Dyeing the yarn for Shetland Wool Week 3

DARK OLIVE
This was relatively easy to dye as I had samples in my stash already and the source material growing in my garden - marjoram. So once the plant was picked, chopped & stewed up it was just a matter of straining it and using it to dye the wool. After the wool was dyed I needed to modify the colour with iron to get the correct shade. I actually did this shade of DARK OLIVE first as I knew I could obtain a lovely rich hue. On drying I was pleased with it.

LIGHT SAND
I was intending to use the natural yarn as the background. I have left a skein of this in with the yarns. It is the 3rd on the left skein of blog post of 19 th of August. It looks far too pale with the other yarns. Earlier in the summer I set up some solar dyeing - reported on fb. One of these jars contained an extract of red clover, the red clover being collected on South Uist during a glorious holiday in 2005. Since then it had been stored in the garage. It had dyed the yarn what I judged from my photo a suitable background beach colour so scaling up the volume of the jar to the mass of the yarn used in the jar, I used the same ratio to dye the yarn for the beach for this hat! Hence the colour of the skein which in the photo is 4 th from the right and looks much better with the other colours than the starker natural white of the fleece. I love using natural colours so I am still wondering about trying to work some natural colour into the hat somewhere!

PURPLE
Obtaining this shade of purple took much experimenting and even when I had obtained the correct hue on commercial yarn the hue on the handspun was more 'heathery' but I actually liked it better ( fortunately). So to obtain this hue, I dipped the skein in an indigo vat 3 times to get a medium blue; then over dyed it with a 5% cochineal overdye. After that I dipped it in the indigo vat briefly to get a more bluer as opposed to pinker purple. This was tricky as I was judging wet colours !

GOLD ( see previous post)

LILAC
This hue was worked in the same way as the purple on a separate occasion - too much for me in the same dye bath at the same time - but with one dip in the indigo initially. It took up the indigo far better than the commercial yarn so there was a moment of sheer panic, thinking I was going to get a lilac that was too close to the purple- ugh! But all was OK.

Anyway all the colours are done and now to see if they work in the hat. The dyeing has been fun. It doesn't matter how long you have been natural dyeing there is still so much to learn. If you have never tried natural dyeing do have a try you can get great colours.

The finished hat from the side

PS . I found more details for the recipe for the grey, it was 10% logwood.

I have another hat project planned, to knit a hat in the colours of Horsey beach (Norfolk) but the dyeing is done for that!

Dyeing the yarn for Shetland Wool Week 2

LIGHT OLIVE

Getting this lighter olive was quite a challenge as it was the second green I was aiming for and needed to be lighter than the one I had produced already ( 2 skeins to the right on image of August 19th). Part of the problem was I needed to get a darker shade 'wet' as when it was dry it would be lighter . However it was not to be so dark it would be too close to the dark olive I already had. As I have noted already I was doing trial skeins - but on different yarn and as anyone who has done natural dyeing knows it is not an exact science and seemingly doing everything the same can sometimes give different results.

So for this olive I used elder leaves and stems that I gathered fresh, boiled up and allowed to cool overnight. I then heated the wool with the elder extract ( it gave a glorious bright yellow) then removed the wool. After adding modifiers of copper, vinegar and iron I heated the wool in the extract again and produced this glorious olive colour, I added further iron until I judged the olive was the right olive. After rinsing and noting as always the fastness of the colour it hung on the line to dry and I was pleased and relieved to say it was distinctively lighter than the olive I already had. Another success!

GOLD
This colour was not dyed specifically for the hat, but is the exact colour that I needed so I decided to use it. The wool is some previous handspun Jacob and I had dyed it with heather ( again following an alum mordant) and then modified with tin. For some reason I had done two small skeins which was just perfect as I could put them between the two olives and purples to see how they would look on the hat! They were dyed in 2004. The rest of the yarn was used in a cushion and they were left over so I am pleased they now have a use.

 

Dyeing the yarn for Shetland Wool Week 1

I knitted a sample hat to work out how much yarn to dye and tried to remember to note the length of each colour used! I tried to use colours something like I was aiming to use.

