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7/7/2008 6:20 pm
115 lb. Dominique holds a 250 lb. ram upright on his tail bone with her knees. With his feet in the air, the ram can't move, nor can he struggle much. This effortless holding position, for both sheep & shepherd, frees Dominique's hands to work on his feet, look at his teeth, examine his eyes, etc.
This 4 year-old ram was limping. Dominique found an adobe-like (weed & dried mud) substance wedged in the cloven (the soft space between the two claws) of his hoof and removed it. He should walk more easily tomorrow.
This 4 year-old ram was limping. Dominique found an adobe-like (weed & dried mud) substance wedged in the cloven (the soft space between the two claws) of his hoof and removed it. He should walk more easily tomorrow.
7/3/2008 2:00 pm
Indigo Blue, Part 2
Yes your heart may pound, but the good thing about indigo is the color is layered by subsequent dips, each layer gets darker and is built upon the previous dip.
Light Indigo
It's hard to go wrong with indigo if you're patient and looking for a straight blue.
An indigo bath ready for yarn
Yarn coming from the spinnery has spinning oil on it. The oil must be washed and rinsed off; the washed yarn will be put into the indigo bath when it is wet. Washing is done in a machine by soaking the yarn (with no agitation) for 20 minutes in water containing a normal amount of laundry detergent. The washing machine spins the yarn between the wash and three rinses. Our machine will hold 8 pounds of yarn at once.
Lowering natural yarn into the bath
Eight 2 oz. skeins are tied together in a bundle. We may dye 2 lbs. at once with each finger holding on to a stringed bundle. The yarn is lowered, or dipped, into the bath; with a gloved hand, it is swirled to always keep it moving.
Swirling the yarn in the bath
The yarn is in the bath for about a minute then it is pulled. This first dip is to determine the strength of the bath by judging the intensity of the blue.
Pulling the yarn
The yarn comes out of the bath a teal green; when it contacts the air it oxidizes and turns blue before your eyes. Notice how the color has changed between the top of the skein and its bottom as it is pulled up.
We let the yarn drip back into the pot, then hang it on the overhead rack to oxidize. If we want a darker blue, we will dip the yarn again, oxidize it...and over again... The intensity of indigo blue is additive.
Dark Indigo
When we have arrived at a shade of blue we like, we will let the yarn oxidize longer, then wash, rinse and air dry it. Indigo is truly a forgiving color.
Next: Over dyeing with indigo, Laura's Ember
7/2/2008 9:19 pm
In botany, a scape is a flowering stem. The scape of garlic, Allium Sativum, begins to curl after having formed a bulbil that will soon flower. Scapes should be broken off to enhance the final underground growth of the bulb, or what we call the head, which we will harvest in about two weeks when the cloves have fully and distinctly developed. Until then I cook with the whole plant using both the immature head and the green leaves; this is spring garlic.
Harvesting garlic, from the Tacuinum Sanitatis, illuminated in Lombardy ca. 1400; a handbook on wellness, food and agriculture based on the Taqwin al Sihha تقوين الصحة, Tables of Health, an eleventh-century Arab medical treatise by Ibn Butlan of Baghdad.
When I lived in San Francisco’s North Beach I often took the 30 Stockton, an overhead electric trolley, that went through Chinatown. There, the bus was crowded—standing-room-only—and reeked of garlic, the so called "stinking rose," that is eaten to ward off plagues according to the annals of TCM, Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Garlic Scape Pesto
1/2 pound peeled garlic scapes, finely chopped
6 T fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup olive oil
2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
salt to taste
Use the curled, tender portion of the scapes & peel them. Put the peeled scapes and lemon juice in a food processor and chop finely. Add the olive oil to the mix and stir for 2 minutes. Add 1 cup of Parmesan cheese and stir for 2 minutes, then add the rest of the Parmesan along with salt and stir again.
6/26/2008 10:40 am
Indigo Blue, Part 1
Laura wants 15 skeins of Ember, a color that begins as another color called Sunset which comes from mixing madder, fustic & logwood gray extracts.
Laura wants 15 skeins of Ember, a color that begins as another color called Sunset which comes from mixing madder, fustic & logwood gray extracts.
Ember
Jen, Laura’s daughter-in-law, liked Ember for its subtle color variation, she wanted a sweater-coat knit from it and Laura offered to knit the coat for her; but we had only two skeins of that color in the stand; it would have to be dyed. To get Ember we must over-dye Sunset with indigo; fortunately at the farm we had 24 skeins ready to be over-dyed.
