Echoes of a Dream

a blissful weekend

It's amazing what you can get done when most of the family goes away for the weekend. On Friday, straight after lunch Tom went off to Devon (near Clovelly) with the boys and suddenly the whole weekend loomed large for me and Amber. It was lovely - Amber pottered around in the afternoon while I did some mordanting and then in the evening we watched a film together. Desperately Seeking Susan with Madonna, if you're wondering. I first watched that film in Tokyo when it came out and it's amazing how watching it again brought back such memories - I could still remember walking out of the cinema at the end with 'Get Into the Groove' playing.

Anyway, on Saturday we got up early and went shopping to a big mall about 40 minutes from us. Except that it took longer as the motorway was closed at our junction and we were diverted all around the houses. We went through some amazing villages - it was like being on a wildgoose chase and we breathed a sigh of relief when we actually found ourselves at the shops. Back home at luchtime and I knew I just had to get on with the dyeing - it was now or never. So whilst Amber seemed to spend hours in the bathroom washing her hair and waxing her legs or whatever, I got on with it. This time I was dyeing blanket and silk squares as well as fleece.

First off it was brazilwood:

Then I did some cochineal on blanket:

and some on fleece - I love this colour:

and then logwood, which came out a dark purpley grey:

I didn't like it on the fleece so I overdyed it with cochineal and then brazilwood:

I also dyed with some osage orange which is a lovely colour. Then all too suddenly it was early evening so we collapsed in front of another video and then on Sunday morning I started my indigo vat around 8 o'clock.

I overdyed some yellow fleece and blanket. The fleece isn't wonderful but will blend into a nice shade once I card it. However, I do need to re-dip some of it in either blue again and some in yellow as it's too bluey:

The blanket was first dyed with onionskins and osage orange. I love the result:

Isn't it gorgeous? However, the backs of some of the pieces have gotten streaks of blue on them where the blanket touched the base of the dyepot that had some unblended dye on it. I'm pretty annoyed about that but I guess if you just use the nice side it's OK.

Then I had a marathon blue session - on blanket:

and on fleece:

some of this fleece will stay blue and some I will overdye with yellow to make green.

So, all in all a pretty productive and tiring weekend. By 3 o'clock on Sunday afternoon I was ready to drop and drop I did. I curled up on the sofa and went to sleep. Still, it was a lovely weekend. I had no cooking to do - Amber and I just ate what was in the fridge. Not cooking frees you up so much doesn't it? Then I got to spend some quality time with Amber and I got to do my stuff too. It was bliss.

Tom and the boys came back at 6 o'clock absolutely shattered. They'd had a great weekend - been to the beach a lot and on Saturday the whole party hired a boat and went fishing around Lundy island. Too many late nights meant they were all in bed by 8.30 last night. That gave me time to sort through my dry piles of blanket:

and silk squares which need ironing yet:

I will have most of this stuff up on Etsy soon but I have to card the fleece first and the carder is at school - I keep forgetting to ask for it back. Hopefully, by the weekend so keep a look out here or on Etsy. Or if you're interested in anything in particular email me and I'll save it for you. Incidentally, the silk is 8mm so not as sheer as the lighter stuff so would make great playcloths or nature table backdrops.

OK, I have to go and tidy up after myself - the garden is a tip.

dyeing with dandelions

It all started because I was going to do a post about dyeing with dandelions. Then I saw a pattern for a felt dandelion on the internet and yesterday afternoon when Tom took the children out I decided to make one and feature it in this post:

It was fun to make but the dandelion was a giant one that looked like it had eaten too much fertilizer. When the children saw it they said "If you put that on the nature table it'll be bigger than Mother Earth". So I searched in my books:

and combined the patterns in both and came up with this one:

Bet you can't tell which is the real one!

It's still a bit big and I think I'll reduce the pattern even more to make a whole bunch of them. It seems fitting to have them on the nature table as I'm currently dyeing with them. Here they are - monster dandelion, real one and number two:

 

If you fancy making one let me know and I'll write out a pattern. I'm going to make some smaller ones as I said and this time I'll record my measurements.

