Blue?

I owe you some pictures of the indigo-dyeing! So I followed the instructions in "A Dyer's Garden" by Rita Buchanan, but I just had about half the indigo leaves that I should have for the amount of fibers I used.


It was a lengthly process, I think I managed to keep everything at the right temperature and the pot-in-a-pot waterbath system worked quite well. In the end the soup was quite smelly, so I thought I could have used urine after all, because that spectralite stuff can't be anything much different. I put in two portions of wool and wool/silk fibers and awed at the magic of color changing after airing the dipped fibers. The second portion was already much paler than the first one, so I decided to give them a second dip. And I am not completely sure, because it was already late in the evening after the first dip and I could not see the colors very good, but I think after the first dip the colors were deeper and not so pale. Anyways, I will try on it further if my plants ever grow back sufficiently. Here is my result:


The second portion has hardly any color and it looks more greyish. I think after the first dip it still had some ice blue, but if it faded because of the second dip or because of drying and washing I can't tell. Oh and the silk did not seem to take up the dye as much as the wool.

True Blue

Just a note: though Tini is going to move, my humble self is still in the business. Though I am quite occupied, but whenever there is an order coming up, I surely will fulfill your wishes and ship any yarn your heart desires.

Now back to the topic! Since I have a small garden now (and own the book "A Dyer's Garden" by Rita Buchanan for even a while longer), I finally could go and grow indigo and dye with it. The indigo dyeing can be a smelly and lengthly process, using a fermented soup which includes urine, but Buchanan describes a fast method with fresh leaves, and using spectralite and no urine. I had to order the spectralite in Britan, which took a strangely long time to arrive. I did not use "real" indigo, but polygonium tinctorium (japanese indigo or dyer's knotweed) but that has the same color pigment as indigofera tinctoria. I had started the seeds in spring in a small greenhouse, and later I planted them to a sunny garden patch and crossed my fingers that they will grow readily. To my delight, they did so! Now they even start to flower which makes me hope to harvest some seeds later that year. Here they are in their green beauty:



I just cut off around 90% of it, I just left the stems with the most evolved flowers. It is said that it will regrow readily so I maybe can dye with it again later that year. I picked all the leaves from the stems and started the extraction process. Until now it looks good, I have a liquid which seems to be of a dark green, but there are several more steps to follow. I will keep you posted on the results!

Times they are a-changing

A lot of changes has happend in the last couple of months. next to some personal changes am I starting a new job in the middle of September and will move to the beautiful city of Koblenz in Germany. but before then I will go on my long awaited holiday (I know, unemployment is hard..;-)) so I will not be able to reply to requests or send out orders till Aug 29th.

Wish you all a wonderful summer or winter!
So long, Tini

TdF Day 10 & 11

I got my spinning wheel running again and after being held up with work and family I am now a proud member of Ravelry's "Spinkult"-Team :-). And having fun.

Day 10 was just a plain simple soysilk warm-up. Nothing fancy but so soft and cuddly *sigh*

Day 11 turned out to be a shipwreck. Not me, but the yarn. Blue, white and light green merino with mohair locks and some wooden beads. Stormy sea and a sunken ship = shipwreck. No harm was done to humans, animals or actual ships. Promise ;-).

Busy Bee

I know it has been a while since the last post, but I was well occupied with moving, working, a bit of travelling, seeing the family and also creative stuff. I hope I can catch up with that in some future blog posts.

But what I would really announce now is that I will show up at a local craft fair tomorrow! *Squeee*
I just wrote them to add me to their mailing list to be notifyed earlier next year, but they said that a free spot is available because someone cancelled. It is totally unexpected and I have to organise a table, chairs, table cloths etc. and go through the things I would like to sell.
I will share with Katharina, like for the christmas market and expect it to be quite fun. Here are the details:

Marché Artisanal de Mies
9 am to 6 pm
Saturday, April 30
In front of the Administration Communale,
1, rue du Village, 1295 Mies

You can have a look at photos from the 2009 edition here. It seems to be a very nice market, with even a small flea market, animals, music and plant sellers. I just hope the weather will be fine, because we don't have any tent or pavillion. If you are in the area, come and have a look!

It's a baby!

I finally finished two projects I have been drooling over for quite some time. "It's a boy!" and "It's a girl!".
I found the blue polka dot baby buttons in Cardiff and the were screaming out "spin me in, spin me in!". How could I resist that? And when I ripped off my pearl necklace in the same week I knew I also had to spin a girl equivalent. And they are sooooooooooooo cute! You just want to hug and cuddle them all day, make them laugh and sing them to sleep...

Take a look for yourself



Wanna hold?

Take care, Tini

Wakey wakey, have some tea!

So the coffee dyeing went fairly well. Definitively a way to destroy coffee. I also found my two value packs of british black tea I had bought just for dyeing a while ago. I am also no big fan of black tea, because it makes me feel quite weird. But the smell is very pleasant - I was just concerned that the vapours of so much tea would cause some insomnia but it seemed to have no effect whatsoever.

I found a recipe which said something like 8 tea bags for 5l, which would dye 100 g of yarn and I was surprised, checked my tea pack and realized I could have dyed 1kg of yarn with those 80 tea bags which were in it. I re-checked the reicpe and it said it would become some kind of beige, so I decided to make some experiments on my own.
First I used 10 bags, and that gave some quite dark beige, bright brown. Then I used the same dyebath again, put in new fiber and another 20 bags and reached a nice caramel brown. In the end, it put in the rest of the 50 bags and put in more silk and wool/silk blend and got some dark copper.



I like the colors, and it is really easy peasy with the tea bags, no filtering neccessary and no dirty fibers (as long as no tea bags burst open). And very nice colors for a low price.