Finished dyeing

Done. You can find more pictures from here. I try to write something more about the whole process a bit later. The colour is much lighter than I really wanted, but quite nice anyway.

We visited today Överhogdal, which is a village here in Härjedalen. Almost 100 years ago they found pieces of a tapestry from the village church. The tapestry was later dated to the Viking Age and is one of the very few very old tapestry finds in Europe which have never been under the soil. The original tapestry is now in Jämtlands county museum, but our teacher, Ellinor Sydberg, made an exact copy of it on ’80’s working with spinning, dyeing and weaving linen and wool. The whole work took several years.

I took also a bunch of photos about the tapestry reconstruction and a “museum” made around it. It was a very fine place; if you ever visit Härjedalen, I can recommend it warmly.

Dyeing, part 2

Some pics about dyeing are now here in Flickr. I got a very beautiful olive green colour from the heather, which was cooked in an iron cauldron (about 3,5 hours cooking, yarn was in the heather bath only one hour).

I counted my yarn yesterday and figured out that I got more than I actually should need. Because of that I begun to dye those yarns on this morning. I have done mordanting, now the heather is cooking and I’m trying to relax a bit before beginning to dye the loom.

Because the school doesn’t have a big iron cauldron, I have to use iron vithrill for getting the green iron colour out from the heather. This is actually probably almost authentic – in the literature it’s often mentioned they have used file dust or small pieces of iron in baths made for dyeing yarn or colouring leather.

I’m dyeing the loom in the first heather bath and the weft in the afterbath. The big cauldron is made of stainless steel. I’ll dye both dyes and then add iron vithrill and put both the weft and the loom together to the iron bath. I hope the colour will be a nice one.

Now I’ll begin with my hand-spun yarns…

Experimental dyeing

We planned the dyeing a bit with my teacher Ellinor. I want to make an experiment with  only a small amount of yarn because of the uncertainty of the end result.

So, this is my plan:

120g yarn = 100g “industrial” white woollen yarn (3 fibres) and 20g tightly hand-spunned (spinning wheel) yarn (2 fibres)

This amount is divided to two small skeins (2 x 50g + 10g).

Other skein is washed with water and a small amount of ammonia and the other with mixture of water and urine. The purpose is to wash away the lanolin fat before mordanting with alum. The point in using urine is to experiment again: it has been a very popular way to wash yarn, but the amounts which were used are a bit uncertain. Another thing is that I didn’t remember to begin to pee in a bucket before this morning, so the urine I’ll use is quite fresh, which means I probably need more than it has been traditional (which is a bit nicer for me, because some weeks or months old urine just smells like hell…) We’ll see if it works or not.

These skeins are divided once again to two different cauldrons. The other one is made of stainless steel, the other one of casted iron.

So, both cauldrons will have 120 grams of heather and:
- 25g ammonia-washed industial yarn
- 25g urine-washed industrial yarn
- 5g ammonia-washed hand-spunned yarn
- 5g urine-washed hand-spunned yarn

I’ll cook heather 4 hours before the dyeing. An old dyeing book (Hulda Kontturi: Luonnonväreillä värjäämisestä, http://coloriasto.blogspot.com/2007/12/hulda-kontturi-luonnonvreill-vrjmisest.html) tells that an iron cauldron will give olive green colour to the yarn dyed by heather. I’ll check if this is true. If I’ll get a nice green colour, I’ll experiment with stainless cauldron and a very small amount of iron vithrill (no idea about the correct name in English). It’s possible that in prehistory they have been dyeing in clay pots, but a bit more probable is that they have been using iron cauldrons (thought not casted iron, but I don’t have any other options now), which loose a bit of iron to the water. But we’ll see what happens, this is very exciting!

(Writing in English becomes more and more difficult. All terms are in Swedish n my head, and sometimes it’s difficult to find words even in Finnish. Sorry about terrible grammar in my later posts, but if I begin to think what I’m writing, I will not write anything…)

It happens something soon

I begin to be a bit tired of spinning and combing and spinning and combing. My need is about 1600m warp and 1300m weft, and this is soon done. I should be done after couple of days. Then I’ll dye my yarn – you’ll get pictures, I promise – and set up the warp-weighted loom.

Making adjustments to the project plans

I got an inflammation from softening my skins to my right hand/wrist on the beginning of December and was so pissed off that I wanted not to write anything here. I’m still having the same problem, but by using a spatula I can work a bit – but carefully. I can’t actually clasp almost anything and my ability to use the computer is also still very restricted. This means that my project won’t be ready on the end of February, as I planned, but I have to do some things in Finland. I hope I’ll find time sewing the shoes and such.

This kick in the teeth intimidated me to plan what I really can do now. An injury on right hand is very awkward, when all of your work is mostly writing and doing handicrafts with your both hands.

I decided to spin all wool what I couldn’t spin before Christmas now ready so quick as possible. I have to spin only one skein with the spindle and then the weft is done. Unfortunately I have still lots to do with the loom. When I’m ready, I can dye yarn with heather. I hope I’ll begin to weave wool after two-three weeks or so.

Hemp is ready for spinning. I managed to get quite soft fibres out of my stems, but my purpose is not to make very fine yarn, because the apron is an everyday working cloth. If I don’t have enough time to weave my head scarf, I’ll do it on summer while I’m working in a medieval exhibition.

I have problems with softening goose skins. It’s possible that they don’t have enough fat inside. My teacher Aja is incredible kind and has been softening one of my goose skins during this week, because I can’t clasp the softening iron (I got my nice inflammation from that). If I can’t make all of my skins ready, I have to work with them later on spring or summer and sew my leather frock in Finland.

We took my cow hide up from bark bath on 18th December. I try to get the possibility to cut the shoe pattern and begin to sew while I’m still here. I can finish my shoes later in Finland.

I’m not going to try to weave tablet-woven belt, nålbinda socks and make a leather apron here in Bäckedal. Those are things I can do without any leading also in Finland.