If there is a science, meaning predictable, to working with natural colors, then working with indigo is an art, meaning unpredictable; if art is defined as surprise, and all good art surprises. When dyeing with indigo you are playing with chance; it requires the blessing of serendipity, and often the result is a pleasant surprise.
To exactly match the color would be impossible, and to come acceptably close to it would not be easy either, but I decided to try. 15 skeins is a large order, Laura didn’t blink at the price, how could I balk over my doubt.
To exactly match the color would be impossible, and to come acceptably close to it would not be easy either, but I decided to try. 15 skeins is a large order, Laura didn’t blink at the price, how could I balk over my doubt.
Source & History
A variety of plants have provided natural indigo throughout history, but most indigo is obtained from those in the genus Indigofera, which are native to the tropics. The primary commercial indigo species in Asia is Indigofera Tinctoria.
Indigo dye is obtained from processing the plant's leaves. These are soaked in water and fermented in order to convert the Glycoside Indican naturally present in the plant to the blue dye Indigotin. The precipitate from the fermented leaf solution is mixed with a base, pressed into cakes, dried, and powdered.
Natural indigo was the only source of the dye until July 1897. Within a short time, synthetic indigo almost completely superseded natural indigo; today nearly all indigo produced is synthetic. In the United States, the primary use for indigo is as a dye for blue jeans. After the Wikipedia entry on "Indigo"
My source for indigo extract is Earthues; it is sold as a powder. When working with extracts & dyes wear a paper particulate mask over your nose and mouth, latex gloves and eye protection as the situation requires.
Dyeing Procedure
In a 1 qt. jar I mix 2 ounces (56 grams) of indigo with a small amount of water making a paste, then I fill the jar with 3 full cups of water and stir it well. To the aqueous solution, in this order, I stir in 2 TBS of thiourea dioxide (also available from Earthues) and 2 TBS of lye to the solution in the jar. (Always add lye to aqueous solutions, and never the other way around, to prevent it from splashing back.)
Thiourea dioxide is a reagent that reduces the oxygen of the dye bath and lye raises the pH. Both an absence of oxygen and a basic (non acidic) dye bath (with a pH of 9-10) are required for the indigo to fix to the wool yarn being dyed in the pot.
Thiourea dioxide is a reagent that reduces the oxygen of the dye bath and lye raises the pH. Both an absence of oxygen and a basic (non acidic) dye bath (with a pH of 9-10) are required for the indigo to fix to the wool yarn being dyed in the pot.
The indigo/thiourea/lye solution is set aside in the shade for a half an hour to let the thiourea reduce the oxygen in the jar; it will turn from a blue to a dull yellow. At this time I prepare the bath by heating water to 130 F in a stainless steel pot, using about 4 gallons of water for each pound of yarn to be dyed; then I add the indigo/thiourea/lye solution to the pot and stir gently.
Until now we have been scientific and specific, but art and experience are required to get the blues you want. With a spoon, to determine how much oxygen remains in the solution, I check the color of the dye bath: to dye indigo well the solution must be a blue blue-green, not a blue (too much oxygen) and not a lime-green (too little oxygen). Upon addition of the indigo/thiourea/lye solution to the bath its color will be blue at first. One must wait about 15 minutes for the thiourea to reduce the oxygen in the pot. If the blue blue-green is not green enough then add another TBS of thiourea to the bath. If it is too green, agitate the bath to introduce oxygen.
Until now we have been scientific and specific, but art and experience are required to get the blues you want. With a spoon, to determine how much oxygen remains in the solution, I check the color of the dye bath: to dye indigo well the solution must be a blue blue-green, not a blue (too much oxygen) and not a lime-green (too little oxygen). Upon addition of the indigo/thiourea/lye solution to the bath its color will be blue at first. One must wait about 15 minutes for the thiourea to reduce the oxygen in the pot. If the blue blue-green is not green enough then add another TBS of thiourea to the bath. If it is too green, agitate the bath to introduce oxygen.
I used a pH meter when I began dyeing indigo, but it broke; now I rely on the slipperiness of my fingers after sticking them into the dye batch to tell me the pH. Basic solutions are slippery; the more basic the slipperier they are. pH 10 feels more slippery than pH 8. This knowledge is the experience, if not the art, of dyeing and your fingers can learn too.
