Indigo Dyed Wool Hand Spun By Me

Now I won't tell you this dye came from my garden as my madder dye plants were. But I did try. I planted 18 indigo plants. And one did sprout up and grew to be a pretty big plant. But the process of creating a dye from the plant was, um, baffling. Strangely, by accident, dripping some of the pre-reduced liquid on my yarn put a pale blue splotch on one of the skeins. That was strange. I did not see this until I was ready to place the yarn into the indigo vat. Well, it was a mini vat. And smelled pretty foul. But all that busy work and no color. Boo. Here is where I bought the Indigo seeds

So I was like, what the heck, let me go with some pre-reduced indigo. At left is what it looks like. Very awesome. Here is the link to where I bought it.
 Brush Creek Wool Works
I bought 2 bags of 1 oz each at 4.50 a bag. I used 1/2 a bag and got all the color you see in the yarn above. So much easier. I liked there was no weeding the around the plant. Sorry no pictures. That computer's guts vanished. It was a Vista. You can see why it died. But I love old things. I cannot help it. Hell, I still have my Windows Millennium upstairs in the back room which is actually an attic-ish type spooky place. There also hides two old typewriters. And you may have seen my Walking Wheel elsewhere on this blog. Enough said.

These two skeins on the right I tried to get a heathered feel by tying the skeins with two knots. Though the colors are lighter here than in real life, I hope you can see how they turned out. I love heathered yarns. 

Oh man, there is a teen aged human wondering around. Not a bad thing mind you just that he is awake. Time to get gone. 

My Great Wheel

I love it. Had a Friend, an expert on all things concerning spinning on one of these babies, come check her out. I certainly needed some help. I could not keep the drive band on the wheel. It seemed to just jump off, twisting and tangling. And of course I would stomp off in a huff. Baffled. Now it works beautifully. Can put a good spin on it and the (properly prepared) wool will twist nice as you please.

 

The expert took one look at the added extra wood contraption shown at left and said, "No, no, no. Redundant. This stuff has to go."

The expert and myself had just come from the yearly June 8th "Knit in Public Day" at our local Heritage Farm Museum's "Sheep to Shawl" festival. Here are some pictures of the goodies that I brought home. At right is mohair. Looks like at least 8 or 10 lbs of the stuff. Love it. The man who sent this my way said he wanted me to make something for him. What the dickens am I supposed to do with that. I canna read his mind. And we all know the dude had something in mind.

At left is Jacob sheep wool. One of my favorites. I enjoy spinning the black and white separately as well as blended and using the yarns together in a project.

I find navigating Blogger with the posting and putting up of pictures a bit strange.The pictures are hard to put in place. But with that being said, I still am very grateful that Blogger is still around!

Madder Root as a Dye

Someone posted a message on my blog and Blogger sent me an email about it.

Well guess I should do some visiting and start some typing. 

 Life has been very busy. Intense.

 

 Above is a picture of the madder root. Which the plants grew for 4 years in the garden.

 

 This picture shows off the deep orange reddish color. I like it. I just threw a bunch of roots into the pot keeping in mind I would need space for about 4 oz of fiber. Poured water to cover the roots, set the pot outside in the sun and left it sit overnight. Next day in another pot I did 1 3/4 teaspoon alum for the mordant along with 1 1/2 teaspoon cream of tarter with my wool and simmered about 45 minutes. Moved wool to dye pot and put on low heat. Brought to real low simmer and cooked all day. Also before adding the fiber I added about 1/4 cup of calcium carbonate. Also know as ice melt. Yes, really. You can also add ammonia when the dye pot is cool but please look this up. It can harm wool. BUT it clears the orange and brings out the red. Just saying.

This market bag held the roots to keep them separate from the fiber and got dyed a good color. Happy accident. Below are some skeins which dyed up very differently. You can see some of the colors are very soft.

In the picture below this color was the first root soak which I though was nice enough to dye with. Most instructions say to pour that first soak off. Naa. I most definitely used it for a dye and ....

 ....knit up this pretty shawl with the yarn.

The bottom picture is a close up.

Which by the way this pattern was a tough little beast. It was a YouTube knit along with a lady from Russia. I loved her accent. My problem was the chart for the border and its repeat. I had to make up some stitches. I don't love charts but I wanted this shawl!
 The Gail Shawl part 1 

The Gail Shawl part 2

Note 1: I guess if anyone does give Gail a chance I would suggest to use markers to separate the repeats on both charts.
Note 2: I located the charts through the Wayback Machine
I think I put in her name, Dina Nugusheva.

I hope this was interesting enough and useful for the natural dyer enthusiast!
Happy fiber adventures!