the roadsides are in bloom

It's that time of year.

The roadside flowers are in bloom which means they've been wrapped in fiber and tucked in jars to steep on my porch.

Each like a little science experiment.

Tansy, Goldenrod, Yarrow, and Aster.  Each giving a shade of yellow.

Oak leaves, Creeping Charlie, and a few Eucalyptus too that I tucked away in a bag and dole out slowly.

Now we wait.

I hope you all have a great weekend.  What's growing on your roadsides?

at the intersection of craft and snack

Pomegranates are in season here in the US and we're enjoying a box of them from California.

They're a favorite around here and we look forward to having these as a special treat.

It's a bonus that their skins give dye, a golden yellow.   I've been drying the skins atop the wood stove in anticipation of combining them with these locally-grown lincoln locks.  So while we may be disappointed when the last fruit is eaten, we'll enjoy them once again in the dye pot.

Hope you're enjoying your week.  Happy Wednesday.

onion skins in the dye pot

I've been saving up my red onion skins and finally had enough to add them to the dye pot.  I've been wanting to dye another scarf like the one I made last year, but was hoping this time for the khaki green that red onion skins can give.

And yay! I got it.

I haven't yet laundered and pressed them here in the photo, so they're deeper in color and much more wrinkly than they'll be later, but you can get the idea.

If you want to try getting these shades on fabric from your red onion skins, here's what I recommend.  Simmer your onion skins in your non-reactive pot for about an hour or until the color has drained from the skins.  Strain the skins out and add your pre-mordanted fiber.  I use an alum mordant on the cotton fabric, simmer in the dye liquid for an hour then turn off the heat and let it sit overnight.  The next day I pull the fabric out and let it dry before dipping it in an iron solution.  You'll see the color start to change right away.  I let it change for about a minute and then I rinse the iron solution off so it doesn't weaken the fibers.  You can make the iron solution by soaking a steel wool pad in vinegar overnight, then removing the wool pad.  The resulting liquid is your iron after-dip.

I dyed the floss with a slight modification.  Instead of using alum as a mordant, I simmered the floss in a tannin solution then let it sit in soy milk overnight before rinsing it and adding it to the dyepot.  I found that the floss took color up better than normal in this way.  The orange is the color given just from the onion skins and the greens have been modified with iron.

Red onions are one of those dye stuffs that seems to be a bit fickle.  Sometimes I get great color out of them and sometimes they're a bit lackluster.  On the upside, they're generally easy to find and inexpensive.  Worth a try.  If you want to see some of the colors I've pulled from them before you can also have a look at this post.

Have you tried onion skin dye?  What were your results?

a nuno scarf for Molly

Yesterday my friend Molly had a crash course in nuno felting and natural dyeing.

She came over with that Starbuck's pumpkin spice latte in her hand and an eagerness to learn, and though I thought the PSL was only so-so, I think her scarf turned out wonderfully.

Wanting to make a shade of grey, we looked for tannin-rich materials that we could afterdip with iron.  A walk in the woods yielded oak leaves, acorns, twigs, barks, and a smattering of different leaves that went in the dye pot to simmer.  We dyed her scarf at the pre-felt stage, that is the fibers started to hold together but weren't completely felted yet.  That allowed her to add a few little undyed locks and some lines of fiber I had previously dyed before finishing the felting process.  The leaf-like shapes were small pieces of silk that had been felted in.  I love how they took up a different color than the scarf itself.

And I especially love how happy she was with the end result.

Didn't she do a great job?

dyeing with mustard yellow polypore - Phellinus gilvus

The little polypore I found the other day - the mustard yellow polypore - gave me some color in the dye pot.

After noticing the interior had an ochre color, I tore some up into pieces and put them in a mason jar filled with water and a splash of ammonia.  After letting it sit for a day I put the mix in my dye pot and let it simmer for about an hour, adding a little more water in the process, then turned off the heat and let it set overnight.

