Dyeing...

After the reed blossom natural dye I went for another dye plant that was in my stock for almost two years. I collected these birch leaves on midsummer day in 2013.
Only 30 grams of leaves gave an intense yellow on two 100g skeins of DK yarn.

The yarn was mordanted first with alum, while the leaves were allowed to boil a bit for dye extraction.
Then I poured the mordanting water into the dye bath and hung only a section of each skein into the simmering "birch leave tea". After a little while, I added more of the skein and more and more... In the end I put the whole skeins into the bath and let it cool over night.
Then the skeins were removed and washed.
Into this almost exhausted dye bath I gave a spoon full of alum, heated and let a part of a skein of sock yarn hang into it, heated it up for a short time and then let it stand for a day (at room temperature). It also got a pretty soft yellow... I'm planning to use that skein for some indigo dyeing.

Apart from plants I was also pretty productive with acid dyes and tried myself at kettle dyeing...
The roving was immersed completely in a pot of water. Different dyes were added in different sections of the pot. The dyes spread a bit and talk to each other.... as a result I got very harmonic colors that fit together so well.

For the following two rovings I only used Ashford hot pink, blue and yellow (no black or other colors). So beautiful!

left: BFL wool, right: Merino 16 mic

And as I am showing dyed stuff already.... the following was dyed already some months ago, but I never showed them. Pure Tussah silk and merino/silk blends. They were dyed using the handpainting method, wrapped in foil and steamed to fix the dyes.

When am I going to spin all that??!!

Natural Dyeing - Reed Blossom

This weekend I finally found a little bit of time to dye a skein of yarn with natural dyes.

I have collected a huge number of natural dyes already, that are all waiting for their day in the dye pot:

- onion skins (brown and red ones, collected over many months in my kitchen)

- birch leaves (collected on midsummer day in 2013)

- madder (bought)

- myrtus leaves (bought)

- alcea rosea (collected during walks through Zurich, they grow everywhere here)

- sandal wood (bought)

- annatto (collected myself in brazil)

- reed blossoms (collected in 2014 in the park of my university)

- cochineal (bought as an "easter egg dye")

- (probably more than I remember now!)

Unfortunately I could never find time to use them. This weekend I just felt like this summer I should change that and at least try some of my natural dyes :)

I started by using reed blossoms which I collected last year together with my boyfriend in the park around my university.

me collecting reed blossoms in August 2014

I am a bit short on time usually and a bit lazy ;-) So I used the following heavily modified version of a recipe found in the book "Naturfarben auf Wolle und Seide" by Dorothea Fischer.

Ingredients

- 30 g of dried reed blossoms

- 100 g of sock yarn (Bluefaced Leicester 75%, Nylon 25%)

- 15 g of alum

- 1.5 teaspoons of iron sulfate

- 2 pots (a small one for about 1-2 liters and a larger one for about 5 liters)

- piece of cloth to tie the plant material in plus an old hairband or a piece of string.

Mordanting

dissolved the alum in a bit of hot water, added more cool water and the yarn, so that it was just covered. Heated and let simmer for about 30 min. This I did in the larger pot!

Preparing the Dye Plant

This can be done at the same time as the mordanting. 

Cut the reed flowers into small pieces using scissors. Put the plants into the smaller pot and added water to cover, heated and let simmer for about 30 min. Then I filtered the mixture through a piece of cloth, letting the liquid run directly into the larger pot (where the yarn-mordant mixture is). The cloth was tied together with an old hairband and also placed in the larger pot.

Dyeing

Many recipes will tell you now to simmer the yarn for one hour, then taking it out and putting a second skein intho the bath which will again stay for one hour and get a lighter color. I don't like pastel colors so much, I want strong colors. As my dyebath already has quite a low content of dyeing material (30%, most recipes take 100%), I wanted to let that skein in as long as possible to exhaust all the dye it can...

I let the yarn simmer on low heat for about 1 hour, then I switched off the heat and left the mixture stand over night. On the next day, I turned it on again and let it simmer on low heat for about 2-3 hours. Sometimes I added more water to cover the yarn completely.

During this time you don't need to watch the pot, you can easily clean the house, go to the post office, grocery shopping, etc ;-)

Color Modification with Iron Sulfate

I took out the skein and placed it in a strainer over a pot (the smaller pot from the beginning). I removed the bag with the tied dye plants and added about 1.5 teaspoons of iron sulfate to the mixture. Then I let hang half of the skein into the dye pot, keeping the other half in the strainer.

