Limited Edition
This blue burns a hole in my heart and although I'm not ready to bring it out formally with new pages that reconstitute the Yarn Store, I had to show you, so proud I am of it. Not all naturally dyed colors are as wonderful as the one in the mind's eye of the dyer as he begins the dyeing process, but then again, when you stumble upon a truly surprising hue, you'll swear that you can hear the angels' trumpets heralding you and your color.
This blue is the result of two long dips (about 3 minutes each) in a mystical Indigo vat.
The yarn is a singles worsted weight: a 2 oz. skein measures 140 yd. in length. The color was dyed in a limited editions of 16 skeins.
Now available from the Yarn Store.
We couldn't believe our eyes when this color came out of the dye bath; we'd planned to overdye almost all of this dyelot but upon seeing the hue we reversed ourselves and overdyed almost none of it, one pound I think. Never have I seen a more intense Cochineal* and the coverage along the Saxon Merino yarn is even too. It has a charm—so unusual—the color deserves to be seen as it is.
The color was dyed after an Alum and Cream of Tarter mordant at 1.75% WOF. This is a singles worsted weight: a 2 oz. skein measures 140 yd. in length. The color was dyed in a limited editions of 32 skeins.
Available from the Yarn Store.
*Cochineal is an intense red colorant (known since the Mayan times), a natural extract that comes from an insect (most natural dyes come from vegetables) that lives on the prickley pear cactus found in the southwest. It takes 10,000 bugs to make a pound of extract and that is a reason why it is the most expensive natural dye I use: currently it wholesales for $650.00 a pound. Also, the FDA approves Cochineal as a food coloring—one of the few natural dyes so approved—this creates demand to keep the price high.
We added more Indigo to the pot and I said to Rebecca, "Let the yarn stay in the pot longer, we're looking for a deep green." We watched the intensity of the value not the color (everything looks green not blue in a reduced-oxygen indigo pot) as Rebecca swirled the fiber in the pot raising it out of the liquid from time to time.
It looked good, a black green, a deep seaweed color; I said, "OK" and Rebecca pulled the 16 skeins from the bath. We watched the black become blue over the Weld yellow—it turned a true teal—as the oxygen struck the indigo solution on the fiber.
It was a green we'd looked for—a deepish color—one that was distinct from the lighter greens we'd just gotten in the more dilute indigo pot when we'd pulled the yarn out sooner.
As much as lovely colors we want for you, we want colors that are different from one another because everybody has a different favorite color.
This color was dyed in a limited editions of 16 skeins.
Available from the Yarn Store.
I'm not sure about the new yarn photographs—if I like them. They're for the Yarn Store: the show-and-tell and sell there.
Tell me what you think. Let's make it a focus group of Twitter knitters, fiber enthusiasts and newsletter subscribers; I'll link the photos (the old photos and the new [the 1st two] for comparison) at the Yarn Store & on Twitter too.
For all respondents; telling me what they prefer, what's useful, what helps them in their online purchase of yarn: either the old or the new protographs and also photographs of other online yarn vendors they like too; I'll put your Twitter name or your email address into a hat and in a week's time I'll blindfoldedly draw one and send the winner a skein of our undyed 2 ply Sport Saxon Merino Yarn, the same yarn that Clara Parkes reviewed in Knitters Review.
Again, a most unusual natural color. More green than indigo blue and more yellow too than the colors in #34 One would suppose that its uniqueness is the result of the Osage I dyed as a base color as the other Indigo overdyes that I did in sucession produced colors that one might expect.
This color was dyed in a limited edltion of 24 skeins and they all vary somewhat. Available in the Yarn Store.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
This is what happens when you add Iron to a Cutch pot and let it steep for 15 minutes; it changes the butterscotch Cutch into a mellow brown—I've never seen this color before—it's the universal in the particular, as it get smaller it gets larger if you understand Derrida as I'd like to.
This color was dyed in a limited editions of 16 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This is a pure Cutch. It is a delicate color to dye; you must not boil it or the color flattens out and if you want it darker, leave it overnight to cool in the dye pot.
This color was dyed in a limited editions of 16 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This is the first time we've ever dyed a light Indigo over a light Weld; we like it and everybody in Union Square likes it too.
