batik skirt

When my friend Annalisa was in town recently, she brought a nice surprise: the batik skirt I started last year in the Virgin Islands!

We ran out of time to finish dyeing and dewaxing before I left, so Annalisa kindly finished that for me (that's the hardest part of batik).

It's always a fun surprise to see the final result of a dye project-especially a batik project-and I love how this turned out!

Some photos of the batik process:

(sew skirt, sketch design in pencil onto fabric, then fill in with wax)

Emerging from the first dyebath:

Adding more wax to increase detail before dyeing again in a darker color

For Summer, this is great with sandals and t-shirts.

For Winter, I'm going to wear this with burgundy or navy tights and colorful sweaters!

See the Batik Tree Skirt with winter branches

See a Batik "lesson"

Exotic dye results!

My friend Annalisa (of tree skirt and Virgin Islands fame) came to visit a few weeks ago. She was in town to see family and attend a natural dye workshop at Earthues. We had a great time catching up and driving around Seattle. We even went on a tour of Theo's Chocolate Factory, which I now totally recommend to everyone.

Beside having a great time with her, Annalisa's visit was made even sweeter because she passed on some leftover dye from the workshop!

(left: coccineal with citric acid. center: coccineal. left: madder)

Coccineal is a scale bug harvested from cactus and dyes wool deep red-purples. This was second-hand dye and I still got great pink-reds! The orange is from the same dyebath but I added citric acid crystals to change the pH.

Madder, of British Red Coat fame, comes from the red roots of the Madder/Rubia tinctorum plant) and dyes wool a deep red-orange. This second-hand dye was somewhat exhausted but still gave a nice orange-yellow.

I love the results!

from left to right:

coccineal+citric acid; madder; coccineal; coccineal, madder overdye on a a previously failed dye attempt)

I still have a few quarts of indigo dye to use! Very excited because I love indigo.

There was a logwood dyebath, but it was exhausted ("used up") and produced a pale grey on wool yarn...I'll probably re-dye it in indigo.

Flea Market report

Oh, my goodness...look what I bought for $5 at the Punk Rock Flea Market!!

It's a bundle of antique scraps from a kimono store!

A lot of these are handwoven silk and a lot of these are shibori dyed in indigo! I love indigo and I love shibori - I flipped when I saw these scraps.

I see an indigo sampler quilt in my future....wouldn't that look great? Then I can showcase each of the prints emphasizing the variation in texture and results from just one dye. I think it would look awesome with red-orange stitching/ties and binding. I can't wait to make it. More photos to come - each scrap is absolutely beautiful and deserves documentation.

Here's me at our Tree Peeps booth.

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day - the first day we've had temperatures over 70 degrees since last August...and the whole city almost died of heat stroke (including me)! Hilarious.

A sampling of our wares (above) and the rock star seller beans and rice (below) I love how well this goes over every year :)

California Visit

I just got back from a quick visit to my family in Southern California. It was wonderful; the weather was nice and sunny, we went walking everyday, and we did some garden and attic organizing projects.

Here are some photos:

sunny weather

going for walks by the beach

Tess and Briana

my mom

A wonderful, all produce grocery store called Growers Direct!

Me and my Dad filling up the IKEA bag with fruits and veggies :)

My mom, Briana, and I went exploring in the old town area of Orange. We oohed and ahhed over items in antique stores and ate Belgian waffle sandwiches at Bruxie's (but ate them before we could take a photo).

If I lived nearer, I would have wanted to buy this dresser chest. It was beautiful and in excellent condition, and way less expensive than I've seen in other stores. It would have been perfect for clothes, diapers, and blankies in a baby room :)

pretty idea for folk painting

pretty idea for old-timey lettering

An old dye cabinet!

with packets of dye still inside!

And a list of recipes to obtain various colors:

My purchases: set of 8 black and white quilt squares, two bobbins of handspun wool (I've started a collection), cute apron.

At the outdoor Bruxie's Belgian Waffle joint:

Then we made some fruit crepes at home (bad photo, but delicious!)

Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of Thom! He came down with the flu the day I arrived; so sad. He has grown up to be very tall and handsome and will be the best uncle!

I miss everyone alredy! It was wonderful to be with family for no specific reason - no holiday or family event, just regular everyday life.

Shibori lesson #1b - Mokume

More shibori woodgrain (mokume) this time in black walnut with iron mordant. Black walnut is an aggressive dye, in this sample, it nearly wiped out the design after only ten seconds in the dyebath.

