'Tis the Season for Walnut Dyeing

Time to harvest these

To achieve this

As with pretty much all my friends in the Northeast, it seems, right now I have a walnut tree nearby dropping nuts all over the place. For tree huggers like me who want to know more: the Black Walnut Tree is also called "Stinkweed" when it's small, because it grows fast and just about anywhere, refusing to yield to weeding -- and when you do manage to pull it up, it stinks.

These trees are wonderful, however, because they produce a great hard wood. Also, you can make dye from the hulls of the fruit. You can even eat the nuts, although I found it hard to get much food out of them. You can stain wood with the hulls, as my Dad did with a salad bowl I bought years ago.

The walnuts are high in tannins, which serve as a mordant and make for a very potent dye. Just look at my gloves:

I recommend you wear gloves

Here's a brief pictorial essay on making dye from black walnuts. I did mordant my fabric, by the way, with about a teaspoon of alum in maybe two gallons of water.

First, you harvest about 20 green to green/brown walnuts per gallon of water. Crush the daylights out of them, removing the nuts themselves. Here, I used a big stone tool. A friend of mine insists that you get better results when you put them in a bag and drive over them. I tried that, too. Either way, you're going to have to work to chop them up into maybe one-inch-wide pieces.

Throw all the crushed hulls, minus the nuts, into a vat of boiling water and then simmer them for about an hour. To me, the dye solution has a wonderful, nutmeg-like smell! Let the whole mixture cool overnight.

You're ready for dyeing. While some sites will tell you to add maybe one cup of dye solution to a gallon of water to dye your fabric, I found that this gave me very pale colors. So now I simpy immerse my fabric directly into this solution, without diluting it at all. The results are a warm golden brown, as I showed you in the photo at the top of the page. Here it is again:

The fabric, by the way, is three yards of 100% wool gauze, originally in off-white, purchased at the famed and wonderful fabric shop, Delectable Mountain, in Brattleboro, Vermont. (The name comes from the book Pilgrim's Progress, although e.e. cummings also refers to "Delectable Mountains" in his book, The Enormous Room.) The website, which I highly recommend: http://www.delectablemountain.com/

Next on the Loom, Something Simple: Indigo-Dyed Cotton Rugs

Warping from the back, without tension

After working with hand-dyed warps of 60/2 silk and filament-like overtwist weft, it's time for something very simple: cotton rugs! I need a bathroom rug and so does my daughter (I think), so I'm warping with "Newport" pearl cotton from Henry's Attic, 830 yards per pound, sett at 8 epi. The warp will be about 30" wide on the loom, aiming for a 2' wide rug after some shrinkage. We'll see what happens.

The weft is also indigo-dyed, also from Henry's Attic: Pigtail (on the right, at 175 yards per pound) and cotton chenille (on the left, weighing in at 500 yards per pound, which sounds like I'm announcing a prize fight). I'm planning on weaving alternating stripes. The rugs should wind up about a 2' x 3' size each. Again, we'll see what happens!

New on Etsy: Half Moon Jacket and "Fleur de Laine" Scarf

The credit goes to Noro Silk Garden Lite -- a yarn that works magic with colors, in a soft blend of wool and silk -- as well as to the creator of this wonderful sweater pattern. It's the "Sunrise Circle Jacket," available from Kate Gilbert at www.kategilbert.com

The scarf in the photo was crocheted using the same yarn, but the pattern is my own. I call it a "Fleur de Laine Scarf," as it's composed of dozens of small, medium, and large "flowers" crocheted in a circle, just as you would a yarmulke! I'm giving a course on the technique this fall at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center. (See "The Center" at www.weaversguildofrochester.org or check out my page on courses in this blog.)

A few more views of this jacket, which I knitted using size 6 circular needles. It's a size large to extra large, following the directions for size 38 in the pattern.

 

For many more versions of this wonderful sweater, check out Ravelry.com! If you're a knitter and you haven't yet joined, I heartily suggest you do.

Another Wonderful Poem by Anonymous (with a few edits on my part)

The Weaver*

My life is but a weaving

Between Nature and me.

I cannot choose the colors;

But we work steadily.

Often we're weaving sorrow,

And I in foolish pride

Forget She sees the upper

And I, the underside.

Not till the loom is silent

And the shuttles cease to fly

Shall She unroll the canvas

And explain the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful

In the weaver's skillful hand

As the threads of gold and silver

In the pattern Nature planned. 

*A note: I altered this poem a bit, adapting it to my own thoughts and speech. The original author used the word "God" and "He" where I use "Nature" and "She."

Coming in the fall: Classes on Dyeing with Weld and Onion Skins

Dried weld (left) and 8mm China silk scarf dyed at approximately 100% weight of goods.

Yarn dyed with good old cooking-onion skins. Note that the yarn was already a pale yellow color, so the resulting color is a deeper gold than if the yarn had been natural.

This fall at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center, I'll be teaching a class on dyeing with weld, an ancient dye for achieving bright yellow, and onion skins, which yield a golden color. For the upcoming schedule of classes (soon to be posted), please visit the website for the Weavers' Guild of Rochester, which sponsors the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center, at www.weaversguildofrochester.org

The Toad

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,

 Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

 Wears yet a precious jewel in his head..."

 Shakespeare, As You Like It

 

Scenes from a Dye Class: Madder and Cochineal

Linen scarf, ombre-dyed with madder and cochineal

Today at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center in East Rochester, NY, four fiber enthusiasts and I spent several hours playing with madder and cochineal, seeing what reds we could achieve with these two ancient dyes.

We had some surprising results! Using cochineal bugs purchased online from Wild Colours in the United Kingdom -- and following their directions -- our fibers came out in vivid purples and lavenders! I bought a 100 gram bag of bugs (sounds nice, doesn't it?), ground them up in my coffee grinder, doused them with boiling water and soaked them overnight, strained them in the morning, and divided up the dye solution between two dye pots. So I used about 50 grams of ground cochineal for maybe 300 to 400 grams of fiber. Here are some results.

Wool yarn on left, cotton on right

In my experience, cochineal produces magenta, rose, and salmon-red colors. How did this happen? Our water is hard -- perhaps that changed the chemistry. I used a high concentration of dye powder, which might have had some effect. Does anyone out there know how we got purple from cochineal, using nothing but alum mordant?

More results below, from both cochineal and madder, with an alum mordant. By the way, I had to increase the intensity of the madder dye, because our results at 10% WOG were lackadaisical. I upped it to 20% WOG (that's dyeing jargon for a ratio of 20 to 100, weight of dye to weight of fiber).

Wool roving dyed in madder, alum mordant

Skeins on drying rack: madder on left, cochineal on right

Different fibers, same vat, different results: Tencel on left, silk on right

Many thanks to Barbara Clements, Eleanor Hartquist, Joyce Leary, and Gretchen Wheelock for a wonderful afternoon!