This color was dyed in a limited editions of 16 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This is color rectitude: if we don't care for a color (this was originally an uninteresting greenish hue) we overdye it with Indigo, as we did here; now it has a depth to it, you can see into the color, it has layers, it is many, one color is over another making a third and a fourth, the mixing is optical rather than chemical (mixed in your eye and your heart), and that charges the color with an energy that only natural dyes have. They radiate the light of the natural world, of dawn, of rainy days, of forests fragrantly abloom, of dusk and of so much more. Natural dyes come from our world and they colorfully tell about where they've been.
This color was dyed in a limited editions of 12 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This is deep Indigo over Cochineal after several long dips in the blue pot. The color is close to one of the New York Twilight variations, but much more intense. Is it a navy purple? The color intrigues me, it eludes a name and dyeing the same hue again will not be easy. Some colors are truly one of a kind. Make sure you buy one skein more than you think you'll need because when it's gone, it's gone.
This color was dyed in a limited editions of 12 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
Nothing is always, never is sometimes and when we get a color we don't like or one we already have we put Indigo over the top of it to make something new.
This color was dyed in a limited editions of 24 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
These are the colors we like to dye where one color becomes another. The lesson to learn is when something doesn't work out instead of stopping you can go further too—it's really a better way of stopping. This color began as an ocher (Madder/Osage/Cutch/Pomegranate) that we didn't like and decided to overdye it with indigo and did.
Last night I heard coyotes singing on the farm; I wanted to dye a color like their song. If I never get that color I'll always have a color to dye or one to listen for.
This color was dyed in a limited editions of 24 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
A great color for a scarf. This is an example of the color variation that natural dyes give for reasons as numerous as the colors given. But which color for which reason. I suppose according to T. H. Huxley, who coined the term agnosticism in 1869, you could "follow your reason as far as it will take you," then what. Sometimes this means not actually reaching any conclusion.
It's a color, a nice color but we may not be able to get it again. Why? Well truthfully, I don't know.
The recipe that was followed for No Name Brown was the same as the recipe that dyed the colors shown in Iron Magic.
This color was dyed in a limited editions of 16 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
Surprisingly, the last time I sourced Osage Orange I could find no liquid extract; there was only sawdust available from which I would have to extract my own dye. Busy then and busy now, I had several ounces of liquid extract left and I had other yellows, a Fustic (from the heartwood of the tree) and a Weld (from the flowering stems of the plant), that I could work with. I would wait.
The week before last week while ordering more natural Indigo, I was told that Osage extract was now available. I ordered 2 lb; feeling more secure, I dyed a pure Osage last week. It is a yellow that tends toward a green, less full than the Fustic and less bright than the Weld.
But if the truth be told, the yellow from Osage is a difficult color to get when dyeing with the more modern acid dyes. Subtle mixing of synthetic dyes, those of complementy colors—both secondary and tertiary, is required to get this hue; and more importantly, to get the muted feeling that comes so easily from a natural dye extract made from a harvest of Osage trees growing in Oklahoma.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 16 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with earth friendly, natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
Cochineal is dear. It dyes these lovely pinks after an Alum/Tartar mordant and it now sells for over $500.00 a pound. This was the color I was trying to get last week, but getting poor coverage on the skeins I had to over dye them with indigo to get an equally lovely color, New York Twilight #10. Having a pure cochineal pink completes a basic, but minimal, color story told by natural dyes at the stand and in the Yarn Store.
Cochineal is not a vegetable dye; it is from the Dactylopius Coccus insect that lives on the Prickly Pear cactus in the desert. 10,000 of these insects (the females only) must be harvested to make a pound of dye extract.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 24 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This was to be a straight Cochineal, a baby pink; it looked great in the bath until I pulled the skeins out and I saw they were dyed pink in some spots and not dyed at all in others. No one would buy these as they were, I was sure. The baby pink I wanted would have to wait another week because these skeins had to be overdyed with indigo if there was to be any chance of selling them.
The Indigo blue parts of the skein are where the Cochineal did not take up well; the purple parts of the skein are where the Cochineal shows through the Indigo overdye.