When the bath is ready, judged by its color and its slipperiness, the yarn is immersed in the pot, and your heart pounds, “Did I do it right…bumpety, bumpety, bump…O the art…”
When the bath is ready, judged by its color and its slipperiness, the yarn is immersed in the pot, and your heart pounds, “Did I do it right…bumpety, bumpety, bump…O the art…”
To be continued...
6/22/2008 7:43 pm
When I’m in New York at market, Poem spends the day in her kennel that faces the noisy pond. Because she will be there all day Saturday with nothing to do but listen to the frogs croak, I try to work her before I go, and then again when I come home. Friday I took her to the ram paddock with me; I wasn’t expecting much more than commanding and correcting her as is usual with a young dog.
But instead of running ahead and making me stamp my foot to get her attention, Poem surprised me by staying at my side as we approached the sheep. I stepped over the fence, then she jumped over following me. “Sit,” I said and she did. Rather than cast her around the flock of rams to the left, “Go round” or cast her around them to the right, “Go over,’ I let her choose her direction by simply telling her, “Go back.” She went “round” to the left; but what amazed me is that she went wide around the flock (correctly staying off the sheep to not scare them) rather than coming in too close as she usually does.
How did she do that? For months now, I had wondered how I would teach her to stay off the sheep on the cast. I called her back to me for another cast; she went wide again, perfectly. Poem, we should quit winners. I called her back to me, bent down and stroked her; I told her she was “good dog,” but it wasn’t enough. Dogs love you by letting you know your love for them is not enough.
Sunday I took her back to the rams. On the first cast, rather than going around the sheep—staying off and out wide—she came in to cut the flock in two and began running the small group of five bucks just for dog fun.
"O Poem," I sighed; then shook my head and loudly yelled, "come behind." She came off the sheep and to my side; panting, she looked up at me with her wild brown eyes, then wagged her tail. No, it’s never enough.
6/19/2008 4:44 pm
Dyes, utensils & resources
The Catskill Merino Natural Dye Syllabus describes how, using natural colors, we dye yarn on the farm. The history of natural dyeing is fascinating and I will make reference to it occasionally, but our focus here is to show you how we dye yarn so you can begin dyeing it too.
Osage Heather
This is a 2 oz. skein of heather merino yarn over dyed with Osage Orange. This dye is available from Earthues, a supplier of natural dyes, and they also offer a booklet that I highly recommend called the Earthues Natural Dye Instruction Book by Michele Wipplinger, the founder of Earthues. 
Pictured above on our dye table are a balance and dye extracts weighed out on coffee filters.
You will need an accurate method to weigh the dye extracts to 0.1 gram. We use a triple beam balance like this one available from Scales-n-Tools
You will need stainless steel pots. A good place to find them is a local used restaurant equipment dealer. We got several good used 20 qt. ss pots locally at a reasonable price.
But we needed larger pots too, and those were hard to come by used; I found a 100 qt. ss pot (20” in diameter & 20” high) online at Kitchen Fantasy. To heat a 100 quart pot (weighing 208 lbs when full + the weight of the pot) you need a sturdy propane burner and that I found online at Louisiana Lagniappe designed to be used for big crawfish cookouts.
The Catskill Merino dye studio is as big as all outdoors, and as colorful. Here is a Kitchen Fantasy 100 qt. ss pot on a Louisiana Lagniappe 105,000 btu burner. Note the garment rack (sans wheels) over the pot to hang the dyed yarn when it is pulled from the dye bath.
To dye one or two skeins on your stove top you won’t need equipment like this; but you should use non-reactive pots, either stainless steel or enamel and never use pots of iron or aluminum as these metals influence the colors. You can get around buying a triple beam balance by using measuring spoon weight equivalents (charted by color and intensity) specified in the Earthues Natural Dye Instruction Book.
6/15/2008 12:29 pm
Vultures tell you that death has come. When I saw the turkey vulture sitting on a far away fence post, I was certain that we’d lost a lamb yesterday in the high grass when we moved the ewe flock.
Looking at a dead sheep, you can understand the cause of death. There are reasons; death is from a natural disease, it is from old age or it is inexplicable…death is reasonable and you are sane. But when you have unintentionally caused a sheep’s death, it taunts you in your own voice, “You did this.” And you must accept responsibility or death becomes unreasonable as it invites you to place blame elsewhere, and doing so you've become insane.
Either way, the vultures come.
To move the ewe flock to a new paddock a quarter mile away meant moving them through an unfenced area. Dominique would lead them with the carrot, a bucket with grain in it, and I would follow with the stick, a barking Poem. But that unfenced quarter mile could make the trip a long one as there was lush grass on the sides of the lane to tempt the sheep. The idea was to keep the 300 sheep bunched together in a flock moving forward, going for the carrot, afraid of the stick.
