Nature Dyeing

Well folks, it is the time of the year when most of my spinning friends are in a frenzy to finish the last of their nature dyeing before the cold weather comes and the leaves and blooms have faded for the winter. If you are like me, you will be thinking of nature dyeing too. I like to dye in the early fall with everything from woad and ornamental apples, to beets and lichen. Once the snow comes we are limited in our nature dyeing to what we can order from other parts of the world or using what come from the grocery store like onion skins and turmeric, or if you are very diligent what you have saved and preserved from your summer jaunts through the bush. I like to get together in September for a day of dyeing with woad with my friend Anita McWilliams who has been dyeing for many years. It has become a bit of a tradition. She has a lot of experience nture dyeing and so she is a wealth of information. (She even remembers all the latin names for the plants that she uses which is beyond my linguistic capabilities!) I asked her to write a few thoughts about what she does and I've included a few pictures. This is what she had to say.....

Dyeing With Plants by Anita McWilliams
With rare exceptions, plant dyes will give earth tones and subtle variations. Most plant dyeing requires mordanting to ensure fastness of the dye. I use alum, as it is easy to get, cheap, and not toxic, so no need for rubber gloves and a mask.

Some plant material is easy to come by - onion skins, for instance. Who doesn't have handy a source of these? I find, as a person living alone, that a years worth of skins saved, will suffice, giving a golden yellow colour. I was able to achieve an interesting "saddening" effect simply by adding a quantity of rusty nails into the dyebath.

One of my favorite natural dyes, is the raspy, fern-like Marestail or Horsetail (Equisetium) which grows usually in ditches or along roadsides. It is easy to gather and doesn't take much bulk to achieve a desirable weight of material. It is a pleasure to go out on a sunny spring morning and gather them. (I speak as a country-dweller!)The best results come from early season gatherings.The light, clear greenish-yellow is suited to overdyeing, in my opinion, as well.

As to proportions and recipes, I have gone mainly by guess, just go ahead and gather and experiment,just remember to make a note of proportions so that you can repeat your successes next year.

Anita's and my recommendations for resources:

1. "Dye Plants and Dyeing", Brooklyn Botanic Garden, may no longer be in print.
2. "A Dyers Garden", by Rita Buchanan,
3. "Flowers of the Yukon", by Mickey Lammers
4. "Wild Colour" by Jenny Dean no longer in print.

Shawl

I've started working on a shawl with a pattern from a book called Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls by Martha Waterman. It is called Garter Lace Triangle Shawl. I've knit this shawl pattern before and found it to be a real treasure. The first time I knit it I had a fairly bulky weight peach woolen homespun yarn it turned out to be simply lovely. It was very soft and cozy and it made me think of soft kittens curling up. The next time I knit it I used a light grey coarse wool with stripes of woad dyed woolen yarn, that I spun myself. It too was lovely though not as soft as the peach version. It had a much more hardy look and would have been "in the olden days" considered a working shawl. So yesterday, I decided to knit the same pattern again and this time I am using an ivory coloured yarn that I spun worsted to enhance its lovely sheen. This yarn is called Karaoke and is a combination of merino, and soysilk. I spun it fairly finely at about sport weight. Once again I am pleased with the results so far.
I love shawls because they are triangles of perfection and I have knit many. I have also woven many too. I tend to pick patterns that I like and knit them over and over trying different types of yarn to see what each yarn will bring to the pattern. This pattern could easily be adjusted to turn it into a sweater or a blanket just by changing the increases or not having increases at all to suit the shaping of your chosen garment.
Drape is an important factor in considering the perfect fibre for a shawl. The yarn you use should be knit loosely but not so loosely that the stitches become holes (unless that is the effect you are trying to achieve). The sport weight yarn that I am using is being knit on 3.25 mm knitting needles. This is fine but I would have liked this shawl to be a bit drapeier. I did try a size 3.00 mm knitting needle however, that was definitely too tight. Then I tried it on a 4.00 mm knitting needle and that was too loose. So I didn't have 3.50 mm knitting needles so I chose a pair of 3.25 mm knitting needles. #.75 might have been better too but I didn't have them either. Soysilk feels a little like cotton when it is being knit with very little memory and so that also detracts from the drape of the shawl. Still this shawl is pleasing to touch and I feel it will be fine when it is finished.