Onion Skin Dyeing

The merino/silk skein I spun during Spinzilla and then dyed with mushrooms from the garden, blogged about here, was crying out to be over-dyed.  During the month of October, we're having a dye-along using onion skins in our Ravelry group DIY and Dye and this seemed the perfect subject.

I gathered up all the onion skins I'd been saving for the occasion (just over 100g) and boiled them up for about an hour, then sieved out the skins once it had cooled.

I put the skein (previously tin-mordanted, because I'd read that the mushrooms I dyed with first gave a good orange when mordanted with tin - must have mis-identified the mushrooms!) into the dye bath, which was quite dark and promised some good colour.

This was after about 20 minutes of being in the dye bath and was looking quite good, so I put it back in and heated for maybe another 30 or 40 minutes.

After removing that skein, there was still lots of colour in the dye bath, so I quickly spun some more merino/silk (unmordanted this time) and dyed that.  A bit paler, but still pretty good.  I spun another skein and tried that, which gave a slightly paler result again.

Anyway, here are the 3 skeins with the tin-mordanted one on the left.

There's still colour in the dye, but I don't think I'll manage another skein before it starts to go off.  We're going on holiday on Thursday (Switzerland and Germany to visit family and friends) and I have quite a lot to do before then.  The dye might end up on the compost heap.  No worries - there are always more onion skins!!

Mushroom Dyeing

We get some of these mushrooms growing in our garden every year, and I've often wondered if they'd give colour.  I looked them up in one of my dye books "The Rainbow Beneath My Feet, A Mushroom Dyer's Field Guide" and couldn't decide exactly which they were.  The ones most similar though are reported to give orange when the yarn is mordanted with tin.  I haven't used tin for years, but thought I probably had some somewhere.  Sure enough I found a tiny bit in a jar so used it to mordant the skein I'd picked out.

This is the yarn I chose to dye - it's the merino/silk I spun in Spinzilla.  I have no idea of the weight of the mushrooms because I forgot to weigh them, but the yarn weighs 35g so I thought I was in with a chance of getting something.

There wasn't a lot of dye stuff, but I chopped them up anyway and heated them in some water to extract the colour.

The dye looked quite promising :-

And here's the finished yarn.  It's subtle, very subtle.  In real life it's very pale yellowish, probably a bit too pale for me.  I think this one might be going into the dye pot again.

At least I now know not to pick those mushrooms and just leave them for the mice.  They were obviously not the ones I thought they were!

Shaggy Parasol

This, I think, is a Shaggy Parasol mushroom (Macrolepiota Rhacodes).  I've found it's relative, Macrolepiota Procera - Parasol Mushroom) occasionally in the countryside, but never anywhere near our house.  Both of these mushrooms are edible.

Can anyone tell me then, why this mushroom was found growing inside our house, albeit in an undeveloped part?  It was growing quite happily in the angle between the floor and a plastered wall.  I've since broken the cap into various small parts and distributed them around the garden, hoping in future years they may choose to grow here.

In the meantime, I've been busy spinning like mad for our Christmas sale on 1st December in the village hall.  There will be photos soon!

Autumn Army

Look what I found marching through the garden :-

I think autumn has arrived.

Pisolithus Arhizus

As soon as I found out what this mushroom was called, I should have thrown it on the compost.  What self-respecting dye mushroom has a name like that?  Well, exactly!  If it had been Pisolithus Tinctoria I might have had better results.

The offending article

Apparently, the young fruiting bodies of this mushroom are edible.  Would you put this anywhere near your mouth???  The inside was even worse :-

Anyway, I checked out my mushroom dye book "The Rainbow Beneath My Feet" and didn't find it.  The Pisolithus Tinctoria was in there though and apparently that gives a rich brown colour.  Can't be an awful lot different, I thought, can it - it's the same family? Well, yes, obviously it can, but I still had to give it a go.

The amount of colour that came out of this was quite amazing.  Really thick, dark brown with a reddish tinge.  Very promising.