There are a few good sections I can use.

Next time, I will quickly dip or paint the dye on the folds instead of soaking.

Important Side Note:

This chicken chili was delicious and fed the hungry husband

and these peanut butter-nutella brownies were just what we were hankering for

I'm thinking of making these granola bars, but haven't yet.

Black walnut dye 2 ways

As mentioned here, I was thrilled to acquired some buckets of fermenting black walnut (Juglans nigra) hulls.

I finally got around to dyeing some wool with the liquid, here's a little "how to" and my results:

-Ferment walnut hulls in water 1 week

-strain liquid through finely woven cloth bag to remove grit (very hard to get it out of the yarn later....)

-Add fiber (I used an alpaca lace weight and Icelandic Lopi as well as a few squares of cotton cloth for shibori). I didn't use a mordant, black walnut has enough tannins to act as a mordant.

-Heat slowly and keep warm/simmer about 20 min.

-Let fiber soak in dye 2 days.

-Rinse and dry. Each fiber took slightly different shades of brown.

I read that iron mordant will give a dark brown/black color. After I was finished with unmordanted dyeing, I dissolved iron mordant (you could use nails, pieces of iron, etc) in hot water and added it to the dye bath. I then soaked the fiber, photos coming soon....

The potency, abundance, ease of dyeing, and especially the shades of orange-browns and black-browns make me think Black Walnut would be ideal for batik tree skirts. I wish I had the time to sew up a bunch of linen skirts, wax and dye them using my extra two buckets of ready to go dye.....alas.

At least Black Walnut is easy to find and could be a predictable Fall dye for next year's projects :)

Lobster mushrooms

Lobster mushrooms are actually two kinds of fungi: a white mushroom, usually Russula brevipes, parasitized by the bright orange fungus, Hypomyces lactifluorum.

Hypomyces turn purple with a chemical indicator (see below).

Hypomyces lactifluorum will make a good dye, which is why I care about these funky, contorted, parasitized, stinky, mushrooms.
Some people care about lobster mushrooms as edibles. I've actually never eaten one though I plan to some day.
I care about them for dye...and I must care a lot because I have gone through the most disgusting tasks to get them into the dye pot. Unfortunately, it's mostly my fault.
To illustrate:
I got 2 boxes of past-their-prime lobsters from a mushrooming friend.

They sat outside rotting and collecting flies for 4 days until I had time to cut off the red/orange Hypomyces. This (handling rotting, slippery, raw-meat-like mushrooms pieces) in and of itself was disgusting, but it continues...

Then I boiled them (mistakenly) in our house on our stove. They put off the most horrible chemical rotting smell I have ever experienced. I also dried some of the less rotten parts for winter dyeing.

I put the whole dye pot outside to cool while I aired out the house...for 7 days.
Using a cloth bag (after work, in the dark, wearing a headlamp), I strained the chunks from the liquid and had to throw the straining bag away and wash my hair in the shower (my hair had absorbed the horrible smell).
3 weeks later (last night) I attempted to use the dye. Over the 3 weeks, I had time to plan how to use the dye. Not what to use it on - that's easy - but how to actually get through the dyeing process. I still needed to heat the dyebath and let the wool soak in the warm dye.

My idea: use our car camping propane stove at the nearby neighborhood park, hahahaha!

Ideally, wearing a hazmat suit.

Results:

Though Adam and I had a nice night at the park

on the slack line

while the dye pot simmered,

I must say I am bummed to not have gotten the dark purple colors I was hoping for. Many people mention getting cinnamon pink colors, which it probably a fitting description for what I have.

I dipped half of the skein in iron mordant (blue while wet, orange when dry) and the other half was alum mordant.

Further reading:

Tom Volk's website

Mykoweb

black walnuts

Yay! I have inherited some black walnut hulls!
Folks at UW Farm harvested black walnuts (Juglans nigra) and saved the hulls and rinsing water for me to use as dye. In Provo, I had a black walnut tree in my yard but I wasn't in to dyeing. Now that I love to dye with everything I see, I didn't have a tree...until now.
Now I have 4 buckets of hulls to dye with! Rather than transport them back to my apartment, I am going to keep them in Seattle and bring my wool to dye while I'm at work. It's a perfect plan :)

This morning, I dipped in a few yards of white Lopi (Icelandic wool) to test out the dye while I'm at work.
My plan is to dye several skeins with no mordant (warm brown), several with alum mordant (warm brown), and several with iron mordant (a near black color!).