Well, onto dyeing then. Two weeks ago I was combing the lanes for dandelions and in the past week our little orchard has been covered in them:

So now is a good time to have a go at natural dyeing as I'm sure you'll be able to easliy lay your hands on some. As with all flowers you need to pick the heads, cover them with water and bring to the boil. Simmer for an hour and then take out the mushy flowers. Either cool the liquid and add your mordanted fibre or if you're mordanting at the same time add the hot fibres. Either way bring to the boil and simmer for half an hour to an hour. You should get a nice pale yellow (pic below).

If you want to experiment a bit take out the fibre and add some iron water. I have some rusty nails soaking in water in the garden:

the dyepot will turn a murky sort of grey/green:

 

Put your fibres back in and simmer for about 15 minutes and you will get a very pretty, light sage green:

That's the plain old dandelion yellow on the left and various shades of the green on the right. They look much nicer than in this picture actually.

My fave greens are goldenrod/indigo and turmeric/indigo but it is nice to have a few of these dull greens in your stash too. When I made this nightlight ring I found that I used the dull greens much more:

Once again I would suggest you get a book out on dyeing and read a little bit more. Iron is used to 'sadden' colours and too much can make fibres brittle I believe. One last point. I left the flowers in the pot as I was dyeing blanket. If you plan to dye fleece or knitting wool I would suggest you strain the dyebath as you will go mad trying to pick bits out of the dyed fibres.

Well, it's STILL easter holidays and I'm off to visit my parents tomorrow - just overnight. This time we're going on the train as I have some train vouchers to use. Raj is very excited and I'm thinking two changes, three-and-a-half hours door to door (double what it takes in the car) but what the hell - we're on holiday. "Let the train take the strain" as those old adverts used to say. I certainly will .................

Daffodillies..............

Oh my this swapping thing is so addictive. I can't believe that just for all the stuff I don't want, I'll be getting Lambs Pride wool; some magazines, lots of chocolate chips, sizzix cutters, fabric, dollmaking stuff and much more besides. It's recycling at it's best isn't it? Exchanging the stuff I don't need anymore for the stuff you don't need anymore and I'm going through my shelves again soon, I can tell you!

Now I promised to tell you about dyeing with daffodils in this post and many people complimented me on the colour which was a bright, bright yellow. However, I got that colour in a roundabout way and I'm going to show you how.

First off I started with no less than 40 bunches of daffodils (which I did get cheaply thank goodness) - weighing nearly a kilo. I put them in a pan and brought them up to boil and simmered it all for an hour. I had to do it in two lots because they didn't all fit in my pan.

 

Then I let the pan cool overnight and next morning I strained out the flower mush and added my mordanted fibre. I also put in a few bits of onionskin as I'd read that it enhances the yellow of flowers. Brought it up to boil and simmered for about an hour.

Now you can't really see here but once I let the pan cool a bit I took out some fibre and rinsed it. It was a pale hay, goldy colour and not at all to my liking. I was worried that it would dry even lighter.

So I did an experiment on the side. I took out some of the dye liquid and I added washing soda to it which makes the water alkaline and I added a bit of wet fibre to it and compared the result.

   

The washing soda'd stuff is on the left and as you can see it went a vivid yellow:

Then being the impetuous person that I am I decided that I preferred the brighter shade so I bunged a bit of washing soda into the big pan. It went darker:

Yep, if you flick back to the other pic you can see the difference in colour. I left the fibre in for 10-15 minutes and then I washed the whole lot in dishwashing liquid which is ph neutral.  Here's another picture of the two shades. This is now just a memory as I put ALL the fibre back in the pan to brighten!