The next day I strained out the mushrooms and put them back in the dye jar, where they are still making color, and added my fiber to the dye liquid.  I heated the dye pot up to just under a simmer and let it heat for about an hour, then turned it off and let it, too, sit overnight.

I let the fiber dry in the sun before rinsing it.  I feel that the color gets a chance to "stain" into the fiber more, and I also get a sense as to how lightfast the color will be.

From left to right above - unmordanted wool, wool mordanted with alum, and undyed wool for comparison.  Beneath the wool is unmordanted silk and cotton, and unmordanted cotton floss next to undyed cotton floss for comparison.

The mordanted wool took up a really lovely golden color while the unmordanted wool is a very pale wheat color.  The silk and cotton floss also picked up a lovely golden color while the cotton cloth picked up only a small amount of color.

All in all, a lovely experiment, and one I'm glad I did.  When I went to check on these mushrooms yesterday they were all dried up and almost unrecognizable.  I may try dyeing with the dried ones too, just to see.

my oh my, mushrooms

A walk through the woods revealed something that I've been waiting and waiting for...

mushroom season.

With the dry weather we missed out on some of my favorite edibles - lobsters, chanterelles, black trumpets - but after a bit of rain it was really encouraging to see this:

That's a sulphur shelf mushroom aka a Chicken Mushroom growing on an oak stump.  I've harvested Chickens off of this stump before, most recently this spring, and never before has it given me two fruitings in a year.  I'm feeling pretty special.

These guys grow really quickly so I'll have to check them daily to be sure I get them when they're still young and tender.  Trust me, it's a task I don't mind doing.

Sharing space on the same dead oak were these little shelf mushrooms which I believe are mustard-yellow polypores.  The yellow and white edge caught my eye as they reminded me of the dyer's polypore in miniature.  When I pulled one off the stump I noticed the pretty ochre interior and thought I'd better see if it would give dye.

I picked a few, tore them into pieces, and put them in a jar of water with a splash of ammonia and bam! color.  I'll let it sit a few days before I try to dye with it but I'm excited at the possibility.

There were some other little lovelies popping up to say hello from the leaf litter.

But most special of all were these amazing specimens that flew all the way from B.C. to be with me.  

Aren't they gorgeous?  Handmade by the immensely talented Kristy of fog and swell.  If you don't already know, in addition to being a talented maker, Kristy also captures some spectacular images of her wild surroundings.  You can find her blog HERE.

The stitching on the gills is just fantastic.

They make me so happy.

Hope you all have a happy day too.

a natural rainbow

 

The threat of near-frosty temperatures on our overnight made me a little nostalgic.  I'm not quite ready for the cold.  We only just got over the scorching hot and now... 36?  Really?

It's only temporary, our temps are supposed to be back in the normal early-fall range again for the rest of the week but regardless, the threat of frost was enough to make me want to clutch a little tighter the days of gathering leaves and twigs, barefoot mornings in dewy grass, and the dyepot humming.

 

This rainbow represents a full year's worth of gathering; leaves, bark, mushrooms from last fall, kitchen scraps, walnuts from Illinois, and more.  I tend to hoard my natural colors, only pulling them out when I have a special project to work on. 

 

 

Though I do think perhaps I could hang them on the wall, I like them so much.

Hope your week starts off beautifully.

walnut wednesday

Along with the wonderful memories, I also dragged home a bag of black walnuts from my trip a few weeks ago.  I've had them fermenting in a big dye jar on the porch since I got back and yesterday seemed a good time to see how the dye liquor had progressed.

That gorgeous brown in the middle is the first dye bath with plain, undyed wool.  I love it!  Totally love it.  The mocha color on the far right was the next bath, and the many hues to the left are other naturally-dyed pieces that I over-dyed with the walnut.  It makes me eager to work with them, these earthy, natural tones.

And work, I shall.  I hope to be able to share a naturally-dyed piece that I've been working on, soon.

What sorts of oddities do you drag home in your suitcase when you travel?