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Picking & Straining

29 Jun

So before temps soar above 100 today I picked & prepped some more dyestuff. The Diospyros Texana Persimmon branches are heavy with the green fruit and is ready to pick.

An item of interest, in the four years I’ve been watching the persimmon bushes I’ve never seen a heavier or thicker crop on the branches. I don’t know if this is the effect of more rain earlier this year compared to the 2009 & 2011 drought years. We’ll see soon how the color comes in on the silk.

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In addition I strained some of my Parmotrema Austrosinense Lichen which has been soaking in a high ph bath of ammonia and water.

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The lichens gathered in Dec 12 are on the left and the lichens gathered in early fall 2012 are on the right. My paper towel test gives me a decent indication as to what color to expect a dye bath to yield. Do you think it is the 3 month soak difference or the time of year gathered?

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Time to wash the dishes & head inside to cool off!

Overdyeing acorn & oak galls with woad on the side!

7 Mar

Test drive today for my shoulder with my husband’s help! I got on his calendar!

Acorn and oak gall to be over-dyed with my Parmotrema Austrosinense lichen. Purple over yellow tones, I’m thinking a brown. Hopefully a nice neutral brown to brighten other colors. We’ll see. There is always the iron afterbath to take it darker.

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In the meantime as my hero is learning how to turn wool skeins in the dye pot I am harvesting 2nd year woad to over-dye some last year woad blue that I want a shade darker.

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Parmotrema Austrosinense

1 Jan

We have not had significant rain since September 2012 so it was really nice to get the .3 inches of rain for the new year! This moisture made the morning walk gathering lichen much easier as the lichen has rehydrated and has a greenish gray glow against the winter grasses and the wet weather creek bed. We haven’t had enough rain for the creek to run but I can assure you that the lichens are happy.

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Over the past dry months we’ve had 3 significant wind events so I’ve gathered the branches against the tree trunks waiting for moisture to make it easier to separate the windfall lichen from the tree branches. I think this will be a good lichen harvest week, until the sun sneaks back out and dries everything out again.

Happy New Year to all!

teloschistes exilis

24 Oct

A quick picture post, more words later.

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Below is my dye experiments with teloschistes exilis or slender orange bush lichen. It took over two years to collect 2 ounces of this windfall lichen plus one big damaging wind storm. The substrate is silk. I now know this process works as well on silk as well as wool!

The lichen was soaked for about two months in one part ammonia and 2 part water. An amazing solar photosynthesis happens when you allow the skein to dry slowly in the sun.

If anyone can provide input/resources on the chemical reaction taking place please let me know. For now, I am enjoying the color! Of course if I want to keep the pink I would allow the skein to dry in the shade.

See the time lapse below for the transformation from pink to blue.

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This final photo show the two original skeins, the one on the left was rinsed with vinegar, in other words I took the ph down. The one on the right was the one which went to blue under the sun!

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Overdyeing with Blender Indigo

19 Aug

I have green samples of indigo overdyed with yellows but now I am trying indigo as the top color layer. The main experiment is overdyeing cold persimmon dips with some cota & lichen skeins thrown in. The cold dip persimmon (Texas Persimmon) appears below!

Hence the blender indigo as it doesn’t have the reduction chemicals and will impact the persimmon. Here are the wet skeins that are still changing over…definitely a different green when one flips the overdye. Will cure overnight and rinse tomorrow! The skein on the left is the lichen was a magenta.

These two recipes are my reference:

1.  I’ve used the recipe at the bottom of this web page several times and it works well!  I appreciate the time taken to write this up!

http://www.lustauffarben.de/faerben-faerberknoeterich-englisch.html

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2.  Rowland Ricketts also just posted this recipe, I need to try the 2nd recipe with some of my cotton/linen fibers.  Rowland has an active indigo community on Facebook, look at http://indigrowingblue.com  to track down the link.

Once again, thank you for sharing!

http://indigrowingblue.com/Dyeing_With_Fresh_Indigo_Leaves.pdf

These are silk scarf blanks that I dipped to pick up the extra blue leftover after my primary skeins!  Always have something extra just to pull the leftover color!  Can’t waste those leaves.

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Persimmon – 2 dip Before the indigo

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Look up category persimmon for more background on the Texas persimmon

Colors from my valley – Parmotrema Austrosinese

31 Dec

Also known as unwhiskered ruffle lichen, here are some color ranges on silk I’ve gotten from my lichen by combining it with acorns, Japanese Indigo, iron, soda ash and ammonia.  Of course not at once!  There is quite a color range available.  I still have walnut and agarita to explore with lichen in color combinations.  Next up, lightfast tests….and more dyeing….what colors can I find in my valley!

Always collect ONLY windfall lichen.  Our Texas winds kick up every once in awhile here in HIll Country and when we have a heavy dew morning I have plenty on the ground to harvest!

In a later post I’ll detail how the colors were combined, but I couldn’t resist sharing since the skeins had dried and were so pretty!  The yarn was sourced from Habu and from Georgia Yarn Company.  They all held up well in the dyepot.

 

Unwhiskered ruffle lichen

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Time to sort lichen!

10 Dec

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After last week’s rain I was able to pick up plenty of windfall lichen. It’s dry and ready to sort. Ready for the next round of wind & rain!

2011 Colors from My Valley

24 Sep

Here are the results if 2010 gathering & growing and 2011 dyeing. Lots of details on my old blog http://www.debmcclintock.com/Debmcclintock/Debs_Dyepot_Blog/Debs_Dyepot_Blog.html

I’ve done 5 scarves from all the color samples. The toughest thing was combining the colors so each scarf showed off it’s colors. The project started as a dye sample project, not a finished product project so I had a real challenge in pulling the colors togeather so they did not clash. BUT I did find out the minimum amount I needed to get great colors so next year I’ll plan bigger skeins.

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Lichen scarf earns fair ribbon

19 Aug

Yahoo! Lichen scarf wins Crafts & Hobbies category in Blanco County Fair. Warp is Texas Parmotrema Austrosinese (unwhiskered ruffle lichen) soaked in alcohol. Weft is same lichen simmered in water.

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