Woad, wonderful woad... growing and dyeing

So, the harvest has yielded!
This was my first year growing woad, and look at the lovely colour I got for my urine/ woad hot box combo ( see older posts for using this method ).
As blue is such a difficult natural dye colour to get, I decided to grow some this year from seed. I also know exactly where they came from (really local!) and there were no petrol transport miles involved in this process at all! I was donated the seed via a friend's mother, but also bought some on line.
One of the wonderful things about woad, is that you can harvest it in the first year of growth, in fact you need to, to get lovely blues, so the results are as quick as they can be!
I started growing these woad plants in February, as they really seem to need some frosty cold to germinate properly. Some seeds were sown directly into the ground, some were started off in little pots in my back yard. By the time it came to harvesting them ( any time from late August ), there was no difference in the size of either group of these plants, so either method is fine, but ofcourse, planting them in the ground first means , perhaps, one less process togo through ( although maybe more weeding?). Almost all the seeds germinated (hooray!), and a few leaves were a little munched here and there. In the end I had about 35 plants to harvest. One of them flowered, although woad is generally bienial in the UK (perhaps because some ants had decided to nest under it...). This plant is yet to bear fruit, so maybe might not this season, but an older plant I was donated has done, and I've harvested the black pendulous seeds from it, so hopefully can get a crop next year too.
It is the lovely lush green leaves you harvest, at a point in the year when they've had plenty of sun! Although this summer seemed very rainy, it was also rather sunny, and the proof is in this lovely blue I've obtained.
These leaves were harvested at the beginning of September, and brewed for two weeks in the warm urine vat. My harvest from the plants at this point was 1700 grams of leaves, and I used half of them for this brew, and reserved half of the dye liquid in (hopefully) airtight containers, for later use. This amount yielded about 300 grams of dyed fibres (mostly wool), from pale sky blues  (one dip, or when the vat was running out) to a rather dark blue (from as many as 4 dips).
The green in the picture was a lovely yellow from birch leaves on a young jacobs wool fibres, that I overdyed with one dip in the woad vat.
Wenslydale locks came out a more royal blue than the blue faced leicester and shetland wool fibres. The really deep jeans blue was on soya silk fibres, but bamboo fibres came out much paler ( top left hand corner, on second photo). I also dyed some naturally grey  and moorit shetland wool fibres: the blue only started to show after 3/4 dips, but I do like the effect too ( very top L hand corner, photo 2).
A month later, and I might be able to sneak one more harvest out of these plants before the cold darkness means they won't yield any more blue. If all turns out well, that might mean about 900 grams of fibres dyed from 35 plants.. We'll see how the saved dye liquid works out...

Finally, some photos of the lovely plants prior to harvest, they are about 6 inches in diameter...
 And woad in flower, not to be harvested for blues apparently!

Ethics and natural dyeing; complexity

Top: Cumbrian Blue Faced Leicester wool locks, cleaned with eco washing powder, by me, then dyed with wild harvested Horseradish, onion skins from the wholefood shop, and madder from?
Bottom: Blue Fcaed Leicester, some commercially processed, some by me, as above, dyed with black beans from? onion skins, goldenrod from UK, and indigo from?

Recently received "Eco Colour" by India Flint in the post: Sustaining soul food for the natural dyer who is trying to pick the most ethical way through to coloured fibres. Afferming and at times eye opening, it's wonderful to come accross a person who makes an ethical approach into an Art via spirit and joi de vivre.
Helped me to focus thoughts feelings actions I've been having about my dyeing works in that I've realised using "findings of the forest floor" is the most comfortable path for me to amble on. Whether I can "give it up" to my results being entirely happenstance remains to be seen.
Methods I question as to being comfortable for myself which India uses: Uses of found metals as mordants/resists: I'm happy with copper (probably beneficial to a body), and possibly iron if dye dregs are thoughtfully treated, but I'm seriously unkeen on Aluminium (surely a link to alzheimer's?):The use of a microwave: I'm never happy with irradiating anything, it's a crime against life itself! Not to mention the high probablity of leaks right into your living space. And then there's Microwave disposal when it's done, it's all too much!
What was really useful was her critiquing of the Logwood and Indigo industries: I guiltily admit to uninformed use of Logwood!(see earlier blog). It is nourishing for me for someone to turn the ethical spotlight onto the natural dye industry, and then prove it's how unnecessary compromised ethics are so eloquently with her wonderful colours. I also love that she questions the use of synthetic dyes so completely: You've probably heard the discussion: Q:Plant dyes are not permenant, so why waste your time using them? A: Some are very long lasting, but ALL dyes fade anyway, as we know from experience (and indeed on my own pootles around Ravelry etc I've certainly noticed complaints of synthethic dyes running, fading and even changing colour!)
Regionalism is also an approach close to my heart: blues from local cabbages just seems so much kinder than indigo from who knows where flown accross the world to my dye pot. 

