Surprise!

Apologies for the lack of updates lately. It's been hectic here, but I have good news! I found a part-time job and I've stumbled upon an amazing new dye!

Take a gander at this:

Oh yes. That stunning pink, purple, and turquoise is from beans! I noticed the water my beans were soaking in was becoming coloured, so I tossed in a few pieces of unmordanted cheesecloth and silk. Some samples were later treated with dish soap, others, with vinegar. I wrapped a sample around my favourite rusty anchor and the colours shifted to grey purples.

Ah, lovely. I'm not sure how colourfast beans are as a dye, but I can't wait to test it! This method uses no heat and the beans are safe to boil and eat since I'm not using a mordant.  

OS

Last Friday I started weaving a bit of overshot. Love the structure and challenge, hated the string of Friday tour groups.  

The warp and plain weave weft are dyed with rose hips, and the pattern weft is natural Harrisville wool. 

I also took a trip out to Gemini Fibres, a charming fibre arts shop packed to the gunwales with books and spinning wheels and soft things, to (in theory) window shop, but... my strict budgeting regimen goes out the window when I see hand-turned wooden earrings and silk carrier rods. I managed to walk out only 9$ poorer. 

You'll eventually see photos of what those junky little silk bits are being turned into. Right now content yourself with knowing that it'll be neat. 

Surprising Results

While my noggin is taking a beating from this fierce head cold, I figured you should look at some things I've done! 

Above: pre-mordanting some wools and silk in an alum and tartar solution (note: the dye kitchen doesn't have a proper scale, so I had to eyeball the amounts), and in the pot on the right, a rose-hip dye extraction. This was from that demo...

I banged off a scarf in record time! All of these cotton scarves are blank canvases for dye experiments. If they turn out well, I'll sell 'em.

Below: dye experiments! Gorgeous, fascinating dye experiments! These two were coloured by horse chestnut hulls. The top photo, though out of focus, shows the samples after an iron post-mordant. LOOK AT THAT BLUE! 

And without iron, you get lovely champagne and nude tones. It's incredible that the colour shifted so drastically AND only on the cotton and silk! The cotton was pre-mordanted with milk and an ammonia solution. I am also testing cotton with a tannin solution, so we'll have to wait and see how effective it is. 

These next two photos show the rose hip bath. Similar nudes and champagnes, but wait till you see the results of the iron post-mordant...

TADA! BLUE! Logwood blue on cotton and silk! Amazing!

And here are all of those little samples lined up in my book. The colour's a bit off in the photo, but you get the idea. The horse chestnut blues are far more yellow than the purple blues from the rose hips. 

I need to spend some time in the BAC driveway collecting walnuts and horse chestnuts before they get carted off by squirrels or shredded by lawnmowers.