dye stuff

this morning, i woke to another simply GLORious day—that sounds trite, but truly there are no other words; we’ve had wonderful summer weather all week long! i opened my eyes to bright sun, birds, the sound of the breeze, and, of course—the even louder sound of weed wackers. and leaf blowers. at 7:00 am.
sigh. some day we are moving to the country, i swear.

i made my way to the kitchen, waving to my neighbor across the way, who was grooming his
9 ft x 9 ft square of grass with a you-know-what, while gazing straight into our office window. after all, that would be too big a job to leave til, say, after 9 am . . . and it hasn’t been touched since, well, yesterday, for pete’s sake.
not that i am complaining! it nice to look out and see a well-kept yard facing my house, especially when my own yard is so aesthetically-challenged, as to be an emarrassment by comparison. it’s just. so. . . . early. y’know?

then, i glanced out the back window into the yard and saw an amazing thing! i ran for the camera, and high-tailed it outdoors. rounding the side of the house to get to the back, i stopped dead in my tracks, halted by the sighting of a wee miracle out of the corner of my eye. what a quandry! two amazing sightings at once—which to show you first?? . . . ok, i made a decision

i can’t believe i’m seeing tomatoes! they weren’t there yesterday—i checked!! YAY!! woo-woo!
ahem, uh, sorry, but remember—i’m from New York City! we don’t HAVE accidental tomato sightings there! oh sure, the community and rooftop gardens, i know, but you never just happen to see one out of the corner of your eye, when you are minding your business on your way to something else. no, this would definitely classify as an experience you CAN’T have in NYC.

ahh, it is the quintessential Father’s Day weekend. a dry week preceded, the better to get the lawn-mowing out of the way. that clears the weekend to make room for cookouts, ball games, and fishing. (so why is everyone doing it again today? do fathers actually like lawn care?? i know mine didn’t . . .).
i miss my dad! he’s gone now—he died two years ago from MS, after dealing with it for about
35 years. the slow, creeping advance of this debilitating illness made it seem like he might never give in to it, but still, he wasn’t afraid to use it as an excuse to get out of yard work on a saturday, in order to go fishing instead! and, even he had to give in eventually, stubborn man that he was.

which brings me to another point that i’ve been meaning to beg you for talk about.
please, if you can, go to Claudia’s Blog, and give something (any little thing!) to support her Ride for MS. she and her husband will be riding 150 miles on a tandem bicycle next saturday, june 24th, to raise money to fight MS.

last year claudia raised about $3,000 through her blog; this year she got that much on the first day!! (knitter’s DO rock, and when we rule the world, things like this will be the norm!) anyhow, now she is trying to make it to $15,000 by next saturday. pleasepleaseplease, in the last week, let’s give her what she’s asking for!

okay, that was me begging you, and now i’m going to bribe you: i gave money already, but i am going to put up some handspun sock yarn for claudia’s prize patrol as well. winner’s choice of a hand-dyed or natural colorway!
AND for every reader who writes me to say they gave, i will send her $10 more, even if you gave before you read this!! now this last might even be considered me guilting you, but i’m gonna risk it (i didn’t suffer through and italian-american-catholic upbringing, just to let it go to waste now!)

that ends our lecture for the morning; now i can show you the other amazing thing from my yard

the lilies are blooming! this may mean that i will bore you all the next week with an ever expanding array of them. we put them in everywhere last fall after buying in to a sweet deal from a mail-order bulb pusher. we thought the squirrels dug them all up, but no! (some day, i will tell you about the squirrels . . . let’s just say that they have made us all-too-aware that we are trying to take over their property, and they do NOT like it a bit).

so yeah, wow. that garden, man it just gets better every year! i just step back in awe and let it grow, and try to be deserving of its graces—may i pull this weed? may i mulch you? want some water, juice, vodka tonic?
i don’t know if i mentioned my dye garden, yet, but yeah, i made one a few years ago. it looked really scroungy for the first couple of years, because well, a dye garden is really just an organized weed patch.

on first sight, it is quite a, er, homely kind of garden. but if you look more closely, there does exist some fabulosity, like this bronze fennel.

and, it matures into a weed patch full of plants that you can get dye from! how cool is that! (and you know i like me some dyestuff).
i never told the story of the first year we lived here, and the dye i made from the berries in the yard, but i, in true city-slicker style, did attempt it.
after two days time of making a huge mess, concerning some dark blue berries, and then moving on to stinking up the whole house with some other kind of red ones that i cooked (thus creating a HOT stink), i had three whole skeins of dyed yarn, and a sample skein!
(david, bless his enormous heart, remained stoic throughout, silently moving dyepots aside in our small kitchen, to brew coffee, or clean up around me . . .)
i made socks from a couple of the skeins, and here is what is left

the green yarn was mordanted in alum, dyed from the dark blue berries, and rinsed in an acid afterbath (vinegar and water). i also made a skein that i rinsed in an alkiline afterbath (baking soda and water) that turned out a deeper mineral blue. the camel-colored yarn is a bit that was leftover from the skeins i dyed in the stinky red berries—i did not expect that deep red liquid to make this color, but i love it! and no, i will never dye with them again, at least, not indoors.

i found out later, that those dark berries were left behind by the birds because they have, uh, purgative qualities. fortunately i did not find this out first-hand . . . that tree is gone from the yard now, and it only gave those berries in one year, but fortunately, i saved plenty of the dye in the freezer (where it will keep for quite some time, i have read).

unlike the acid bath dyes i talked about in previous posts, natural dyes behave differently and produce different results under varying pH conditions (among other things). results using natural dyes are wide-ranging, subtle, and fairly accidental (which is my main interest in them!!). even the super-vigilent experts concede that the process cannot be completely controlled, which to my mind, is the beauty part. when it comes to the unknown, the accidental, the possible, i am as a moth to the flame.

i find the ephemeral qualities of wool dyed with natural materials to be infinitely fascinating; i cannot tear my eyes away from the beauty of these colors. many of them even change over time, fading or deepening according to atmosphere, washing, and handling. start researching the history of dyeing and you will quickly become overwhelmed by how many facets there are to the craft! the practice is simply stupefying, in its complexity and depth. don’t even get me started . . .!

now that my dye patch is in its third year, and is beginning to mature, there should be enough plant material to actually dye some skeins (it takes a LOT of vegetation to make enough dye . . . like pounds of it). i have green santolina

dyer’s cammomile

along with tansy, lady’s bedstraw, borage, and several others. there are also plenty of oak trees that produce lichens and bark, and we have a hickory tree which produces nut husks full of brown dye. i am hoping to be able to share the process of natural dyeing in late summer and fall, even if it is just a series of bad decisions and mistakes.
what i dream of doing, is a workshop in the back yard, where a bunch of us cook up some dyes, mordant some wool, and have a dye day. wouldn’t THAT be fun? like have a two-day thing where people could even stay over? hmmm, maybe someday . . .

speaking of color and dyeing, cara, at january one, has organized a spin-out (and knitting!) in NYC’s central park to take place next saturday, june 24th from 11 to 5. suddenly, this week, i have a desperate urge to attend this event. i would love to visit my hometown and be part of it! i gave to the heifer fund and everything, but that just isn’t enough. is anyone else going to attend? anybody want to meet up there? i think i just need a reason to get there! (other than, “i really want to . . .“).