shades of late-summer berries... testing...

Dye News update

I did some test dyeing with late summer berries

pokeweed berries - brambles and elderberries

after fermentation of the berries I've put some lace merino for one day in the glass jars

I only used an acid dye-vat (with vinegar)

here's the final result:

dyed with elderberries (dark old rose)- onion skin (fantastic orange)- poke weed (purple)- brambles (pink)

I love these colours, they look great together !

what do you think? 

lace merino dyed with poke weed

not washed yet

the same yarn - after it was washed and placed in full daylight for one week, but no sunlight

I'm quite happy with the results !

...

We went on a autumn walk and we saw this cute little goat 

:)

... summer fruits

some fruit from the garden

I didn't do any fermentation dyes this summer due to circumstances, but now with all the wild fruits growing in abundance, Elderberries and Brambles for instance but also with the Pokeweed I planted last year which is giving some fruit now, I decided to give it another go, with promises of some pink or red or maybe even purple... who knows!

Pokeweed  -  Phytolacca esculenta

(here with the leafs of some Buckwheat - Fagopyrum esculentum)

Here's a blog post about dyeing with Pokeweed by Grackle and Sun

Pokeweed edible or not?
Here you will find information about it:    Can Be Deadly But Oh So Delicious: Pokeweed

Pokeweed - Brambles - Onion skins

It's such a fascinating subject, fermentation...

...

The labyrinth we painted along the riverside...

I'm really grateful that I live in such a beautiful place

Nature offers so much inspiration

each and every day

...

and... I'm definitely working on something new here

:)

shades of summer

Here are my final dye experiments for this summer
I've cheated a bit, because I placed the dye vats next to the wood burner this last couple of weeks
to keep them fermenting.
Which works fine :)

The yarn is Poll Dorset from Renaissance Dyeing

Here's another photo. The exact colours are difficult to capture, they look more like this.

from left to right - dyed with:

 Brambles (Rubus fructicosus) - Yellow Iris (Iris pseudacorus) - St Johns wort (Hypericum perforatum)

Madder (Rubia tinctorum) - Elderberries (Sambucus nigra) :basic vat  - Elderberries :acidic vat 

...

the yellow Irisses were harvested in my own garden. They grow in abundance close to the river

I would never take the wild ones as they are quite rare

and they were replanted after taking away only a part of the root

sliced roots Iris pseudacorus

The roots hold a reddish colour which apparently gives a bluish grey dye 

with promises of more blues or maybe even some purples, if I had used more roots

I'm definitely going to try it again next year !

My conclusion is that the colours you get with the fermentation method are quite different from the bright colours of the synthetic dyes, much softer, but they are what I would like to call "vibrantly alive" and frankly I prefer these soft tones to the ones we are so used to see on clothing and yarn these days.

And, once you get used to work with these natural colours, it's not easy to return to the synthetic colours again. 

Well, I won't, anyway !

I think I will make a crochet wrap or maybe a cardigan, with these six colours

:)