo--
(sorry, there have been a lot)--
two more exhaust skeins casually tossed into the jar with
what I thought were the well-extracted fresh roots.
How gorgeous is THAT????

Henry's Shop Shirt

2/17/2018

It’s 2 degrees F this morning in North Idaho with no shortage of snow
so the wool shirt Henry asked for last spring
that I finished yesterday,
is still just the thing.

His shop does have a wood stove,
but one wall is an old sail
and to actually get work done,
wool layers are essential.

A boatbuilder by trade,
Henry is also the son of a spinner
and a couple of years ago
he designed a spindle
that just happens to be perfect
for the yarn I like to make.

It’s called The Hepty, and I’ve blogged about it at least twice...
Indeed, many of the spindle photos on this blog are of Hepty #1
which I’ve used almost exclusively since I snatched it out of Henry’s hands two years ago.
(Once in a while he makes a few to sell-- the Heptys
in the photo above are waiting for their very own spinners--
and since I was visiting I got to try them all...)

At any rate, from Henry’s first casual request for a shop shirt
there was no question as to how I’d spin the yarn.

Since almost every knitting project begins with fleece,
I ordered one from the Ortmann’s in Wolf Point, Montana.
Their marvelous fine fleeces have been a staple (pun sort of intended)
of my spinning life for years (Cormo, Polworth, Debouillet),
and this time I chose a Targhee/Debouillet cross--
out of curiosity and a desire for something both next-to-the-skin soft and wearably robust.
The fleece was (and still is), lovely.

About 20 microns, it is soft and silky with enough integrity that my fingers
don’t feel like they are covered with sandpaper when I touch it
as sometimes happens with superfine fleeces.

It has, indeed, been a pleasure to work with at every stage

An early sample helped me to decide that the fabric I envisioned -
fine, light and very stretchy— would begin with three ply yarn.

Of coruse I was disposed to want a three ply,
as it is so easy to chain the singles from my spindle onto a plying stick
(at left in the photo below), and then add twist when plying back onto the spindle.

—note: I wrote about plying sticks in the same February 2, 2016 blog post linked above, so no need to click again if you clicked on that one!

The joy of this technique is that I can spin and ply each spindle full of yarn
with the tools at hand, wherever I am.

By fall — I had spun about 380 grams (13.57 oz)

I never did count the yardage, but I was pretty sure the sweater would be less than a pound.

Lobaria Pulmonaira (lungwort lichen), from a particular spot near our cabin
provided the dyestuff.
I went there for a few solo days in early December,
enjoying the full circle satisfaction of dyeing on a wood cook stove
using the same aluminum pot in which I dyed my first yarn ever,
while living in the tiny house you can see a couple of photos down,
back in 1985.

These lichens work best for me when there is direct contact,
but I didn’t want bits of lichen in the skeins
so put the yarn in a net bag
and the net bag in the pot with the simmering lichen.

The color was not as even as it would have been had I let the skeins float free,
but it is luscious nonetheless,
And certain amount of a abrash can be a fine thing
on an otherwise unadorned garment.

The structure is a simple top down raglan in the round,
all in stockinette stitch, which means i could read while knitting— always a plus for me.

The pattern is the shape of Henry with numbers based on the yarn I had made.

The final garment weighs in a 295 grams (about 10.5 oz)

It actually fits me (with a little stretch over the hips and extra long sleeves), so perhaps the next one will be me shaped, as I have 85 grams left over, plenty of fleece,
and a spindle that likes to be used.