When we let the sheep out they followed Dominique and her grain bucket, but halfway there the flock began to string out; the leaders doubled back as the flock turned to the grass on left side of the lane. They were not going for the carrot, I called Dominique to come to the back of the flock with Poem and me; now we were the stick.
Shouting, clapping, barking and moving from side to side we got them swirling forward toward the open fence of the new paddock. We couldn’t let the sheep get behind us, if they out flanked us and ran we were lost. Then three ewes broke through our rear line, others would soon follow; like a Civil War reenactment, the Battle of Goshen, I sent Poem (the cavalry) back to round up the rebel sheep and drive them back to the flock, and she did it quickly with her innate skill.
Looking at a dead sheep, you can understand the cause of death. There are reasons; death is from a natural disease, it is from old age or it is inexplicable…death is reasonable and you are sane. But when you have unintentionally caused a sheep’s death, it taunts you in your own voice, “You did this.” And you must accept responsibility or death becomes unreasonable as it invites you to place blame elsewhere, and doing so you've become insane.
Either way, the vultures come.
To move the ewe flock to a new paddock a quarter mile away meant moving them through an unfenced area. Dominique would lead them with the carrot, a bucket with grain in it, and I would follow with the stick, a barking Poem. But that unfenced quarter mile could make the trip a long one as there was lush grass on the sides of the lane to tempt the sheep. The idea was to keep the 300 sheep bunched together in a flock moving forward, going for the carrot, afraid of the stick.
When we let the sheep out they followed Dominique and her grain bucket, but halfway there the flock began to string out; the leaders doubled back as the flock turned to the grass on left side of the lane. They were not going for the carrot, I called Dominique to come to the back of the flock with Poem and me; now we were the stick.
Shouting, clapping, barking and moving from side to side we got them swirling forward toward the open fence of the new paddock. We couldn’t let the sheep get behind us, if they out flanked us and ran we were lost. Then three ewes broke through our rear line, others would soon follow; like a Civil War reenactment, the Battle of Goshen, I sent Poem (the cavalry) back to round up the rebel sheep and drive them back to the flock, and she did it quickly with her innate skill.
As we drove the flock ahead, several weaker lambs in the rear fell behind us in the high grass—the temptation was to pick them up—I yelled to Dominique over Poem's bark and over the voices of hundreds of ewes calling for their lambs, "Let'em go, we’ll get'em later…keep the flock moving forward…” Round and round the balling sheep eddied advancing with every rotation as we shouted and barked; when they saw the opening, they went through it and we closed the fence. Everything was quiet.
Now for the lambs. We walked with Poem back and forth through the high grass but found no hidden stragglers; we assumed, and hoped, they'd joined the flock when we were busy circling the sheep and didn't see them.
Now for the lambs. We walked with Poem back and forth through the high grass but found no hidden stragglers; we assumed, and hoped, they'd joined the flock when we were busy circling the sheep and didn't see them.
The next day, when I saw the vulture sitting on the post, the voice began: “You lost your little sheep, didn't you Mr. Bo Peep...” I shook my head and said, "I'm too old for this shit." In the paddock where the lambs had been, three vultures were on the ground fluttering their wings and picking at carrion. They lifted up and flew off as I approached the carcass. I had no one to blame—if this was death, it was stupid death—I was alone, if not sane. When I got close enough to smell it, I saw that it wasn’t a dead lamb at all, it was the innards of a dead box turtle with 100’s of green bottle flies madly buzzing around. It was repulsive; but then, it was better looking than a lamb.
6/12/2008 2:13 pm
Sunset
Color variation in naturally dyed yarn
Sunset is a reddish ochre hue made from combining Madder, Fustic & a touch of Logwood Gray; you can find out more about these dye extracts on the Natural Colors page.
Notice how the vivid color mutes along the strand of Sunset. This variation is unique and is a discovered beauty of dyeing with natural colors; you're never sure what your going to get until you've gotten it.
You can order this yarn from the Naturally Dyed Yarn department of the Yarn Store, or you can follow the online Natural Dye Syllabus to learn how to dye this color yourself.
6/10/2008 9:02 am
White
What color is and what it isn't
My Nikon D80 is in the shop until tomorrow—nothing serious—Photo Tech on 13th St. tells me its exposure sensors need cleaning. I may not be able photograph the yarn that Dominique dyed to present in the Yarn Store as promised. Also, thrush has flared up in the ewe flock, now the ewes and their lambs must be walked daily through a foot bath. The beginning of the promised Natural Dye Syllabus may have to be postponed to next week.