The half in the pot will now get a darker color giving a two-colored semisolid skein :)

After simmering for about 30 min, the skein was removed from the pot. Be careful that the color modified part, does not touch the unmodified part because this can give stains!

After letting the skein cool a bit on the strainer it was rinsed with warm water, washed with a mild fiber soap and further rinsed until the water stayed clear.

Let it dry... and tadaaa: Isn't it wonderful? You can see the lighter green, which is the unmodified color of the reed blosssoms and the darker green modified by the iron sulfate.

Here is the skein together with some other plant dyes yarns I did before in similar methods:

left to right: two solar dyed skeins (multicolor yellow-orange-pink), reed blossoms (green), privet berries (petrol), dahlia flowers (bright orange).

I hope to be able to show you more natural colors this upcoming summer! :)

Batts, Artyarn, and a Video!

Camel-silk combing waste carded into batts

Color Theme: Underwater

This is how it looks like on the bobbin...

... and this is how it looks like when I spin this :D

Sorry, it's in German. But you can jump to minute 3:30, there will be only spinning and music!

Spindled Leftie

This week I have been a good girl and finished many things :)

Here is another UFO that landed this week:

It is a "Leftie"(pattern from Martina Behm). The pattern originally calls for Fingering weight yarn, but as this is not my favorite weight of yarn, I decided to go a bit thicker :) The yarn that i had spun had about 9wpi  (somewhere between DK and worsted weight) and I knit with 4.5mm needles.

The colorful yarn was originally spun during the Tour de Fleece 2014, it was a leftover from a roving that I once dyed for a different project.

It was only 43 grams (97 meters), but I loved the colors so much that I wanted to turn them into something big.

Then I found the Leftie pattern and thought it was perfect!

For the "background" yarn I decided to spin a Merino/Babycamel mixture (50:50) in natural color.

And as I was so happy with my new spindle from the famous German wood turner Matthes, I decided to spin everything on the spindle.

That took a while.... so here some photos of the progress :)

I love the result! It's so decorative!

Camel/Silk Artyarn Shawl

Last week I could finish a project which I am really in love with...

More than a year ago I got this fiber from Sidi. It is the "waste" that is produced during the industrial combing process to make combed top. It is a mixture of camel and silk. Camel naturally has a very short staple, but it is extremely soft and light. Silk is a long and sleek fiber, but as this here is the "waste" of the production, there are a lot of knobs, short pieces and also pieces of silk cocoons in it.

Camel / Silk "Bandabgang" (waste from the industrial combing process)

I decided to dye it in some colors that remind me of a beach in Ubatuba, Praia Vermelha.
I chose the colors green (for the jungle), brown yellow, orange, red, and different shades of ocean blue. One part I left undyed, it should be the color of the sand :)
The red comes because on that particular beach you can find many many red and orange shells. Also the name "vermelha" means red.
I apologize for the flood of pictures that coms now... but there are just too many good pictures of that beach :)

the fibers after dyeing

So much to the colors :)

Then I took my hand carders to prepare the fibers for spinning. This has two effects - to make the fibers more organized and easier to spin, but also to mix and blend the colors and to make transitions...

fibers are spread on the hand carder while blending different colors

when finished carding, the fibers are rolled u with the help of two sticks (knitting needles)

Like this I made about 100 fiber rolls, called "rolags". Unfortunately I don't have a picture of all of them together, because I started to spin some, before I finished making all of them :)

The nice thing about these little fiber packages is, that you can build up a gradient or stripes, by spinning them in the order you like...
And then came the spinning wheel!
Due to the knotty fiber the thread became a bit uneven and has a lot of texture.

 

How to ply this single?
This question was in my head for many weeks... I wanted to keep the gradient, but a navajo ply would just look weird... Then I came to the decision to take a thin silk thread that is usually used for sewing, and to ply it with this. I chose a natural beige color. While plying I held the silk thread tight and let the camel/silk thread go on it loosely with a slight angle. By this I obtained a funny spiral yarn, with many bobbles and knobs in between:

Almost at the end! :)
For almost half a year I had the yarn and didn't know what to knit from it... it should be something special. But there were just not the right knitting patterns out there for this yarn...
So I have decided to just cast on 3 stitches and start to increase in a regular way to make a semi-circular shawl. Along the way I picked up some shell beads and knitted them in.
And for the border I got an inspiration at my yarn shop, a pretty wave pattern...

I love the scarf! It's so soft and light and warm... incredible. And with all this story behind it, it really is something special.

Danke, Sidi, für dieses Geschenk. Ich hatte so viel Freude damit :)