I put some merino fleece (mordanted with alum/cream of tartar) in there and heated it for about an hour, keeping it just below a simmer in case too much heat affected the colour. This afternoon I took it out and rinsed it :-

Hhhmmmm, maybe a bit of ammonia would brighten it up slightly . . . no change.  Tried vinegar too . . . no change.  Now if you actually like bleihge you'd probably be quite pleased with this.  But having achieved this colour far too often, the novelty has worn off.

I actually very carefully mowed round this mushroom the other day while I was cutting the grass.  Next time, it's for the chop!

(Almost) Free Food

About three weeks ago I bought a bunch of watercress for making soup.  I cut off the stems (some of which had roots growing) and pushed them into some compost in a tub in the greenhouse.  Yesterday I was able to harvest enough for another batch of soup.

The nice thing is, the plants should produce at least another batch as they're still growing quite strongly.  The soup was delicious and had far more flavour than the original watercress I'd bought, probably because there was only about 15 minutes from plant to pan.

Anyway, thought you might like the recipe; it's very easy and doesn't take long to make.

Watercress Soup

This amount serves four generous helpings.  I only did half of this as I didn't have enough watercress to do the complete recipe.

9 oz watercress, chopped
4 oz butter
Approx 14 oz leeks, chopped
4 potatoes, peeled and chopped
3 pts hot stock
4 heaped tablespoons creme fraiche
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Melt butter in a large pan, then add chopped leeks, potatoes and watercress and stir so they are well coated in butter.  Sprinkle in some salt, then cover and sweat over a very gentle heat for about 20 minutes, giving mixture a good stir halfway through.

Add stock, bringing everything to a simmering point, and simmer, covered, for 10-15 minutes.

Remove from heat, cool slightly and blend in a food processor until smooth.  Return to pan and add 3 tablespoons of creme fraiche, season to taste with salt and pepper, then reheat gently without letting it boil.

Serve with an extra swirl of creme fraiche or cool and serve chilled in the same way.

I topped ours with a parasol mushroom (flash fried in butter until slightly crispy on the outside, but tender in the middle) that we found, and an extra sprig of watercress. Delicious!

When Things Go Wrong

What do you do when things don't turn out quite as you'd planned?  Do you hide them away in a cupboard, right at the very back?  Do you put them in a box under the bed hoping things will improve in a few weeks time?  Do you just have done with it and put them in the bin?  Or do you show your mistakes to the world saying "Oh well, I tried. Next time I'll just have to try harder"?

Remember these?

which dyed this merino fleece:

which was then spun and plied with a strand of thread loaded with little beads.

Not looking too bad so far?

OK, so why didn't I realise that when the skein was washed the wool would shrink and the thread wouldn't?  Hhmmm?

It didn't look any better wound into a ball :

So next I tried knitting with it.

Well that tidied things up a bit, but the thread is still visible.

So, what to do with it?  I suppose it could go into the back of the cupboard so I can forget about it for a while.  There's no point in putting it under the bed to "improve" because I don't think there's any chance of that.  I can't bring myself to throw it in the bin, so that just leaves one option . . . live with it!  Maybe I'll use it as an add-in for a cardigan or sweater.  If it's not the whole garment maybe it won't be quite so noticeable.

The one point that is obvious in this case is "Next time try harder!!!"  Oh, and do your homework first!

Sarah's Sweater

Just a quick note, I couldn't live with that lighter coloured stripe on the right hand side of the neck so yesterday I pulled it back and reknit it minus the offending piece.  Looks better now.

Last night I started to hand-card the merino I dyed with the unidentified fungi I found growing on some logs.  It's ended up a sort of pale apricot colour overall, but the tips are a lovely orangey colour.  As I want to try and keep the orange separate, which carding would have obliterated by blending the two together, I'm painstakingly separating each lock of wool and pulling it through the carders.  It's going to take a while, but I'm really pleased with how it's turning out.

Went for a walk in the forest yesterday and gathered more (potential!) dyestuffs.  At this moment I have fresh new bracken on the stove cooking merrily away - that's definitely going to be yellow. I also picked some of the dead brown bracken from last year to see what colour I would get from that.  Plus more green lichen, and also some interesting looking bracket fungus.

Photos later - got to shower and go out.

Update, Update, Update

That's three projects I have to report on.