All dyeing was carried out on well scoured yarn which was mordanted with alum and cream of tartar.

Following the picture (post of August 19th)
The left hand side DEEP PINK
This will be the centre area of the crown (as in the sample hat) and is the most striking part of the hat. It was one of the most straightforward to dye. It was dyed with 10% cochineal, starting with crushing the beetles!


Second from the left GREY
Getting grey was difficult. For many of the colours I did several trial runs. I had a supply of 10g skeins of commercial yarn already mordanted, I knew these would give me a reasonable, although not entirely accurate, match. However everything I tried was way out on grey. I had got all the other colours complete and my options were running out on getting grey when I remembered that I had a solution in my store in the garage. This was left over from making a part of a fancy yarn a few years ago for an exhibition entry. So I tried this on one of my trial yarns and it was perfect. My only regret is that it was not labelled that well - it just said 'logwood, elder and tin, 2011' but I have no-one to blame only myself. I do like to know exactly how I get a colour but in this instance it does not matter. In the unlikely event that I need some more I do have plenty left. Natural dyeing is not an exact science but I can make sure that my labelling is more meaningful in future than just giving me names!

The next post will follow along, although the next skein is the natural washed fleece – just for comparison – so lovely on its own. I decided it was too stark on its own and did dye it 'beach' colour!

Dyeing for Wool Week 2014

I have dyed this wool to knit my hat for Shetland wool week, you can see a picture of the seaweed that has been the inspiration for this – taken on Skaw the most northerly beach of Unst –the most northerly beach on Shetland. I have also included a picture of the hat that I knitted as a sample this was so that I could work out how much wool I would need in each colour!

All the yarn for the real hat was hand spun. I intended that it was all going to come from the fleece that I hand picked from Jamieson and Smith on my visit to Shetland in 2012. I think it was Ella that helped me on that Saturday afternoon in the fleece store! However to enable me to get the gold colour I had to cut a corner and use some of my early handspun Jacob yarn (the gold), but this brings back pleasant memories too so I am happy to include it.

The dyes I used for the hat were : cochineal, elder, heather, indigo, logwood, marjoram and silver weed. The yarn was mordanted with alum first and some yarns were over dyed whilst others were treated with modifiers to get the exact shades, well as exact as I could get.

More about the dyeing to follow !

If it doesn’t work out I can still wear the sample hat – that is either Jamieson and Smith’s best jumper weight yarn or some of my own handspun and hand dyed!

There are some pictures on my facebook page at www.facebook.com/janet.major

Repurposing vintage embroidered linen

As some of you know life has been a little difficult for me over the past few months. In hindsight this is been for about nine months now, although I didn't realise how bad I was getting until about November! I have now been diagnosed with chronic migraine. This is a relief as it is nothing more sinister but for those of us with chronic migraine it is a challenging & unpredictable condition. I am gradually getting to grips with the situation but still in the position of only having occasional days when I am completely headache free. The challenge at the moment is not to try and run around headless doing everything that I previously did on those days.

I have treated myself to a mini iPad that I can dictate to and hence spend less time at the laptop. This is being a big success.

I am on the look out for enjoyable textile projects that I can complete while headache free. It is a long time since I have done any real embroidery so I have set myself one!  It is to make a sleeve for my mini iPad for when in my handbag. I have a linen chair back saved while clearing my aunt's house.

 

It have used the 1950's floral arrangement for the sleeve front – apologies for the photos- the linen has played havoc with the photography!

I have researched some ideas from my textile library for a complimentary embroidery for the back of the case and enjoyed working this bluebell one.

 

I have backed this with iron on interfacing & padded it to give the case some body. Then I formed the sleeve and added some vintage mother of pearl buttons and two matching loops.

 I am delighted with my new iPad sleeve I hope you enjoy seeing it too.

There is more of her vintage needlework in the drawer - I have a plan for a case for the paper tissues I carry in my handbag too! So watch this space!