There still seemed to be a lot of colour in the pan so I added some mordanted blanket yesterday and boiled it for about 20 minutes. I've read that washing soda isn't good for wool so I didn't want to risk leaving it in for too long. However, as another experiment I did put two pieces in the pan overnight (without boiling or simmering). There was plenty of colour in the pot as you can see:

So, what's my advice if you want to try daffodils? I'd say that unless you want to dye 250g fibre and about 250g blanket you won't need as many flowers as I did, thankfully. The washing soda seems to make the dye more brilliant and to make it go further. So for 100g of fibre or blanket you'll only need about 200g of flowers. Boil up your flowers, cool in the pan overnight, strain and add your fibre. Boil and simmer and then add about a teaspoon of washing soda or maybe a teeny bit more if it doesn't darken. Agitate the fibre and leave for 15 mins. Then rinse in dishwashing liquid (I just use Ecover) and wash out and leave it to dry. By the way only rinse in hot, hot water if you've just taken it out of a hot pan otherwise the change in temperature will make the fibre felt.

VERDICT: I love the colour of the blankets but I'm not so sure about some of the fibre. The curls are lovely, bright and shiny but I'm not so sure about the bluefaced leicester - it may well be different once it's carded. On the whole it was definately worth it but if I'm going to do it again I need to grow my own flowers. If that's the case then it would be cheaper to grow french marigolds which give just as nice a yellow. But you know me - at least I can say - been there, done that when I next walk past daffodils.

Just want to leave you with a lovely song that my children all sang at Kindy before I get back to my cauldron pot:

Daffodillies, daffodillies you're so pretty I was told,

because you shine like the sunshine, like heavenly gold

because you shine like the sunshine like heavenly gold.

Aaghhhhhhhh....................

More plant dyed fibre for sale

Just a quick post today for a change. I'm conscious of the fact that I have a ton of things to do this morning and I can't spend all my time on the computer.  Want to say a big thank you first to all the lovely ladies who agreed to do a swap for my stuff in the last post. I must say I'm really pleased with the idea - why not give your stuff that you don't need anymore to someone who does and vice versa. In exchange for the books and wool I've been offered dollmaking supplies and magazines. I do still have one book left on dollmaking if anyone wants it and a pile of Simply Knitting magazines too - they're issues 7, 11, 12, 13, 18 and 21.

As you know I went to my parents for the weekend as my Dad was 88 on Saturday. Mum and I made pakoras (bhajis). We bought samosas and I'd baked a cake on Friday morning to take with me. It's funny as I was leaving I grabbed some candles that I'd used on Raj's cake and put those on for my Dad. They happened to be those new fangled ones that re-light and you should have seen my Dad's face - he was like a child. He blew them out and couldn't believe that they relit. He laughed and laughed and said 'This is something new. I've never seen the likes of this before' - picture an old Indian man, beard and turban, laughing like a seven year old. It was so sweet and this is the Dad that I had no relationship with, that I was always frightened off, that drank and shouted. It was a pretty cathartic moment. (Is that the right word?)

Anyway, I found an old photo of my Mum and grilled the poor woman about her childhood so I will blog about that soon. But as I said this is supposed to be a short post. I mainly wanted to tell you that I went mad on Sunday and bagged up the last bits of my plant dyed fibre and have listed it on Etsy. I have ten bags of curls in mixed colours

and I've made up a few bags of greens, blues and yellows. I haven't listed those but you can email me if you want them. They'll be the same price as the mixed colours above.

I also bagged up some wensleydale curls which are beautiful - long and shiny. Click here to see them before I bagged them up:

These make really good hair for fairies and little dolls and are definately worth having in your stash. If you want a bag of either just click on MY SHOP in the sidebar.

It seems like I'll be doing more dyeing as I bumped into the lady that has the cotswold sheep in my village and she tells me that she has a fleece I can buy. So I'll take that as a sign that I'm meant to keep at it! The only trouble at the moment is the lack of natural plant stuff to dye with. I fancy trying daffodils but I'd have to go out in the dead of night (it's pitch black round here) and steal them from everyones gardens. Can you imagine the headline in the next Parish News!!