Sheep always come first on this farm.
But for now, here is a little riff for you on what color is and what it isn’t.
October 20, 2006 - June 10, 2008
The interior of my house is white: white ceilings, white walls and white carpet, upstairs and down. With white sheepskins, I draped the love seat, three wicker chairs and an ottoman in the living room. I sleep under a comforter, filled with white wool covered with white flannel.I like white for what it isn’t. Color has to do with place, place has to do with what is there; but white has to do with what is not there and what is not there has to do with desire.Color is felt more than it is seen. According to Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe in his 1807 treatise on color, reddish-green is a color that can’t be seen; but what we can’t see, we can imagine. Last week I dyed a color that Goethe would have been blind to, it was a crimson-lime hue that, it was the color of skin.In the Jean Luc Godard film, Une Femme est une Femme, the tanned skin of his actor, Anna Karina, glows as the camera follows her through the film’s white interiors. According to Goethe, we can not see a brilliant brown in the way we can see a brilliant red, yet her skin is brilliant when seen against the white interior of desire.Color requires us to become its temporal accomplice. When a lone color is seen (isolated in space), the red of an apple for example, a color from the past or perhaps a color from the future, a color heretofore unknown to us, will come to mind. Color can’t be spatially alone, or it becomes white. So through us, the temporal joins and influences color; but white is different, it is unchanging, it is alone, it is beyond time.White is messianic, always to come and never to arrive. When Franz Kafka says, “You are reserved for a great Monday…but Sunday will never end,” he speaks of white. Something that has not yet begun will never end and wouldn't this be white too.To prefer one color is to hide another. The colors we hide become secrets, which are always white, and they determine the strangers in our lives by determining our friends and lovers, those close enough to us to know our favorite color.
6/6/2008 9:01 am
The call to colors
Learn how to dye
The farm has been busy this Spring: shearing the sheep in March, then lambing the ewes in April and finally getting the flock to pasture in May. Now we have time for other things. Dominique dyed new colors that I will present & offer for-sale here next week; they will be available in the stand tomorrow.
She dyed a very good Cochineal/Madder red—kudos in crimson—this is a hard color to get. The addition of Cochineal to the dye bath is a semi-modern (18th Century) and New World variation of Turkey Red.
"Turkey Red was the name given to a red dye which had been developed from the root of the madder plant. The knowledge that madder was an effective red dye was not new. The Greeks, Libyans and Romans all used it as did the Moors. After its use was lost the Dutch rediscovered its cultivation in 1494 and for the next three hundred years were the world’s largest exporters.
In 1747 Prince Charles Edward Stuart disguised himself as Betty Burke by wearing a block printed madder dress to escape from the English. From the middle of the eighteenth century chemists and industrialists from all over Europe had tried to find the industrial process that would give them a bright, fast, non fade red. Ultimately French chemists obtained the secrets from what is now Turkey and the name stuck." From The Color Museum
That Dominique can dye well does not surprise me—she can do many things—but that she learned most of what she knows about natural dyeing here on the farm, does surprise me. They say, "You don't know a subject until you can teach it." Well if I do know something about natural dyes. I plan to find out what that something is by sharing it with you.
I will teach an online dye workshop, a syllabus of natural colors to be more accurate, which will be a dizzying spin round the color wheel that you can enter into anytime at any color and go in any direction. Our curriculum will describe the step-by-step process (with plenty of photos) of dyeing yarn with natural colors in 100 qt. stainless kettles on propane burners as we do here on the farm, and in smaller pots on a stove top using utensils that you have in your kitchen.
No secrets and no tuition: along with tricks-of-the-trade that I've picked up dyeing 1000's of pounds of yarn, I will share with you where to buy dyestuffs & utensils, what how-to books on dyeing I like, and when in-person workshops around the country are to be conducted by master dyers, and much more. Also, either Dominique or I will be available anytime for questions about your color projects.
We will begin this week and continue every week thereafter as sheep blog entries; click the "Natural Dye Syllabus" tag in "Blog Categories/Labels" to call the syllabi up in sequence. After an introduction to utensils and mordants, we'll get into the reds: Turkey Red with Madder, Cochineal red with its tints from orange to fuchsia, and maybe the reds of Lac and Quebracho too, unless another color comes up first.