Sometimes, if you talk about the "ethics" of something people will start pointing the finger at you, and try to prove that you are unethical because of some crime once commited. I write this blog post in the spirit of one searching out a path less travelled, who does so because that feels the most sound path to travel. I'm sure there will be many false turnings, and perhaps some unforseen difficulties ahead, but the path of Adventurer in Ethical Colours for Wool I claim as mine to tread! I aim to get better at it one step at a time...

Grass and docks as dye plus Secret santa yarn

This top fibre is a recent experiment in plant dye colours. As always I am on the search for ways to obtain greens. I don't know exactly why I'm so obsessed with that colour, but perhaps it has to do with chakra colours! The green chakra relates to the chest/ heart area, and as I understand it the area of the body concerned with being open hearted and love. But maybe green just makes me happy!
Anyway, so to get the greenish yellow in the photo, I used dock roots, freshly dug from the allotment in a hope of having fewer docks scattering their seeds over my veg patch this year. These I cut up quite small and let steep in rain water for a few days. Then I remembered about them, and simmered the pot for about 40 mins on the stove. Then later that day I re-simmered them. Then I let them rest over night, and re-simmered them. Then, when the mixture had cooled, I strained out the veg matter, and mud, and inserted the wetted wool (Texel in this case for sox spinning) I heated the wool in the mixture 2 times in a similar fashion to extracting the colour from the dock roots.I added the juice of 2 lemons before heating. I let the wool rest in the dyepot over night. The crucial thing is to get as much colour as poss out of the docks, then to get as much as poss into the wool, without felting it. This takes as long as it takes, and letting the wool rest in the mixture is very much part of it!
Extracting and dyeing with the liquid from the grass was a very similar process to the dock roots, but the heated up grass REALLY STANK the HOUSE out! I don't know WHAT is in grass to make it so smelly when cooked but it honestly smelled of carnivore excrement. Yuck! My husband and the kids were NOT impressed. However, Fay was very keen on having the finished fibre when it was all dry and fluffy and not smelly.... In the photo the colours look more vibrant than they do in cloudy daylight, as they were taken on our table at night under artificial light.
 The other photo is WHAT I SPUN from the secret santa fibre I received from the UKSpinners on the Ravelry forum.(see a previous post). It was blended with various reds and silky noils and throwsters waste etc. None of the baby batts were more than 50% red. I'm currently really interested in how green combines with other colours, but especially reds. There is an exciting section with cocoons spun on, which I loved doing! It's a soft, slightly overspun, singles of 16 WPI (fingering weight). And I am currently intending to knit it into a cowl in the round. I am hoping that it's slightly overspun quality might make the stockingette twist a little, but I don't know if that happens after you've set the twist?

