Compost dyeing

To dye with natural dyes you usually need dyestuffs from wich to extract pigments, mordants to bind them to the fiber and heat to set it all in motion. This time I left out the last and used the power of mold instead. The technique is called compost dyeing and it goes like this: First you scatter the vegetal matter on the damp fabric, you can use anything, leaves, lichens...I mostly used lichens, because I read that they work specially well with this technique, I also used onion skins and eucalyptus leaves. Then you must wrap it in plastic film to keep the humidity within and let it rot for a couple of months. I left it fo or two months. At first I thought I wouldn't be able to stand the impatience, but I scarcely gave my stinky wrap a thought in all this time. I forgot to take pictures when I prepared the packet, so all the pictures are from when I opened it, with the emotion of a christams morning.
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to photograph smells?

Unfortunately at some points the wools itself rot and broke.

I think next time it needs more dyestuff.

The never ending brown

Spun form several tops dyed with different dyestuffs that gave it different shades of brown and russet. Unfortunatly you can't apreciate the colours very well in the pictures.

I don't know why it took me so long to spin it, it was like if the fiber had no end.

100g, 100% merino superwash, 2 ply, 550 m.

Chasing snakes

Have you seen that the new knitty is up? And have you seen that there is a pattern of mine?

The green pair I knitted with this yarn, that I love

check out the beautiful colours on the plain part

The blue pair were born and raised in Brighton, I bought the yarn there and knitted them there. After knitting all day on the machine, the best way to spent your evening is to keep knitting still some more, it looks like I am a little bit obsessed.
As always the photographs aren't that good, I should take a course or give up and let someone help me with this.

Autum in spring

These colours are quite autum-like, but I like the way they blended together

100% merino superwash, 100g, 390m, 2 ply.

Shades

I have some more samples of natural dyes:
Red clover(In Menorca we call it enclova, it was brought here by the british and we took the word from them)

with alum and cream of tartar

with iron

Asphodelus tops. Last year I got a very nice yellow from the leaves

Fennel

with alum and cream of tartar

with iron (I love this green!!)

Eucaliptus barck with iron. I never get the same colour with this stuff...

Together to better see the different colours

If I mix it with my last batch

I get 3 sets of shades from 3 different colours, about 100g each. The question now is how to spin it? Do I mix all the colours in 3 similar skeins? Or do I make 3 slightly variegated skeins with a different colour each? Yarns with subtil variations in colour are very useful, they cheer up plain stockinet and yet don't overshadow more elaborated stitches. Heavily variegated yarns are beautiful too, and I would have enough for a bigger project.

Dyes

Still catchig up with old pleasures

Left to right: weld, madder root, blackberry with alum and cream of tartar and blackberry with iron. On thing about natural dyes is that even using the same dyestuff and the same procedure you will never be able to get exactly the same colour twice. But still, I am intrigued by the very different colours that I get from blackberry stems, the first year I got gray, the second nothing and now dark green, I like the colour, but why does this happen? This time I had done exactly the same, same season, same type of stems, and I really was expecting to get gray. Is it the different locations of the plants, the different amount of rain water every year?

Old pleasures

100g, superwash merino, 500m. I hadn't been spinning for a long time. I took my time, no rush, spinning just for the sake of spinning, the result is unimportant.

grr...it's so difficult to take an acurate picture of these colours