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oss paris to the eurostar feels like i just caught the last freedom moped out of nowhere city brushing aside covid 19 precautions as not applicable to sheep my companion gave me a hug and ensconced herself in the spare room next morning she returned home from asda with a clanking bag of shopping and a sack of seed compost life s little essentials for me and a gift for you beaut probably not peat free but fair play needs must still reusing those old plastic seed trays well that s very kind but i m not really organised for gardening elinor i mean there s no greenhouse here just a north facing yard in any case i didn t buy a 2020 biodynamic calendar and i ve no idea when the moon will be right elinor tipped the woad seeds into a jar of water give the silicles 24 hours to soak isn t that what you used to do we can sow your seeds tomorrow next day i did find some small seed trays filled them with damp compost and sure enough the little yellow woad seeds were easy to strip out of the middle of their sodden silicles it didn t take long to lay a dozen out in a grid cover them with a dusting of compost press it down to get them in good contact with the soil then label and wrap the tray in clingfilm once in the swing of it i carried on sprinkling trays with coreopsis tinctoria impatiens balsamina and japanese indigo none of which need to be soaked in advance and even remembered that weld seeds need maximum light and should be surface sown without any top covering of compost looking at the filled trays my cheery mood evaporated oh hell and damnation elinor the only room in this house that gets much direct sun hasn t any windowsills what a good job you ve got all those boxes shove them over to the light right up against the wall don t stand there like a lemon that was five days ago and things seem to be working out t he coreopsis sprouted after three days and t his morning when i turned the tray in which seedlings are already stretching for the light i noticed that the impatiens seeds are also germinating a whole new dye plant garden remains a long way off but as a start i think this is good enough posted by fran rushworth at 15 57 15 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels dye garden elinor gotland friday 2 august 2019 a trial of dyeing with dock leaves as i paused to collect an armful of dock leaves m y companion elinor gotland sighed why on earth bring home weeds when you ve a whole garden full of dye plant flowers that need picking well i know pretty much what colours i ll get from my own plants and i fancied trying something new you re such an adrenaline junky beaut couldn t you go bungee jumping instead of spoiling any more yarn this isn t just some random impulse it s a cunning plan dock leaves could save me a lot of time and effort in jenny dean s book wild colour she says dock leaves fix yellow colours onto wool with no mordant i snapped off one last spike and turned toward home think about it elinor dock is a plentiful wild dye plant so no time spent sowing watering and tending to it and what s more no time spent preparing fibres before dyeing them quick and easy yellow with no mordant you re sure all sounds that bit too good to be true well i m going to test these dock leaves out on some wool yarn i ll try dyeing one unmordanted skein and one mordanted with 10 alum see if there s any difference i simmered 400g of dock leaves in 10 litres of water and left them to cool overnight when the leaves were sieved out next day the dye central sample looked a very decent yellow testing with ph indicator strips showed it had become naturally acidic adding vinegar to make the sample on the left more acidic made little apparent difference while adding soda ash to make the sample on the right alkaline deepened the colour to a strong bronze feast your mistrustful eyes on that ms gotland looks like a pretty good dye bath to me my companion glanced up from the crossword handsome is as handsome does beaut two 100g skeins of wool went into the 400g dock leaf dye bath and were simmered for an hour and left overnight neither came out yellow the one that had previously been mordanted with alum looked just a little browner but if elinor caught sight of this undeniably beige yarn i was going to have to eat crow i put both skeins in an alkali rinse hoping it would bring up the colour and it did shift them to a more golden beige when one was further modified by heating it in an iron solution it turned a dark khaki green my companion wandered over that s a lot of fuss you re going to with that quick and easy dock leaf dye beaut oh i said airily i ve dyed loads of this yarn with yellow dye plants already what i really needed was a bit of contrast colour one granny square pattern in heavy wool yarn on a 6mm hook was a quick and easy way to make a substantial footrest the inside is stuffed with a considerable weight of failed experiments on yarn and