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…)
Sounds interesting, I have to look later how your yarns turned out. It is always so exciting to read about dyeing experiments:)
If you don’t mordant with alum at all, you will propably get darker green in an iron cauldron. With alum it is more yellowish green, even in an iron cauldron, I think… possibly…
Is your heather dried or fresh?
My heather is dried and actually picked after blooming, but Ellinor says she hasn’t noticed any real difference.
Do you mean that it isn’t necessary to mordant the yarn at all? That would be the most authentic way, I think. I maybe have to take a bit more hand-spunned yarn to experiment with that, too.
Yes, I agree, there is no difference in color of the dried or fresh heather, but I thought that if you had fresh you would need more, but maybe not. I have dyed only with fresh heather in the summer(never had time to dry it).
Iron also is a mordant and it binds color sometimes even stronger to the wool (I have found the lightfastness very good with only iron) than alum, but it doesn’t give bright colors, and yellows usually turn greyish or brownish green, sometimes to very nice khaki color, but sometimes ugly grey. If you have alum also, the colors are more yellowish green. The only thing is that you need to use only very small amounts of iron, so that it doesn’t harm the wool. I think in the old books, the amount is too big, but that’s just my opinion, not a fact.
(I hope your teacher doesn’t mind my comment to your dyeings)
We want photos!
Leena,
thank you for explaining. I haven’t done much dyeing before, I’m more interested in plain textile making, but this has been very exiting anyway. Ellinor doesn’t mind, she approves discussion with knowledgeable people.
meep;
pics are coming as soon as my net is up again – there’s something wrong in our internet connection (I’m now in datasalen).