I showed this color in New York last weekend and did well with it; people were pleased and so was I.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 48 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
Pure Cutch #11
Cutch is from the heartwood of the Acacia Catechu tree that grows in Burma; dye extracts produce camel to caramel colors; when combined with Madder it gives a bright apricot and when combined with Iron it gives a mellow brown.
Pure Cutch & Iron #2
These colors were dyed in a limited editions of 16 skeins each.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This extract, the heartwood of a tree from Central America, is a workhorse; it is a mixture of Logwood Purple and Iron that deepens the purple into a gray. Its use is suggested when you want to mute other colors in a mixture or to get as close to black as you can.
Not only is black difficult to obtain with natural dyes; it's impossible with any method.
The concept of black as a color exists only in theory. Black is invisible and to see the invisible is a conundrum. You can almost see it, or so you think, but what you see is not black if you define it as the absence of all light because black can't be seen by the human eye being dependant on light to see. Lovely, lovely light., yes it does mask the dark side of the world. The black you see is but a suggestion; it is a mixture of visible colors that point to the invisible, point to what you can never see with tell tale traces of their origin. Logwood Gray tends toward purple as all so called blacks (and grays) tend toward the color of one of their components.
Logwood Gray is a masculine color. It is a color for the color shy; it feels safe. It doesn't disclose the wearer's vulnerabilities as a declaiming red or flashy yellow would; it masks a boyishness, or so men think, from anyone watching.
Adding Logwood Gray to yellows makes greens, adding it to oranges makes browns.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 16 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
Iron, whose elemental symbol is Fe, was added (as a 2% WOF ferrous sulphate solution) to a 2% WOF Cochineal dyebath turning Deep Fuchsia #8 into Dusty Plum #1, or the Fum.
Deep Fuchsia #8
Dusty Plum #1
The cost of natural dye extracts is rising dramatically, particularly Cochineal (used as a dye centuries ago in Mayan times) still used today as a red food colorant by agribusiness giants. Because of these increasing costs, we attempt to use the same dye bath to get two or more colors. We are pleased with the colors that iron after baths give us as a 2nd color which is always darker and more muted
These colors were dyed in a limited edition of 16 skeins each.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This color was to be more Cutch ocher than the Madder red/orange it is. But you can see the component dyes: the Osage, the Fustic and the Cutch (all yellows) brighten the dark Madder. Even though this wasn't the color we were looking for; it is still a good color for us as we have no bright orange in the stand/Yarn Store.
But when I dye that sought-after ocher again, I will decrease the amount of Madder in the recipe, maybe going to 3% WOF or even less trying to get that warm, full yellow which we still don't have. We are dyeing for color preferences other than our own. Just because we don't prefer a color doesn't mean that someone else might not find it perfect for what they have in mind. Color is alway seen in context. Our context is what we display in the stand or in the online Yarn Store, where we try to have as many different colors as possible to match the plural, and unknown, color contexts of others. Someone else's context might be more specific; it might be the color of a coat or a hat they will wear with what they knit from the yarn.
As we'd planned for the ocher, we will modify the Bright Madder #17 skeins with iron to darken it. To do this, when the original color is at its saturation point, we pull all the skeins out of the bath, add filtered rusty water and put back some of the skeins for 15 minutes and stir from time to time before pulling them. Et Voila!
A copper color! One we don't have! And one we've never had! An interesting color, it has a vibrancy in its quietude!
We've dyed the Bright Madder before and this is dyelot #17, but it's the first time we've dyed this copper color that we'll call Penny #1.
These colors were dyed in a limited edition of 16 skeins each.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
Dye lots of Madder are hard to match; some are reds with fuchsia tones and others have orange tones as this example. Madder is pH sensitive and even the seasonal variations in acidity of well water will influence its red. Moreover, good Madders require a bath that never boils or the color will dissipate; the dyer must be ever vigilant of the flame under the pot.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 32 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
Indigo over Weld #5 is much like East River Dawn #4 except it was not immeresed in the indigo vat as long or as often as ERD#4; or perhaps the vat was not as strong because the amount of indigo added was less to begin with; or maybe the amount of Indigo in the vat was depleted by dyeing other skeins first.
There are so many variables to dyeing with Indigo that we use few constants other than to mix the Indigo extract solution in 2:2:2 proportions in a about a quart of H2O: 2 T of Thio, 2 T of Lye & 2 oz. of Indigo extract. Dyeing with indigo is like living in London, you get to know your way around in the fog.