fabric i name this pouffe crouching crochet hidden beige posted by fran rushworth at 18 52 13 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels elinor gotland plant dyeing friday 5 july 2019 a coloured romney fleece to spin a trip to the somerset guild fleece fair was the highlight of this year s june spinning camp after a week of rainy days and nights spent listening to the tent flap around me like a washing machine saturday dawned fine and full of promise my last set of clean clothes had remained presentable even the complicated journey along the lanes across the levels went without a single wrong turn arriving at hatch beauchamp just as the fair opened two friends on the inside experienced guild members both had promised to keep a look out for the perfect grey fleece while the farmers were setting out their stands as the doors opened they steered me straight towards it back at home i looked up from unrolling my romney on the lawn that one s a beauty but it wasn t the best fleece there was it beaut how did you work that out elinor my companion shrugged call it intuition you look one plastic toy short of a happy meal true enough even as i arrived at the ashbury romney s stand somebody else had got her purse out and was paying for the exact fleece my friends had pointed out no matter the farmer philip prouse had plenty of other gorgeous specimens for me to choose from surveying my new purchase i picked off a few wisps of hay i was entirely satisfied when i found this beautiful clean soft variegated grey shearling coloured romney sheep fleece and it looks just as good now as i when i stashed it in the car boot so what s eating you i sighed after i bought it i met another friend from camp who had a stand in the marquee she d nipped into the hall before the show actually opened and bought an even finer absolutely amazing silvery grey romney it was under her table and she showed me my companion roared with laughter don t let the green eyed monster steal your joy beaut soon as my sleeping bag was rinsed and drying on the line i set to skirting the edges of the fleece it s a shame the darkest colours are always on the shorter leg and belly wool which gets most matted but this big fleece had few second cuts and no weak points in open locks with a staple of from 10 to 15cm lustre gleamed along the even crimp i d have been happy to spin this fleece with no preparation just picking apart the freshly shorn locks still having a couple of weeks in hand before the tour de fleece though i hadn t got a suint vat fermented i decided to set one up for the summer by soaking the romney for a week in a 90 litre container of cold water after one more day having a second rinse in fresh water then a couple of days drying out the fleece had lost most of its dirt and much of its smell though a moderate amount of lanolin remained though the colour variegations could be split into many shades of grey i divided it into three broad categories there was never any real doubt in my mind there would be no combing or carding the wool this fleece was begging to be spun from the lock just a few bounces with the flicker was enough to open the tips and butts of the locks with a small pile of locks prepared i tried four options results shown on the card below described left to right spinning from the fold longdraw pointing my finger at the orifice of the spinning wheel and pulling backwards was the quickest process though spinning from the fold short forward draw with my finger at right angles to the orifice gave a smoother and more even yarn spinning from the butts or the tips produced yarns somewhere in the middle i spun samples in fingering weight and chunky to compare t he worsted effect from spinning forward from the fold works well at any weight of yarn but i think i d best spin chunky three ply for a thick jacket this romney is lovely but not quite next to the skin soft for knitting the thin cardi i had in mind i heaved a sigh and m y companion looked stern old green eyes stop pining for that fleece you didn t buy make a friend of this one i ve taken elinor s advice and i ve used the fingering weight romney sample to make her a friend with green eyes posted by fran rushworth at 20 41 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels elinor gotland fleece hand spinning saturday 29 june 2019 dyeing with weld plants a week ago i stood a tray of weld seeds in full sun on the greenhouse shelf because i d decided long hours of daylight would germinate the seeds fast n o sign of life today but no surprise because i found the compost dry as a ryvita my companion elinor gotland called from her deckchair on the lawn were you right about a bit of sunshine getting your weld seeds started then beaut a full ten minutes watering the greenhouse had left me gasping in the humidity i staggered out and veered across the lawn attempting to dodge the question what a dramatic change this heat is from all the cool weather we ve had