Color the World

I love color.

The Forbes Pigment collection.  This is fascinating, and I had never heard of it.  A repository of pigments from all over the world and many different time periods at the Harvard Art Museum.  Seed banks are a familiar theme, but I had never heard of a Pigment bank.

“The Forbes pigment collection was started by its namesake—Straus Center founder and former Fogg Art Museum Director Edward Forbes who began the collection at the turn of the 20th century. Forbes would collect his samples from his travels all over the world, bringing back pigments from excavated sites at Pompeii to rare lapis lazuli found in Afghanistan.”

Many interesting ways to get color, but I found the most fascinating was ‘Indian Yellow’ made from the urine of cows fed only mango leaves.  Apparently this process has been abandoned due to animal humane issues.

You can read more about it here and here:

And, on Facebook, there is a great video.

https://www.facebook.com/greatbigstory/?fref=nf

Indigo and Cochineal

At Vogue Knitting Live Chicago last weekend I took an all day class called A Sheep of a Different Color with Rhonda Fargnoli.  My expectations for this class was to see how different sheep breeds take the natural dyes of Indigo and Cochineal.  That was not exactly what we ended up doing.  First we started by winding balls of different yarns, from KnitPicks generic natural “wool”, to cashmere blends, silk blends and flax (why was it called flax and not linen?  I always understood that flax is the plant, and when it is prepared and spun it becomes the fiber linen). This was all done while Rhonda talked and shared information.

Then, after a bit more talking, about an hour before lunch break, we started knitting little swatches.  This part really could have started earlier, and allowed everyone to knit most of the yarn types up.

After lunch we returned and Rhonda made up a batch of Indigo and a batch of Cochineal.  For 20 people in the class, it was really not enough, but we all took turns and made do.  Here is the dye baths percolating, they were very beautiful.

Indigo:

 

Cochineal:

The Palmer house meeting rooms are NOT a place to dye any kinds of fibers.  No running water, and ill-suited bathrooms.  I think that the lack of facilities really impacted the effectiveness of this class.  Rhonda had quite a bit of knowledge to share, and she wanted to do it as a hands on class.  The hands on aspect was limited due to the lack of water resources, and proper space for dyeing.  I would take another class with her, but as my friend Jane said, who took a class from her the second day, only if there was running water and a proper heat source.  I would really like a weekend natural dyeing retreat.

Here are my knitted samples from this class, there was a bit of difference in how the fibers took the colors, especially with the Cochineal.  The linen really took both dyes lovely (bottom left).  One of my cochineal dyes was corrupted by the over abundance of indigo in the rinse bath.  Really should have had 2 different tables set up with their own rinse baths.  And if you were not careful, it was very hard to figure out which swatch was yours.  A better marking system, perhaps as simple as bread ties with names on them and the yarn end wrapped around that.

 

A couple of books were recommended that I have ordered, and I now have a source for natural dyes, Botanical Colors.  My interest is really peaked in continuing to explore this process.  Just in a different place.  And call this class something more true to the nature of it.

Dyeing Part II

After last weekend dyeing at the soon-to-be Sugar Beet Coop, Maggie invited a few people over to her house to dye some yarn, and use more of the Indigo.  First I took some lovely angora blend sock yarn, and dyed it in the Indigo. I love this color, the look of blue jeans in the softest of sock yarns.

Unfortunately, the color is rubbing off on my hands, and has diluted a bit.  I need to see if I can overdye it again, and get something to set the color better.

The other yarn that I took to dye was some nondescript  Merino, imported from China, that was given to me years ago.  I never had much interest in working with it.

 

That is until now!  Here is one of the skeins dyed in Weld I think, again thanks to Maggie.  Look at that beautiful, rich color.

Next, my own experiments.

Inspiration

My mild foray into dyeing yesterday inspired me to look at what I had in my own back yard.

This was not the year for tomatoes.  But kale, green beans, swiss chard, and our Heritage Marigolds all did splendidly.  My husband is a sucker for a plant that says heritage, and planted these marigolds to help with keeping the bad bugs at bay.

Normally, they would be the small version, these top out at about 4′ tall! Beautiful, but they are shading my tomatoes and peppers.

We have had such great pollinators visiting first the native plant gardens, and now the marigolds.  The Monarch butterflies have loved the marigolds also.  Notice the pollinator on the left side in the next photo.

So, when you have lots of lemons, make lemonade.  When you have lots of marigolds, cut the flowers for a future dyeing experiment.

I have some others drying in the sun right now.

Taking advantage of the now open space in the back planters for this experiment.

I will continue to collect them for the rest of the Fall, dry them, and save them in a paper bag for a winter dyeing project.  Hopefully with a little help from Maggie!

Dyeing Naturally

My friend Maggie, of Industrious Anarchy was demonstrating natural dying of fabrics and yarn at the location of the soon-to-be Sugar Beet Coop.

 

She had a great board showing natural dyes on different fabrics.

People brought in fabrics and clothing to be dyed.  First the fabric was wetted.

Then immersed in the indigo dye vat.

It comes out looking green, but as she let the areas become exposed to oxygen, they turned the beautiful indigo color.

Here is the raw silk fabric that I dyed, we used clips to keep parts of it from accepting the dye.

And also at the event was Martha, whom I had met at YarnCon earlier in the year, teaching about spinning and fibers.

If you want to find out more about what Maggie is working on, check out this exhibit that she is working on.