Before I go just want to show you how Amber is getting on with her hat. She was taking her knitting to school this morning so we just plonked it on her head for a quick photo:

and I want to show you the car I've fallen in love with:

Isn't it gorgeous? I can just see it chugging up or country lanes. It's a Singer - from the 50's I think. We saw it at a car museum at the weekend. Tom on the other hand fancies one of these:

This one is an old Jag - maybe an XK120 (?). Amber on the other hand went for the old Aston Martin (sorry didn't take a pic). What expensive taste we have. I'd better get on with ther plant dyeing then if we're ever to afford this lot.

Some dyeing and divali.........

One day I will write a post and tell you what a relaxing and quiet week I have had. But then I'll have nothing to write about I suppose and anyway, I don't think it will happen until after Christmas now. So here's what my busy week has been full of. FirstIy I made another doll to go on my stall at the Christmas fair and I made Ruby a felted wool jacket. Here they both are:

I need to embellish the jacket a little bit but as usual I'll probably leave it until the last minute. I also made these chappies to add to the collection:

I'm not convinced that I like the different coloured beards now - so another thing to change at the last minute. I'll have to have a 'last minute' list going soon.  As if I hadn't done enough crafting this week two friends came over yesterday afternoon and we dyed with cochineal and logwood and onion skins.

Here are some close ups:

 

This lot of fleece was dyed in cochineal and then I dipped the left bit in logwood quickly. The colours are divine aren't they?

This is all logwood and the bit on the left was pre-dyed in indigo. Now take a look at this amazing lot:

Two different types of fleece dyed with onion skins. Can you believe the colour of the one on the right? Sadly, it wasn't my fleece but my friend took pity on me and gave me some. Lastly, a couple of cochineal skeins:

It's going to be my new favourite colour I think. I did dye lots of pieces of blanket too and I've added pics of those to my photo album if you want to take a look.

So that takes us up to last night when I collapsed wearily into bed. This morning we remembered that we were celibrating Divali at school so it was a hasty making of a few divali cards for teachers and me putting on my finery to look the part.

I'm really sorry for the terrible pic on the left. I was too tired to go around the house with the mirror seeing where the camera wouldn't flash. I've done a close up of my outfit though for you to see here (by the way I just squeezed into it this year). It's called a salwar kameez and I bought it a few years ago for my niece's wedding and it's so lovely. The colour goes from green to purple and the dupatta that goes around the neck is gorgeous. It's tie dyed and the tieing is done by picking up little circles of fabric and tieing them with cotton and then going on to the next circle. When I bought it I had to unravel some of the circles myself - they're on a continuous loop. The whole thing gets an outing about once a year for Divali and I will wear it tomorrow when we go to my parents for a little celebration.

Incase, you don't know Divali is on 21st and is the Indian festival of light. Both Hindus and Sikhs celebrate it and it's quite an important celebration. I remember when I was little my Mum and all of us would spend most of the day cooking special food like samosas, pakoras (bahjis), meat curries ( we usually ate vegetables most of the time), puris. Dad would go out and hunt down freshly cooked jalebis and Indian sweets - in those days there weren't many shops selling the stuff. Then after all the cooking we'd put on our best Indian outfits and a bindhi on the forehead and go to the temple to pray. Back home relatives and friends would pop in all evening to eat and chat and to say 'Happy Divali'. My Mum also used to make divas herself - again you couldn't buy them as you can now. She'd take some chapatti dough and make into a cup shape. Then she'd pour in some oil and fashion a wick out of cotton wool and put it in. Then she'd put one in each window of the house and light it. It always looked so magical.

Our Divali celebrations are a bit simpler these days as my parents are getting old and their children are scattered all over the world. Still the whole area where my parents live is lit up with special lights laid on by the council and the place will be buzzing, there'll be queues outside the sweet shops and the temple will be full, everyone will be wearing their brightest and best and there will be fireworks in the evening. We're all really looking forward to it.  So I bid you a 'Happy Divali' and a lovely weekend too.

Some Kool Aid advice please?