Adventures in Green

So as green is my FAVOURITE COLOUR to an extent I really can't explain, I am going to share what I have so far discovered about dyeing wool green with plant dyes and WITHOUT use of copper sulphate, as it just seems too toxic. I'm an asthmatic and I hate to poison the environment, so harsh mordants don't seem the best way to go for me. I also am not happy to use Acid dyes, primarily because to my knowledge they are derived from petrochemicals, and as we purposefully don't even own a car for this reason, it doesn't sit comfortably with me. I'm sure there's plenty of info out there on the petro chemical industry, so I'm not going into it here.
Anyway, GREEN!
My favourite shade of green is a mossy green, not conifer, not Granny Smiths Apple, not quite grassy green. This I have discovered on my travels with plant dyes is hard to obtain. As I don't use copper sulphate, I have a complicated route to green, which involves over dyeing, and as many as three pots. My current favourite is:
Tumeric / Elderberries / Urine
If you first prepare your wool, carded or unprepared, but definitely with no lanolin left in, as it acts as a resist to dyes, by immersing in luke warm, then slightly warmer water. Try to get any air bubbles out gently as they can also act at a resist. Just be gentle in general with the wool, do everything slowly and change temperatures slightly, to prevent felting as much as possible. A silky wool in a Top like Blue Faced Leicester is highly likely to trap air.
 I then make a Tumeric dye bath in a big stainless steel pan, which is EASY. For approx 100g of wool, as little as 25g Tumeric will get a very strong Yellow. (although sometimes, when it's old?, tumeric gives an orange)( I also hear that Tumeric fades with time, which may or may not be true) This may be too strong for you if you want a grassy green/conifer green, in which case use less Tumeric, or take the wool out quickly, after a couple of minutes. Heat the pan with water and Tumeric in for only a few minutes on a simmer (There should be enough water to cover wool well when added, and I use rainwater, harvested from a water butt, off the flat roof, as it should be soft water). You want the water to be less than a boil or the wool will felt, but a bit warmer than would be comfortable for your hand, as then it will set to the wool. You can also add some lemon juice for some extra mordanting, and acid yellowness. You only need to leave it in for 10 mins or so as Tumeric is so strong, or you can leave it in until water has cooled to help the wool adjust and not felt. You will find that the Tumeric does not really dissolve but is more suspended in the water, so if you want an even colour you will have to move the wool around gently to get all over coverage. I'm not bothered about that, as one reason I dye for myself is to get interesting varigated colours for interesting spinning and knitting of yarns.
Okay so, then, take the wool out of the tumeric, and wash gently at a similar temperature to the dye pot it was in, to minimise the chance of felting. You are aiming to get as much yellow and pwder out a s you can at this stage. As Tumeric is kind of greasy, a bit of Bio D washing powder or washing up lioqid at this stage helps, but you need to wash the bubbles out too, with as little squeezing as poss.
Phew! Then have a cup of  tea and let the wool rest, whilst you wait for your Elderberries dyepot to heat up!
For your elderberry dyepot first pick a carrier bag full of Elderberries then add them plus a 70fl bottle of vinegar (4 Cups?) to some soft water (enough to cover berries) and heat up. DO NOT BOIL as you are aiming for a pinky purple NOT a grey, which will result in boiling water. Simmer for approx 1 Hr, or until alot of the colour has gone out of the berries. The water should be a rich pinky purple. Whilst the water is still hot immerse the wool, which should be of a similar temperature by having been rested in water baths of gradually increasing warmth. This is the bit that irritates me, so if I'm dyeing for myself I rush it and end up with slightly felted wool, which needs more pre drafting for spinning... Then leave the wool in the dye bath for as long as your patience allows, but definitely 8hrs. It should be a kind of pinky gold/tannish colour.
Then rinse the wool, you can use cool water as the dyepot is now cooled.
Then add it to a bucket that your husband hates full of GONE OFF URINE solution. To make gone off Urine collect the family's wee for a few days then put a lid on it for at least 2 weeks. My Husband refused to donate his wee... It doesn't need to be a full bucket load at all. This gone off urine has Ammonia in it, a strong Alkali. When you immerse pink/ red shades in alkalis they go green! I guess this is because plant derived reds are acidic, especially if they've had vinegar added. It doesn't work with madder though.
The bucket has a very smelly liquid in it  after 2 weeks, and you can add some water to it too, before you add your wool, to make enough solution for your wool to sit very comfortably. An hour should be long enough to turn it magically GREEN.
You will want to wash out the disgusting wee smell anyway, but don't forget to do it gently in cold water. This method has given me variety of greens, from yellowy green to conifer green, including the elusive mossy green when I'm lucky. You can get a greyish green by ommiting the dyeing yellow stage. You can dye with weld, nettles, dock leaves, horse radish etc for the yellow stage, with an alum mordant if you wish, but the effects will be more subtle. I also have got excellent greens, from mossy to sea green by combining indigo dyed wool with yellows, mordanted as appropriate. It seems to work best with indigo as the first dye, then the yellow, when the wool has dried out.
I have slight reservations about using Tumeric as it does seem to fade over the years. I also don't like using the spectralite chemical as an oxygen reducing agent in the indigo process. But I guess I need to do the full 'woad brewing process' then...

All above photos use elderberries, tumeric and urine to get different effects. Nothing is guaranteed in the world of plant dyes, excitingly....