Firstly, Sarah's sweater now has the neck finished.  I was a bit doubtful about this at first, because I used a ball of wool that I knew was a shade darker than the rest, but when I showed it to our neighbour, she couldn't tell the difference.  There are variations in colour all over the sweater, not from ball to ball, but there are variations in each ball.  I think it adds to the charm!  (Hopefully Sarah will too - they're her camels  who caused the colour differences after all!)

Anyway, here it is so far :-

Just the sleeves to go now.  I have one ball of wool left, so will probably need about two more.


Second project :-

Yesterday I mordanted some merino fleece and dyed it in the unknown fungi mix that I made the other day.  It came out a sort of muted yellow with orangey tips.  Quite nice, but nothing spectacular.  I pulled off a small piece and put it in a cup of vinegar to see if that altered the colour at all.  If anything it made the colours a little more yellow.  So then I tried another sample in a mix of ammonia and water and the difference was startling.  It immediately brightened and intensified the colour, especially the orangey tips.  This is it, what do you think?

Close up :-

This is still damp, but I don't think the colours will change much in drying.  I'm quite excited to see how this cards up and spins.


OK, third project.  This is actually an old project which I thought was dead and gone, failed miserably!  Well, not really as it did give some hope for having another go this year.

Remember the cotton I was trying to grow and ran out of sunshine and warm weather before it had matured?  I didn't take the plants out, I just left them as they were, covered with glass cloches.  Yesterday, I noticed that two of the seed heads had opened a little bit - one only just.  I picked them both and took the more open one to bits.  We have cotton, and we have seeds!!

The seed head on the right hadn't quite made it.  Those are the seeds in the middle on the piece of paper.

The cotton is extremely soft and very fine.  I think I would have a larger amount if the cotton bolls had been able to carry on growing and then mature in the sun, but I'm actually pretty proud of this!

Seeds will be sown in the greenhouse (which is almost finished) within the next week.

Sundye!

Just realised it's 2 weeks since I last blogged.  I must have a very boring life - no, I just haven't done anything much that you'd be interested in.  But, today is Sun-dye!

I found these interesting-looking fungi growing on some dead logs on the wood pile and they looked as though they might give a bit of colour, so today I gave it a go.

I've tried to id them online, and also in my mushroom and toadstool books, plus my dyeing books, but still haven't a clue what they are.  They looked like little cushions sitting on the wood and were stuck pretty well.  It took a while to prise them all off.

Lots of colour on this one

I collected about 200g and broke them up into small pieces for the dyepot - they look a bit lot like Jak's biscuits!

I covered them with water and set them on the gas ring to heat.  After they'd been simmering for about 15 minutes, I added some ammonia which raises the ph and gives a stronger colour.  It didn't smell very nice, but wasn't too strong.  Another half hour of simmering released a lot of colour.  It looks a bit reddish when stirred, but there's a lot of yellow in there.  I'm hoping to get a strong yellow or maybe an orange.

I'm leaving the pieces to sit in the dye overnight and then tomorrow I'll strain them out.  I think there's probably still colour in them, so I may boil them up again and see what I get.

As for dyeing the wool, tomorrow I'll get some fleece washed and then mordant it (with alum and cream of tartar) and probably dye it the next day.  I'll report back soon - keep your fingers crossed.

Oh, and if anyone knows what these are, please let me know.

11.11.11

What a date - and, if I time it just right, this will be published at 11 a.m.

This post actually has absolutely nothing to do with the time, or date though.  Being a mushroom-oholic I'm always on the lookout for interesting specimens (edible or not), and yesterday, whilst driving to the nearest town on a back road, I suddenly spied a nice sized clump of mushrooms in a field.  I was pretty sure they were parasol mushrooms (edible) so had to stop for a look.  Unfortunately, the field was all fenced off - not sure if it was electric fencing, but the fence was there for a reason, not only to keep animals in, but probably also to keep us out!  Luckily there were three specimens at the side of the road (which didn't stay there very long - I love getting something for free!)

These two were tight round balls last night, so I put them in water hoping they'd open up today, and they do seem to be doing that.  The third mushroom wasn't photographed - we ate it.

Might just have to go back today to see if there are any more.  Mushroom omelette for lunch!