As you know I have been sort of natural dyeing mad this summer (understatement I think) and a few days ago I decided that I'd better label all the stuff I dyed before it was too late. Rather innocently I delved into the basket where I keep my pieces of blanket and it was a bit like Mary Poppin's carpet bag - blanket just kept coming out. I did manage to label most of the pieces thankfully - telling myself I should do this straight away in the future. I thought you might like to see some of the pieces together as I've only posted up pics as and when. This is about 3/4 of the whole lot - the stack was going to fall over if I put any more on top. The left pic is outside and the right one taken with a flash inside. I'd say that the true colours are a cross between the two. Aren't they lovely? I'm starting to view them as my children and getting a bit possessive so I think I ought to start selling them. Here's another pic from proud Mum:

From top bottom to top you can see walnut, madder, indigo, brazilwood, goldenrod, brazilwood (pink), logwood (purple), cutch (brown) and the green is my fave combination goldenrod and indigo.

I have also dyed a lot of fleece but I didn't have the energy to start sorting all that out - two black bin bags full of plastic bags with each shade in a bag.  By the way the obsession hasn't passed yet. I'm getting together with two friends to try cochineal and madder tomorrow - want to try and get a red out of madder as I've only managed a sort of teracotta.

As much as I love natural dyes and dyeing I really fancy having a go at Kool Aid dyeing. I have seen some pics on flickr and I want to try and dye some sock wool in different colours - space dyeing is that what it's called? All I know is that it's an American drink (what does your stomach look like afterwards?), some of it has sugar in it and that's it. So please can I ask you for some advice. Which colours are nice, is there a particular type I get, how do I use it, does it need vinegar and finally how do you get a skein to be a few different colours? Any tips, hints, advice, links, pics MUCH APPRECIATED. Ooh I feel another obsession coming on!

........................................................................

Thank you so much for all your kind words about Rohan's burnt fingers. It seemed to go from bad to worse. The nurse popped the blister on Saturday and covered it in plastic. However, as it was looking a bit manky I took the plastic off on Monday and in the short space of time before I was going to put the next one on he managed to catch his thumb on something and peel most of the dead skin away. More tears and panic and it was back to Casualty ( I've never been in 13 years of having children but was there 3 times in one w/end) and they cut off the dead skin. Underneath was bright pink and raw and the nurse dressed it in breathable stuff. I'd doused it in tea tree beforehand. Let's hope it's healing well underneath the bandage.

The importance of friendships and some more dyeing

You know I think I'm becoming a bit anti-social in my old age. I see friends for a quick chat at the school gates and go off home to do my bits and bobs. Occassional dinner parties, talk to my sisters at least once a week, the odd hour long conversation with prairiemouse on Skype the other day and that's it. I'd forgotten how lovely it is to sit with my girlfriends and have a long chat, moan about our lot, laugh about our expanding girths, talk about our dreams, show them my dishcloths and get their reaction. You know the sort of thing. It's even nicer if they come round to do some dyeing with you or make gnomes - the only trouble being that you do more talking and drinking tea than the craft.

That's exactly what three of us did yesterday afternoon. We'd been trying to find a time to suit all of us and Thursday afternoon it was straight after teaching. Someone brought some lunch, another had made a cake and we eventually got started about 2 o'clock. As you can imagine we only had time to try two dyes and they were padauk (an exotic wood) and brazilwood. The padauk was a bit like madder and made a pale orange/brick colour but the brazilwood was amazing. Here are the results - the padauk is on the right:

The brazilwood was soaked overnight and then simmered. We placed the wool and blanket in the pot and simmered for an hour. The first result was a nice pinky orange. As I didn't have enough stuff to dye I tried an experiment. Some of the books said that brazilwood was ph sensitive like hollyhocks. So I poured a little bit of washing soda in the pot and simmered some more fleece and I put in some indigo dyed fleece and some cherry bark dyed blanket. Brought the pot up to simmer and left the whole lot in the garden for half an hour. Well, the white fleece came out pink (middle of pic), the indigo had a tinge of purple about it and the blankets were a plum colour. I was very pleased with the pink and then I put the whole lot on the Aga to dry. Imagine my surprise to see the pink fleece become purple as it dried:

You can still see tinges of pink but can you see the purple too? Isn't it amazing? How did it come about though? It literally changed colour as it got hot on the Aga. Must go and look on google or get my dye books out.

