Black bean dye: the dye you can eat

As promised, an entry on dying with black beans. I apologize to my handful of readers- I’m living in the cabin in the woods in down east Maine (yes, sounds romantic as well as a great setting for a horror) with no internet connections. Here is one of my attempts to catch up as I sit in the grocery store, in the big city of Ellsworth, stealing internet from the cafe next door. To give you a sense, here is a pic of our trusty wood stove!

So black beans. I had a lot of fun with these dye baths, especially since I got to eat the beans that were soaking in the form of a delicious chili. 

First, reluctantly, I mordanted my wool. This is an important step I often try to deny, but important nonetheless. Yes you should do it. The Craft of the Dyer: Colour from Plants and Lichens of the Northeast by Karen Leigh Casselman describes mordants:

“There is more confusion regarding the use of mordants than with any other aspect of plant dyeing. Mordants are simply metallic or mineral salts which, when added to the dyebath, enhance, intensify, or change the colour of the dyebath and mkae the resulting shade more fast to light and washing.” 

So it is a good thing. I mordanted my wool in 5 gallons of water which I boiled for 30 mins with about 1 gram of cream of tarter (found in most kitchens) and 1 gram of alum (an ingredient in baking sodas and other house hold items). Here are more detailed directions:

The wool in the mordant pot:

Meanwhile, I soaked a big bowl of black beans with water (enough to cover the future wool) for two days, stirring whenever I walked by it in the kitchen. By the second day the water was a deep purple. 

Then, in a dying pot strictly used for dying experiments (not cooking), I added the mordanted wool, still wet, and the black bean soaking water. No heat necessary. I let this sit for another 2 days and then rinsed the wool in cold water (don’t use hot, it will cause unintended felting) until the water ran clear. I dryed it in the greenhouse on a few sunny winter days. Though the tips of the wool were the bluest (some even bright shades of tourquoise!) once carded the overall effect was beautiful shades of light blue.

I had did two dye baths, one whose batch of wool had been previously dyed with an unsatisfactory tan. Here is the difference in color. The one on the left is the over dyed wool, a blue/ green/ gray and on the right is the light blue wool. Both dyed with the black bean.

TaDa!  

If you are interested in trying out different plant dyes, it is a deep rabbit hole of exciting experiments. Right now I am collecting a bunch of onion skins... a foolproof dye bath. Check out this book for a great overview of natural plant dying as well as thorough lists and instructions for many of the plants around you:

Spinning cotton= splitting hairs.

Spinning is an enjoyable experience. Imagine relaxing next to the wood stove listening to the music of Joni Mitchell or Patti Smith or classical piano music suitable for the falling snow outside. Imagine treddling your foot in even time and the clicking of well oiled wood. Imagine freshly carded wool, so soft, flowing out of your finger tips as you spin and release it onto the bobbin, even and just the right thickness. Cotton is not that experience. In fact, spinning cotton is pure evil. It feels soft and you dream of making fast drying accessories out of the hand spun plant such as dish rags, but no. It breaks apart and forms lumps in not a cool aesthetic kinda way. I gave up. Cotton is much more suited for the wreath maker while still attached to the plant (very pretty! check out here with Martha Stewart: http://www.marthastewart.com/929249/how-assemble-cotton-wreath )or *GASP* a machine that doesn’t have emotions to jiggle with frustration and throw the bag that Louet graciously sends you for free against the wall. Throwing fiber isn’t too satisfying either. 

Pictures of the fiber and what came of the clump- a cotton ball! Ha. There is more where it came from, unfortunately.

Wool for sale!

So I have just finished a whole bunch of skeins, in 4 different colors, and am ready to get them off my hands. See below for pictures! Each skein is 100 yards, around 2.5 oz., and $20 or $25. Please email lostsheepspinnery@gmail.com if you are interested in purchasing.




(Left to right: natural white, natural dark, black bean, coffee)


COFFEE DYED: a caramel tan color

  

BLACK BEAN DYED: a gray blue

NATURAL COLOR, dark: shades of brown, gray, black, and orange

NATURAL COLOR: white

Experiments in dying (wool)

There is something mysterious about dying. Hovering over a dye pot, which is similar to just a giant vat of tea, with washed but uncarded wool that looks like brains, I can't help but feel I should also be adding eye of newt to the pot. But once washed and dried and carded, I get to pull off bats of varying shades, ready to spin the colors into skeins. It is weird to think of blue or yellow or pink sheep but I hate to forget where the fiber comes from.
I am currently processing 2 sheep fleeces- one white and one "black" whose fleece moves through shades of gray, black, brown, and orange tips. The white fleece is subject to many dying experiments as I try and get my hands around the mordants, stains and dyes of dying with plant chemicals found in nature. Here is my go at indigo, turmeric, beet, and coffee.

INDIGO- I grew indigo in my herb garden this year in hopes for the vibrant blue I often see as a result to the long dying process with the plant. The plant looks like a mini japanese knotweed and is in the buckwheat family... seemingly an ordinary green plant (with no visible hints of blue). To get the dye takes about 5 hours of heating, cooling, oxidizing, deoxidizing (with something called thorax which always reminds me of the Lorax in the Dr. Seuss book), and hoping that the yellow solution transforms into blue when the wool is brought out to dry in the sun. It kinda worked! I got a pale blue which is better than 
nothing... 



TUMERIC- So sometimes I cave when I see something in the kitchen and realize it would probably create a great wool color, despite it not being local (I truly am a sinner. Oh and I eat peanut butter and chocolate as well.) Tumeric was one of these realizations. It holds a brilliant yellow/ orange color. 



I also drink... COFFEE- Here I created a dye bath with spent coffee beans and day old coffee. It turned out a great tan/ brown, about the same color as my carharts! Here is it spun and in skein formation.



BEETS- It is disappointing the color that comes from beets. Everyone asks enthusiastically about it expecting it to be an eye popping pink enough to match a Lisa Frank illustration but alas it all rinses out leaving the wool stained with a pale pink/ brown/ salmon color. Pretty, but not what I was expecting. Which turns out is kinda what is happening with the dye experiments. So cool! But so wrong... in comparison to this perfect example I found online... So its kinda like being Ron in Harry Potter instead of Hermione and I am A-Ok with that. Cuz at least somethingggg magical happens.  Here is the beet wool spun up:

This is just an introduction to my experiments in dying... my next entry I will go more in to detail with the BLACK BEAN dye- that is what I am working on now. It currently looks like brains on a drying rack tinted blue.