Still Summer...

One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.
Henry David Thoreau

The river Aulne next to the house

Le Bleu nouveau est arrivé...

The very first blue (and green) shades

some pre-dyed, some dyed twice, some will be re-dyed and re-dyed again and again...

using Woad and Rhubarb

What happens when you soak some onion skins in rainwater ?

Dyer's Chamomille (Anthemis tinctoria)

Jardin des Simples - Bellegarde en Diois

I've just started a fermentation vat with these flower's

Dyer's chamomille or golden marguerite 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.

Lost and found:

Some wooden stamps I've bought years ago !

I'm going to try and print on fabric

Soon

...

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 

...

early summer harvests

Summer has finally started here in my little Breton home ! I'm still experimenting a lot with fermentation dyeing and right now I'm harvesting everything that could be useful.

Have a look...

The front garden, which is mainly a herb garden.

I work with a lot of herbs,

for medicine, beverages, incense, food

and of course dyes...

Broad-leaved Dock roots

Zen

or the art of harvesting willow bark

and apple tree bark

clockwise: barks from oak, apple tree, willow and plum tree

a few fibers waiting to be dyed

some fallen Eucalyptus leaves

water from the river, common sorrel, wood ash

fermented

dyed

sheep wool, alpaca and silk yarn, paper thread

Thanks for visiting

...

The new colour season has started...

Different herbal dye vats are fermenting right now.
I've put them in my living room next to the wood burner because it's still chilly outside.

dandelion flowers, birch leaves, dock roots, eucalyptus leaves, woad flowers
all from my garden

I won't show pictures of the fermenting vats, instead some pictures of my place:

I can assure you that there are enough dandelions to share with the bees

picture is taken from my neighbor's meadow

Chinese rhubarb, which I sometimes use in the dyeing process

Woad flowers and forget-me-not's, such a lovely sight !

While the woad leaves are harvested the first year for the most divine blues, 

the flowers of the following year are great for a yellow dye 

I haven't tried to dye with Valerian yet, 

I will give it a try this summer

my cat, on the other hand, gets high from the roots

A view of the back yard with two oaks, 

every year a few dead branches give me some lichen 

In the back, the vegetable garden

a small herbal dye garden in the front yard, where motherplants grow:

a few woads, madder, dyer's chamomile, dyer's broom, pomegranate 

and seedlings of orange cosmos, marigold, pokeweed, St Johns wort, 

coreopsis, weld and others

a small pond with one of my favorites, the yellow iris which roots gives a blue-grey dye

I will do some fabric printing tests with the iron rich soil on the bottom of this pond

a little well hidden in the back yard

which I have named

Urdarbrunnr

the well of Urd

:)

I'm going to be more of a dyer than a designer this year

I hope you still will follow me and my dye-experiments on this blog

Comments are always welcome

Thank you for visiting

...

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 

:)

...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

:)