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.