Our new dye group had its inaugural meet on Sunday! Lots of excitement, enthusiasm and questions, some good ideas and knowledge and a little bit of chaos.

Preparing yarn for the pots

Three pots of eucalypt leaves and bark that had been stewing away for the best part of a week and one impromptu pot of mint basil- or basil mint?!

Eucalyptus cinerea

Eucalypts seemed like a good choice for our first meet, as a couple of windfalls had provided a good amount of leaves and we didn’t have to premordant any fibres for the day. Our Eucalyptus cinerea bath yielded some good oranges and rusts- though not the reds that I was hoping for so I am going to add some more leaves to the bath and try again…

Eucalyptus cinerea on various wools and wool/ bamboo blend

while the sideroxylon leaves, which should give orange to red, came out gold to pale olive…

Eucalyptus sideroxylon leaves (left) and mint basil (right)

and the sideroxylon bark, which I had soaked and heated several times over a two-week period until the bath was almost black, resulted in a surprisingly pale cocoa.

Eucalyptus sideroxylon bark

Some say that you can never really know what you’re going to get when dyeing with natural materials… others disagree. I guess I am falling somewhere in the middle at this point, as the variables of seasonality, rainfall and location seem to have a huge bearing on the colours you can get from eucalypts and other plants. I’d say I’m open to the magic and the intuitive side of the dyeing process but I’d also like to know my species and how to maximize colour extraction well enough to estimate what results I might get ; )

Eucalypts and basil mint

Rather than building a massive collection of tiny samples of colour, I’m skeining up the 2kg of Grafton- which sadly doesn’t seem to take up as much dye as other yarns ; ( – that I got in the Yarn Workshop sell-out into 50gm lots. That way, despite the possibility of ending up with a whole lot of different colours, I can turn the results of our experiments into some cushions and blankets- the last thing I need is more single balls of yarn to find uses for! Thanks, everyone!

Lots of experimenting going on at home… I’ve started seeing colour potential everywhere and have been wandering the surrounding streets and parks looking for windfall. The learning curve is steep and sometimes I fear I am not making the best use of the materials but, to a novice, even the palest colours bring delight ; 0

Soft shades

10gm skeins

From the top:

1. Castanea sativa (Sweet Chestnut)- hulls soaked, boiled and soaked again, then strained and simmered. Yarn pre-mordanted with alum and cream of tartar.

2. Unidentified foliose lichen (collected nine years ago!)- second bath, after remembering that I had to boil it before adding the yarn. Yarn unmordanted.

3. Unidentified foliose lichen (collected nine years ago!)- first bath, added unmordanted yarn and lichen to cold water then gently brought to simmer.

4. Solanum laciniatum (Large Kangaroo Apple)- leaves soaked overnight then simmered. Yarn pre-mordanted with alum and cream of tartar.

5. Solanum laciniatum (Large Kangaroo Apple)- as above, then modified with ammonia and copper.

6. Unidentified foliose lichen from property in South Gippsland- soaked, boiled and soaked again, then simmered.

It is making me think about how far I’ll go to get colour… the process of modifiying with copper opened my eyes to just the beginnings of how far one dye bath can range but, without knowing how much is left in the water, I am not comfortable introducing mordants of this kind into the environment simply for fun. I need to play around with copper and iron alternatives like using copper pots and adding rust to the dye-bath… and, anyway, I’m loving what I am finding without even going there yet.

There are now a series of jars in various stages of deshabillement around the house- containing soursob, flowering gum, rosemary, fennel and various mushrooms- and Scotto is slightly nonplussed about it all. I, however, am completely overexcited and so looking forward to both the first meeting of our new dyeing group in November and the imminent experiment with… deep breath… indigo at the guild. Undoubtedly more to follow here.