We divine our blues, looking at the oxidized color of the yarn (to see if we like it, looking at the color of the bath (to determine its oxygen content, its indigo strength), feeling how slippery the bath between bare fingers (to determine the pH) is. The Indigo bath changes after each skein is dyed.
The dyer's decision is always 'to dip the yarn again or to accept the color at hand'; and if we decide to go for a darker shade by re-dipping it, need we add more Indigo, Thio, or Lye and if so in what proportions. All lovely guesswork; and along with the many different colors it can give the dyer, dyeing with Indigo is interesting, fun and always unpredictable. You may not get the color you thought you'd like, but you'll like the color you get.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 24 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This is the "camel colored Cutch pulled from a 2 hour simmering bath, then reimmersed for 15 minutes after Iron was added to "sadden" the bath's color" before we dipped it in an indigo vat to get that lovely, ambidexterous Blue-Brown Gray #1.
I'm not sad at all about this brown; I like it. This color proves what Susan Sontag said about being in war torn Sarajevo directing Becket's Waiting for Godot with sniper bullets flying from the surrounding hills, that you must think of your life as complete in that it could end at any moment. The tragedy of life is the sense of incompletion upon death. And Susan Sontag knew the proximity of death as a person living with cancer. Yes there is more to do; but also, you have done enough and that incomprehensible tension is the hope that this brown conveys.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 8 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
Some colors are more satisfying to dye than other colors. And this one I always like to dye because it's good for the imagination; it is an Indigo blue over a Madder burnt-orange. In theory blue and orange are opposite one another on the color wheel; they are called complementary colors; supposedly, when you mix compliments they make gray.
Colors are sloppy, the mixing of them, the theory behind them, their chemistry, their names, how people see them or take them to heart and so many other incidentals are far form being concise or scientifically repeatable. Colors drive theoricians mad because they do not exist as such, they are but an inference, a property of light and light has no definition. You simply know it as too much or too little. To creationists that lack of definition is a proof of God.
So that's where you are when you work with color; you're so close to love but yet so far away. This color is not a gray from the reds to the oranges to the blues but it is a gray.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 24 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This began its colored life as a camel colored Cutch pulled from a 2 hour simmering bath, then reimmersed for 15 minutes after Iron was added to "sadden" the bath's color. Upon pulling the skeins from the Iron modified bath we found that we liked the saddness that we'd come upon; the gray-brown was even and even tended toward a yellow.
But we were following a new recipe that was to give us a black, a difficult color to get... As insurance we held on to several sad skeins (in case the black recipe was a flop [some recipes are] for one unconfirmed reason or another) and we dipped the remaining skeins in an indigo vat as the recipe instructed us to do. We pulled the skeins out after a minute or so. A black we didn't get, but we really liked the color we got, a Blue-Brown Gray.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 24 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
Because Cochineal extract is so dear now, we try to get a second red in a second dyeing from the same Cochineal dye bath. The first color is always an intense Cochineal, a fuschia, that we usually use for indigo overdyeing, yet we will keep at least 16 skeins of this intense Cochineal, the skeins most evenly dyed, to display and to sell. The red from the second dyeing has a diminished Cochineal content; it is usually more pale and may stand some dye additions to differentiate its color.
One bath can produce 2 cochineal reds and as many as 3 different indigo overdyes from a periwinke to a deep purple. Cochineal now costs about $400 a pound so we try to make it go as far as we can colorwise.
For the second red I added 3% Madder (an orange) and 10% Quebracho Red (cheaper but less intense) to the depleted Cochineal dye bath. You have to shoot from the hip here as you can only guess at the amont of Cochineal left in the pot and you never know what shade of red you'll get for the second color. But the additions felt right and in the right proportions. This is the part of dyeing I like, the educated guess.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 16 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This is a straight Cochineal at 1.5% wof, the first color pulled from the cochineal dyebath. Cochineal is a natural colorant from the female Dactylopius Coccus, an insect that lives on a cactus, now mainly found in Peru. See Twilight of Natural Dyes for a little history about natural dyes being overtaken by synthetic dyes in the 19th century.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 16 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
As natural colors go, this Indigo over Cochineal began its own way, the coverage of cochineal as the base color was very uneven, bands of dark fuchsia, as if they'd been hand-painted, became baby pink where the dye didn't strike well, and back again as the eye traveled round the skein. If this cochineal weren’t destined to be overdyed, it would have been a color failure. But I saw the unevenness as an opportunity: The overdyed Indigo would blue up the baby pink while it made blue-red mauves and periwinkles from the darker cochineal.