Shetland fleece washed and unwashed

This is a comparison of Shetland fleece washed by my version of the fermented suint method. I am delighted with how it has turned out.

the unwashed version, as  shown ( and discussed) on Sept 1st 2013!

Quite a striking difference!

I used a separate bath for the Shetland and the Jacob fleece and washed sections of each fleece at a time to make the process manageable.

Washing Fleece My Fermented Suint Method

For those that have been following this you will know that I first started writing about this in September when I had got round to washing some fleece. I then got distracted and never actually described what I had done. So here goes – but remember I did do this in September, it was warmer and as it must involve a chemical reaction it will be a lot slower now. However, come late February /early March I am looking forward to setting this up again ( as I have been really lucky to have been given a super Jacob fleece!)

Basically the suint (sweat from the sheep) and the lanolin in the fleece along with rainwater makes ‘soap’ so you will not need to add any soap or detergent. It appears that the fleece gets clean on its own. Having tried this on a fairly fresh Shetland fleece and an older Jacob fleece I can say that the method has worked well for me and I will continue to use it in future.

I liked the fact that the rinsed and dried fleece still had some lanolin in it – it did not feel completely dry and lacklustre!

What you need to start:

An outdoor space
Large container with a lid  – I used a large translucent plastic storage box with lid and also a vintage galvanised round bath with lid
Rainwater
Fleece
Container to rinse the fleece in

Desirable:

Watering can for adding the rinse water to the garden
Rubber gloves
Washing machine
Pillowcase
Large net – eg net curtain  eg to go over a triangular washing line / tree for drying the fleece

 How to set the ‘fleece washing bath up’

Add rainwater to the container until it is between half and three quarters full. Add fleece to this , you need to be able to swirl it about so it must not be crammed in too full. I would say to get a good result less rather than more if you are dithering about adding more! The fleece needs to be submerged, so add a bit more water as needed (don’t worry about odd bits that come to the surface). Now you are going to put the lid on and leave it for 7 days. If the sun can get to it so much the better, if it is not sunny but cooler it will take longer than 7 days. You can go and look at it, it will start to smell, the water will go brown and it will get a film on the surface. Look at some of the locks, give them a little rub. You will know when the bath has ‘worked’.

Rinsing

The trick is to keep as much of this wonderful ‘fermented suint bath’ as you can. So I would take out sections of fleece at a time and squeeze them and put them straight away into another container.  YOU ARE GOING TO KEEP THE VERY DIRTY LOOKING WATER TO WASH THE REST OF THE FLEECE. If you have unlimited rainwater use it, however I used tap water for the rinsing and it worked well. I did find that I did 5 /6 rinsings until the rinse water ran clear. I collected all the rinse water and added it to the garden. The plants loved it. So although it seemed arduous at the time it was being as sustainable as possible. At this point I put the fleece in a pillow case and put it in the washing machine for a slow spin ( no rinse just a slow spin). After that I opened up and pegged the net curtain on the washing line and spread the fleece on this – if the weather is not up to that then on a sheet on a spare bit of floor – garage / kitchen ???? will work. It won’t take long to dry but do make sure it is really dry before storing it and again a pillowcase is the ideal storage method- with an accurate label tied on, and the top tied up so no moth can get in.

Back to your ‘Fleece Washing Bath’

You now take the next section of your unwashed fleece and add it to the very dirty and smelly water that you have just taken the fleece out of! Again make sure you have not added so much it is crammed in too tight. Add a bit more rainwater if the level has dropped. I have found that you will only need to leave the fleece in this potent mixture for 48 hours. Then take it out and rinse it as before.  Add more fleece to the even smellier bath and leave that for another 48 hours and so on….

Even though when you take the fleece out of the fermented suint bath it has an odour that you think you won’t be able to get rid of, don’t worry – it will come out in the rinse and the air as it dries and the texture of the washed fleece is, in my opinion, the best I have had from any sort of fleece washing I have done.

When you have finished washing all of the fleece you can put the contents of this washing bath on the garden too – it might be a bit potent – so I would make sure it didn’t go on any plant directly.