i reached the dye garden and stood there dripping sweat and trying to look nonchalant rain then sun has really suited the weld plants just look how many new flowers have grown since its main flowering spike was cut two weeks ago my biggest weld plant has sprouted over a dozen lateral flower spikes quite an impressive effort that first main spike weighed 125g and has gone on to dye an even more impressive 250g wool yarn every batch of plant dye turns out a little differently but since this one went particularly well it seems a good point to record my current method i have found the strongest dye comes from chopping the plant material into large chunks and leaving it to ferment in cold water for at least three days preferably a week the water becomes faintly cloudy slight frothy and properly stinky simmered for an hour the dye bath looks only pale yellow and will test acidic at about ph 4 if you have indicator paper adding enough dissolved soda ash to bring the ph up to neutral 7 will turn a weld dye bath deeper yellow and i think leaving the plant material in the pot while dyeing also adds to the strength of colour starting with 125g weld i first added two 50g skeins of wool yarn mordanted with 10 alum simmered them for an hour and left them to cool overnight next day they were a deep golden yellow more like the colour from dyer s chamomile than the acid yellow i usually get from weld i heated one skein with some dissolved iron to sadden the yellow to green and repeated the whole process with another two skeins which went a more typically lime yellow a last 50g skein was simmered soaked for a few days while i was away from home and even that turned primrose yellow i think the first flower spikes give the strongest dye elinor as they ve given me plenty of dyed yarn do you think i should do some contact printing with this second lot or just cut the spikes and hang them up to dry best you let those flowers set seed beaut somehow i suspect you need to sow another weld seed tray posted by fran rushworth at 16 32 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels dye garden elinor gotland plant dyeing friday 21 june 2019 cultivating weld plants for dye i walked out into the garden thinking this could be the perfect day for sowing weld seeds and as i reached the greenhouse my companion jumped up in delight the miserable june weather has forced her to move her deckchair inside and while the interior of the new greenhouse does provide an exclusive orangery ambiance mobile phone reception is so dodgy that the poor soul often has to trek back to the house to order her tea and biscuits feeling parched and peckish again elinor a gust brought rain in through the greenhouse door and mud splattered the gravel as i dumped down h alf a sack of sodden seed compost my companion shuddered and stepped back do shut the door if you care nothing for me at least spare a thought for your chilli peppers i can t think why you re bringing in compost beaut this weather might feel like april but it s far too late to be sowing seeds i wiped my hands on my jeans and the rain off my specs the summer solstice is upon us weld seeds germinate best with lots of light and since this is the longest day of the year it must surely be a good time to start sowing next year s weld plants i usually sow all my dye plant seeds in march the seed trays sit on the underfloor heating in the bathroom and within a matter of days tiny shoots appear and off they go out to the greenhouse to grow on weld is the only plant with delayed germination i ve found that even when seeds are sprinkled on the surface of the compost with no earth or vermiculite on top they remain inert until they get not only warmth but really decent light still sooner or later weld seedlings do appear in the march sown trays and although officially a biennial with an early start most of the plants will flower the same summer this year s march sown weld plants are presently modest clumps of leaves half of which have put up flowering spikes about 40cm high they ll grow bigger and when i cut the main spikes plenty more will shoot from the lower leaf axils a few young weld plants won t flower they ll just remain as low rosettes of leaves next spring those will grow into plants 1 5m tall which start flowering by the end of may weld flower spikes provide a great weight of material and thus a better harvest of luteolin dye than picking individual leaves from young clumps spikes are also simple to hang up in bunches to dry and dried weld leaves store their strong yellow dye for at least five years once they have finished flowering the weld plants die since the second year plants grow so much bigger and generate ten times as much material as those that flower in their first year i t has become clear to me that though you have to wait longer it s altogether more productive to cultivate weld as a true biennial i ve tried sowing fresh seed in september straight from the last o...