Summertime

Summertime,
An’ the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin'
An’ the cotton is high...

summertime is harvest time

Ash leaves (Fraxinus excelsior) to brew "Frenette". 

Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) as herbal medicine.

and Dyer's Chamomille (Anthemis tinctoria) to make a yellow dye

When fermented in sugar or honey water, Ash leaves produce an alcoholic drink called Frenette or cidre de frêne. Frenette is a traditional drink fallen into oblivion since the sixties. However, it is still made by a few grandmothers in the countryside. This drink, which taste a bit like apple cider was already brewed by our ancestors the Gauls. Each region had its own recipe. Slightly alcoholic (2 °) and slightly sweet, this drink is not fattening. It is drunk fresh as lemonade.

The Gauls were Celtic peoples inhabiting Gaul in the Iron Age and the Roman period. The Gaul region corresponds to what is now Belgium, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Western Germany and Northern Italy.

Sparkling wines from natural fermentation

"Frenette" , wild strawberries and raspberries, peaches, elder flowers

I'm testing all kinds of vegetable mordants for the moment,

to ensure a better result with plant dyes as I don't want to use any metallic mordants !

Here I'm testing leafs of Rheum palmatum commonly called Turkish rhubarb

It is said that the fumes are hazardous so I'm a bit careful.

It surely smells like the rhubarb jam my grandmother use to make

and here's the result

Blue faced Leicester top, Blue faced Leicester sock yarn, silk/mohair, 

alpaca/ silk and some eco wool from the Andes, 

dyed and mordanted with Turkish Rhubarb

waiting for the Woad vat to be ready...

to be dyed 

GREEN !

In the meantime I'm harvesting next year's blues

Isatis tinctoria seeds

Woad 

...

mellow yellow

This morning I decided it was a good day to harverst yellow dyes
en so I did...

the one on the left is feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) which I'm going to test now to see if it's a good dyeplant using the fermentation method

the other two are: dyer's chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria) and dyer's broom (Genista tinctoria)

My dye garden with bright yellow flowers: dyer's broom and dyer's chamomile

starting a fermentation vat with the Dyer's broom flowers and stems 

OOO

It's really important for me as a natural dyer to only use plants which grow abundantly in my own garden.

It's the case with these three plants but there are a lot of other plants you can use, as yellow is the most common natural dye

Some other yellow dyes can be made with:

weld (one of the best), goldenrod,  marigold, evening primrose, mullein, dandelion, yarrow, birch leaves... and many more

...

to read:
http://www.alchemy-works.com/genista_tinctoria.html

“Dyer's broom has been used for dyeing since Roman times and makes a good yellow similar to that of weld, bright and fast.

Harvest the flowering tops and either use them right away or dry them and save them until you want to dye something; they'll retain their strength for about a year. Kendal green, a greyish green named for the town of Kendal in Westmoreland where it was first created, was made from woad and dyer's broom;
The flowers are also a traditional Easter egg dye in the Carpathian Mountains, so give the flowers a try for egg dyeing for Ostara”

bleu de Nimes...

Some pictures I've made a few years ago when I first dyed with woad (Isatis tinctoria)

just for inspiration

ooo

bleu de Nimes - denim - pays de Cocagne 

woad - wede - waid - waide - guède - pastel

Isatis - blues - indigo

different yarns dyed with woad

close up

fine silk dyed with woad

the blues

extracting woad pigment

 fermenting woad

"boules de cocagne"

(Dried balls obtained from crushed woad leaves)

the making of a "boule de cocagne"

notice the "pictish blue" on my hand   :)

ooo

to read:

Bleu de pastel de Lectoure : about woad

history of the jeans

all about woad website

ooo

flowering woad plants with sheep - Drôme, France

my pinterest page: Bleu de Nimes (denim)

- : : ) ) )-( ( ( : : -

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

:)

...open season again...

It’s been a while, I know…

Lots of work on the house right now, painting walls and stuff.

And working in the garden of course…

my poor walls !

Land Art in the back yard

the herbal garden

luckily I have a lot of help from Ingrid Anna

...

And… about dyeing: it's open season again, the weather is getting warmer so it’s time for me to experiment with all sorts of dye plants. First I harvested some common herbs to start with: nettles (Urtica dioica) and Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) which are now fermenting in plastic bottles.

Wikipedia : Geranium robertianum, (syn. Robertiella robertiana) commonly known as Herb Robert, Red Robin, Death come quickly, Storksbill, Dove's Foot, Crow's Foot, or (in North America) Robert Geranium, is a common species of cranesbill in Europe, Asia, North America, and North Africa.

Nettles are known to give some green dye and Herb Robert is famous for its gold yellows !  

But with the fermenting dye method, you never know :) 

We’ll see !

I bought some strange dye plant seeds which I’m very curious about: Sunflower Hopi black dye (Helianthus annuus) which should give some black dye,  Amaranthus hypochondriacus or Prince-of-Wales feather (Amaranthus Hopi red dye) which should give some, well, red dye and Midnight Black Turtle beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) which should give me BLUE ! 

I’ll let you know how it went, 

but first they need to grow !

...

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

:)

shades of madder

Dyeing with madder, Rubia tinctorum, has been a magical adventure for me.

It is magical because madder offers a colour palette from 

light to dark orange, red, burgundy, pink to dark pink.

depending on a acidic or a alcali-basic dye bath

which will give different shades.

(Orenburg silk mohair)

Poll Dorset yarn, dyed with madder

left : acidic dye bath - right basic dye bath

Orenburg silk mohair, lace merino, 

even the wall was painted with madder

You can use vegetal dyes for other purposes too. 

This orange wall was painted with madder

here's the recipe 

100 grams madder powder 

100 grams fine wood ash 

20 grams soap flakes 

50 grams beeswax 

Put the madder and the wood ash with water in a pan 

Warm up till just before boiling 

Filter this liquid in a cloth mesh 

add the soap and the beeswax, mix well 

keep this mixture warm in bain-marie, 

don’t let it boil ! 

when everything is well mixed you can used this mixture 

lukewarm to paint the wall 

the next day you can polish it with a soft cloth 

...

shades of dyer's chamomille

Dyer's chamomille or golden marguerite (Anthemis tinctoria) is a perennial plant with aromatic bright green-bluish foliage and yellow daisy-like flowers.

It has no culinary and only limited medicinal uses. However, the flowers produce excellent yellow and gold-orange.
It has been used as a dye for a very long time, it provides the buff in Turkish carpets but in Europe dyers preferred weld instead as yellow dye.
The leaves give a light green dye.

one acidic and one basic fermented dye in glass containers

with dyer's chamomille

Using the fermentation method with dyer's chamomille

gave some light yellow on kidsilk mohair and buff yellow on lace merino

...