The blankets came out like this:

The two skeins on the left are brazilwood. The pink one is with washing soda. The blankets on the bottom are all brazilwood too.

I had a lovely afternoon and we got all this done too. We're going to meet again in a fortnight and try cochineal and maybe indigo. But mainly I've decided that I'm going to get together with a friend/friends regularly. Maybe have someone over for lunch or tea. It's nice, a time to catch up with people and their lives and a time to connect - even more important as I'm on my own a lot at the moment.

Meeting up with my physical friends is nice but contact with my blogging friends is really important to me too.  It's so nice to open Outlook in the morning or evening and see the e-mails or comments I've received from you all. Nice to 'chat' with you, share stories, give and receive advice. Yes, I do so love blogging ... it's a cliche but it has changed my life.

I'll leave you with a hottie I made this week. The pattern is from Rowan book 28 and the wool is Rowan Kid Classic. Sorry it's perched on the window ledge but the lighting was awful inside:

Must go. I'm having trouble concentrating as Amber has come home and needs my undivided attention!  I'm worried that I'll start typing my answers to the questions she's asking...Yes, you can. I've said No already. Yes, it does look nice but not with those tights!

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend and thanking you for being in my life.

Dyed and gone to heaven............

There was a point yesterday afternoon when I had that fleeting feeling of one-ness, of complete contentment and bliss. My sister had arrived the night before with her three children. I was immersed (pun intended) in indigo dyeing, the three youngest were playing camping and seasides with me as the campsite owner who obviously did some dyeing as a sideline. I had to stop periodically to tell them where to pitch up, help put up the tent although Raj, who we nicknamed Mr Boots (bossy boots) mostly told me what to do. They played from after lunch until 7 o'clock in the evening and they had such a great time. They went off to various neighbours to fruit pick from their laden plum trees, they lay in the tent, played a bit of football and even had supper outside, by their tent made by the nice lady owner of the campsite. It's a wonder that they actually got food instead of something from a dyepot!

The middle two, Rohan and his cousin spent most of the afternoon in their bedroom making up a Narnia version of Risk. Luckily Uncle John had taken them to the playing field in the morning for a game of cricket. Amber, read, baked and knitted and proclaimed that she was bored off and on. Poor thing she suddenly seems so much older than the other five. Last summer she played schools with the youngest three and they loved it. I asked he if she'd do it again in Wales but she said she didn't know if she felt like it. It's funny being age 12/13 isn't it? You don't feel like a child yet your'e not quite in the other camp either. It's the first summer holiday where she's been bored but not sure what she wants to do either.

It got me thinking last night about how different Raj would be if he didn't have Rohan above him but had a sister instead (in my household it's the two boys that are the closest in age and play together). So with Rohan there Raj is very boyish but what if Rohan had been a girl? Would Raj do more imaginery play, cook and bake maybe, play with dolls. Certainly when he's with his girl cousin who's 3 years older than him they play doctors, seasides, schools. Rohan didn't have an older brother but had Amber and his play in those days was very different. I'm not complaining just wondering.............

Anyway, I digress because I was going to tell you, quickly about my final dyeing session before we go on holiday tomorrow. I wanted to have an indigo session because I had so much stuff dyed in goldenrod and I wanted to make a green. Past experiments with fustic and weld had been disappointing although I think I had made a good green with onion skins and indigo a few years ago but in true Simmy fashion I hadn't kept a record. Anyhow, I wanted to see if goldenrod and indigo would make that shade of green that I have been yearning for. Well, I'm pleased to report that it was a complete success. See for yourselves:

On the left I dyed/dipped 800g of aran for Tom's tanktop, the green blanket and skeins are goldenrod/indigo, the yellow is goldenrod and the blue blankets are indigo. The blue skeins are a bit light because with only 30g of indigo I was a bit cautious of not having enough dye but I needn't have worried - I had plenty. I had so much that I kept dipping bits of coltswold fleece all evening so that this morning I had all this:

I wonder if that nice lady will spin it all up for me again? Oh, I don't think you know that story. I had so much dyed fleece that a lady in the village took pity on me and offered to spin it for me if I carded it. I was SO grateful. Here's what she handed me on Wednesday:

The left one is walnut/madder, then madder, goldenrod, madder (with citric acid), goldenrod and then madder/goldenrod. Aren't they gorgeous? It was so nice to see the end result. Can you see the skein in the middle well I dipped that in indigo yesterday and this is how it came out:

The yellow is the fifth skein in the previous photo. The green is so lovely. I wish you could see it in person (do I mean that?) or in skein!!  It's to die for. I really have to keep trying with the spinning. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually but one half of me is saying what are you going to do with all this spun stuff? Raj still wears handknitted woollens and Rohan just about. Amber definately not and I have enough Amano jumpers to sink a battleship. Tom's got plenty of knits too. What do you spinners out there do with all your wool? Do you still have people to knit for?

I have to just show you one more succes. During the last dyeing session back in July I had dipped about 400g of Aran in logwood and I didn't like the colour it came out - a pale heathery colour. I looked on google and found a way to remove the colour with thiox and washing soda. I followed their instructions and the wool came out a very light greeny aqua. Aha I thought if I dip it in goldenrod maybe it'll go green. Well I did but it didn't. It went a yellowy limey colour (it's draped over the back of the bench in my previous post) which I didn't like. So it too went into the indigo vat yesterday and this is how it came out:

Oh my goodness - it's so lovely. I feel like Daisy in The Great Gatsy (with the shirts) and I want to throw the skeins up in the air and shout how lovely they are but I daredn't incase they get tangled.

I really must sign off now. I do have a house ful of visitors believe it or not but thankfully sisters are so tolerant. I want to share details of how to make an indigo vat but I've been on the computer for long enough already.  So I will bid you adieu, ja nay, chunga, chuss and bye till next week because we are all (ten of us) off to Wales on Saturday. We've rented a house in Pembrokeshire and I don't care if it rains or shines which is just aswell considering the weather because we have great company, food, books and games to take. I just hope it goes nice and slowly because I'm dyeing to get away.

Dyeing - the natural way

Here they are in all their glory - my bits of dyed fleece, blankets and some skeins of wool. I have so much to tell you ladies and such little space. Where do I start?

Well firstly I'll mention some of the dyes we used. They were madder, indigo, logwood, fustic, weld, safflower, clover, cutch and onion skins. Most of them required an alum mordant except the indigo and the cutch.

The recipe for the mordant was as follows: for 500g of fibre you need 40g of alum and 35g of cream of tartar. Dissolve each of these seperately in a little boiling water and then add them to a pan of cold water. Stir well. Add the wool, blanket or whatever and bring slowly up to simmering point and keep there for about an hour. You can then leave everything in the pot to cool for a few hours or overnight.

The first thing my friend and I did was to start the indigo vat because that needs to be left for an hour or two before you can use it. For this we used 50g indigo, 40g of thiox and 90g of washing soda. (I think there are recipes for this on the internet so I won't go on about it here).  We placed some cling film on the surface of the liquid and put the whole lot on the warming plate of the Aga to maintain its temerature.

Next stop fustic which had been soaking overnight. We placed that in pan, added the fibres and put it on the stove like so:

Brought this up to a simmer and let it sit like this for an hour or so. I wasn't that impressed with the colour it was a nice light yellow but nothing to write home about. Still it was nicer than the weld that went on the stove next (in the same manner).

