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Blogini kertoo kasvivärjäyksestä ja sienivärjäyksestä.
This blog is about dyeing with plants and mushrooms.
Yesterday I dyed with cochineal. Birch is a Midsummer tree here in Finland, it is used to decorate porches and gates in Midsummer so to dye with birch would have been a thing to do in Midsummer.. but I needed cochineal reds so birch leaves have to wait:)
I soaked 80 grams of cochineal over night, boiled it for 30 minutes in a little kettle and then added 40grams of cream of tartar. I then put the cochineal to a bigger pot (added more water) with one kg of alum premordanted dark grey yarn, and simmered in 90C for a little over an hour.
This gave me darkest color in the bottom picture.
I then added to the bath another 80 grams of cochineal, boiled the same way as before, and put the yarns of the upper picture to the bath. They were dyed with Cortinarius semisanguineus mushroom already, and even though their color was ok, I have so much of them and now I needed more reddish colors. There were three different shades of orange, two of them were dyed on grey yarn and one on white yarn. They were already mordanted when dyed orange so I didn't add any mordant to the bath and after simmering one hour I took them from the bath. They are on the right in the bottom picture, but now I have to say their color isn't exactly right (my husband isn't now home to help me get the colors right) even though the other colors in the picture are ok. They are really a little darker and not so bright raspberry color. I will try to post more pictures when all the yarn is dry and sorted out.
After these two baths, I got three afterbaths from the same pot, all of them were on light grey yarn, first was 800grams, mordanted with 10% alum and 2% cream of tartar, second 600 grams, mordanted with only 10% alum and last 500grams, mordanted again with alum and 2% CoT. In the picture is the second afterbath, the other ones were still waiting to be washed when I took the picture (I was in a little hurry today, it was going to start to rain, that's why I had to take the picture without all the yarn now).
I got quite a lot of good colored yarn from 160 grams of cochineal: 3,9kg all together and now I am very pleased with this weekends work.
Olen värjännyt myös hiukan silkkihuiveja kasviväreillä.
Lapaspakettien mallilapasia ei ole tällä hetkellä myytävänä, ehkä ensi talvena ehdin tehdä taas uusia kesäksi, saa nähdä.
In English
I have also dyed some silk scarves with natural dyes.
Mittens in the picture are not the same ones, that I have kits for, these are knit with a little thicker yarn and are quicker to make. Right now I don't sell my model mittens for the kits, maybe next winter I have time to knit them again also for the market. Lankakorit, suunnitteilla on jonkin sortin hylly, että saisin enemmän lankoja esille, nyt lisälangat ovat säkissä varalla kojun takana. Lankakorin sisältö vaihtuu aina sitä mukaa, mitä myyn ja toisaalta, mitä uutta värjään, koskaanhan en saa aivan samoja värejä värjäyksistä.
Vakka, jossa värjäämättömät langat ovat, on vanha viljavakka, taivutettu yhdestä puusta ja varmaan sata vuotta vanha. Sitä aina välillä halutaan ostaa, mutta se ei ole myytävänä:)
Myös värjättyjen lankojen kori on vaarini vanha.
In English
My yarn baskets, my husband is planning to make some sort of shelves for the yarn, so we could have more of them for people to see, now I have extra yarn stored in the back of the booth, these are just color samples that I have at the moment. Actually, colors change every week depending what we have sold and what new I have dyed. And as you know, it never is just the same.
The basket, where sheep colored yarn is, is very old, propably about hundred years and used then to store grain, or that is what we think it was for. Once in a while someone wants to buy it, but it is not for sale:) Also the other basket used to belong to my grandfather, it has his name in the bottom.
Lapaspaketeilla on oma teline kojun takaosassa.
In English
Kits for mittens are in the back of the booth.
Tämän päiväiset värjäykset onnistuivat kivasti, niistä huomenna lisää ja kuvia.
In English
I am very pleased with today's dyeings, more about that and pictures tomorrow.
Here is the picture of my last weeks celandine dyeings. Nice yellow. I will dye more with it this week. I kept a little piece of yarn outside in the sun for two days, part of it covered, and the color changed a little. Not really faded, rather like the shade changed to more brownish, it looked like the lemon yellow dyes in the yarn faded and the other ones were still there. I have an old finnish dyebook from 1919 and it mentions celandine so it is an old dyeplant.
Some pictures from the celandine plants near our house. They are about one meter high with small yellow flowers, but I have heard that also a double flowered form of it exists. That would be a better garden plant than this single form, but I like this one especially now that I can dye with it.