Then we tried some logwood which I had had lying around for about 5 years! You're supposed to soak this overnight but I only found it in the morning so I poured boiling water on it and it sat on the warming plate for 7 hours. With this one we just added water to it and boiled it to extract the dye. Then it was strained and we added the wool and the blankets like so:

Now this was the success of the day. What a colour. I was ecstatic. We simmered this for an hour and left it in the garden for an hour or so. After that we re-boiled the logwood chips, strained them, added them to the now empty dye pot and we added some skeins of wool and repeated the whole process. Here are the results:

Then my friend had brought some safflower which we simmered for an hour to extract the colour. Added this to the dyebath and then we put more wool, fleece and blanket and simmered the whole lot for about an hour. This was my next favourite. Here's a pic of one of the skeins:

I was keen to try some cutch that I had because I wanted to dye some blankets brown. For this dye you just mix ther powder to a paste with boiling water and then add warm water and then you add it to your dye bath. For a deep brown you don't use alum mordant but add a copper modifier afterwards. So in went the blankets all evening and overnight. No heat necessary. (I added the copper after a few hours). Here are my beautiful blankets (or at least one of them):

Then it was time for the madder. Also soaked overnight and then warmed up on the Aga (you musn't let it boil if you want red and orange colours). I wanted to dye 400g of wool so in it went and it simmered on the stove for a few hours. I left it overnight because the dye didn't seem to be strong enough and a phone call to P&M Woolcraft this morning confirmed my suspicions. I hadn't used enough dye for the amount of wool. So I've ordered another 200g and I will repeat the process and hope the wool goes darker. Here it is in it's pot:

Meanwhile the indigo vat was ready. Hurrah. Firstly I dipped in 800g of wool - a very quick dip:

Then in went some fleece and another skein or two. After this I wanted to make a green so we dipped in some of the yellow wool that was dyed with weld, fustic and safflower. I have to say that the results weren't that impressive. I had hoped for a grassier green but we got this instead:

I've redipped these in an onion skin dye bath tonight to see if the green colour improves.

Now I'm conscious that this post is going on and on. Sorry prairiemouse I PROMISE ONE DAY I WILL WRITE A SHORT POST (she's been teasing me again). So I'll just tell you that we boiled up some onion skins next and some clover too (seperately ofcourse). I don't have a good pic of either of them but here is one with the indigo dyed fleece and a piece of onion dyed blanket:

This next one is yellow blanket overdyed with indigo and then dyed with onion skins (because I didn't like the shade of green it was):

I quite like the mottled-ness of this. It'll be good for gnomes.

Well, that's it for now. I think. Suffice to say that I really enjoyed it. It was so nice working with natural materials and never knowing how anything would turn out. Just to sum up: I am really happy with most of the results but I need to redo the madder tomorrow. I would use all of them again except the weld and fustic - the safflower and onion produced nicer shades of yellow.  Would love to hear which colours you like.....

Dye-ing to show you............

Sorry about the terrible pun - maybe I inhaled too many toxic dye fumes. As some of you may know I am organising our school's summer fair again this year. It's a small school, the teaching based on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and my three children all go there. I have a great team of people who are planning everything with me and I'm going to have a little table to sell some of my stuff. The children don't wear a uniform but there are rules like no strappy tops, no midriffs showing, no logos and the like. So each year I do a batch of tie-dye T-shirts - some for my boys (Amber doesn't wear them anymore) and some to sell.

So with four days to go I decided it was today or never. A friend had Raj after Kindy so I that I had a good six hours. Fortunately or not, Amber was off school with stomach cramps and I told her the best remedy was to keep busy!  After washing the T-shirts we had a tie-ing blitz and then it was onto making up the dyes and dyeing. I love the bit when the T-shirts first come out of the colour and you open them up and smile with pleasure or wrinkle your nose with disappointment. There was more of the former but also some of the latter. The pinks and blues worked beautifully, the light blue was too wishy-washy for my liking and the purple was nice but a bit grey in some places.

I'm going to post up a how-to-do just as soon as the T-shirts dry and I can photograph some of the patterns. I tend to go for spirals, concertina folds, sunbursts and rings made with marbles. It's a great activity to do with children and fairly inexpensive - plain white T-shirts don't cost much and I just use Dylon dyes.