In my mind's eye, I saw the overdye in darker shades and was somewhat disappointed with the actual colors, but it appeared that the color mavens of Union Square liked the yarn on Saturday as I sold more than half of what I'd dyed. The colors you make for others may not be the colors you make for yourself: every color has its person and some are rarer than others.
This color was dyed in a limited edition of 32 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This was the first time I'd used this recipe. The color was arrived at by using the modifier CaCO3, a pH buffer to hold the acid/base relationship unmoving with the temperature increase over time. I used a 3% wof Weld and 0.75% wof Logwood. I was doubtful when I saw the color of the concoction I'd mixed because it was purple and it looked like it would dye yarn purple. With fingers crossed I immersed the yarn into the bath and it became purple as I had feared—Holy Moly*—I left the yarn in the bath to go feed the ewe lambs damning the recipe, the recipe writer and my stupidity to follow it. I knew that Logwood was a very concentrated dye extract; 0.75% was too much, maybe 0.50% or even 0.25% would have been better. Oh well what's done is done—another purple—next time... But when I came back 20 minutes later it had turned green.
*Holy Moly, an expression of surprise from the Captain Marvel comic book stories c. 1941 written by Bill Parker and Otto Binder and drawn by C.C. Beck.
Moly, a protective garlic-like herb from Homer's Odyssey. In Book 10, Hermes gives the herb to Odysseus to protect him from Circe's incantation. Homer describes Moly by saying, "The root was black, while the flower was as white as milk; the gods call it Moly, and mortal men cannot uproot it, but the gods can do whatever they like."
I liked the color and still I will try a lesser percentage of Logwood to see what kind of hue I get.
This color was dyed in a limited edltion of 32 skeins.
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
I've never seen this amalgam of Osage and Indigo before; this overdye usually gives me light hunter greens or dark teals depending how long I leave the skeins in the bath. One would suppose that its uniqueness is the result of the unusual Osage I dyed as a base color as the other Indigo overdyes that I did in sucession produced colors that one might expect.
This color was dyed in a limited edltion of 16 skeins
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and it is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
Myrobalan (Terminalia chebula) is a natural dye used in India; it comes from the almond-like fruit of a shrub that grows in the foothills of the Himalayas.
The myrobalan dyebath smells like cookies in the oven. Mom always left enough dough for my brother and me to "lick the bowl" when she baked cookies. Myrobalan is the color of cookie dough too; it is easy to dye, but what is hard is to get its unusual cool hue in a photograph.
This color was dyed in a limited edltion of 16 skeins
Each worsted skein weighs 2 ounces (50 grams) and is 140 yards in length; the wool comes from our superfine Saxon Merino sheep and is hand-dyed with natural colors on the farm. Expect 5-6.5 stitches per inch using US 5-8/3.75-5.25 mm needles.
Available from the Yarn Store.
This shade was a mistake, but a fortunate one. No dye, either natural or synthetic, yields a perfect black, nor a gray either, blacks are either warm or cold, they tend toward a violet or a green.
A true black absorbs all light from the spectrum and no dye can duplicate that.
My error was that I mixed 2% (wof) Logwood Gray which tends toward the violet with a 2% Osage Orange which dyes a yellow (violet and yellow are complementary colors, opposite each other on the color wheel and in theory they make gray when combined) trying to get a green as in #147. I looked into the dye pot and disappointingly it wasn't green, it was gray; but how gray I wasn't to know until I rinsed the yarn. I discovered in my notes from years ago that I had added 4 times as much Logwood Gray as the 0.5% required for the green hue.
I scaled back the Log and dyed more yarn; #147 is the result. But #146 was an abject failure as a green yet it was a grand success as a gray (nearly perfect but still tending slightly toward violet) and we shall celebrate this serendipitous mistake by calling it Logwood Gray #1. I hope I can redye it again.
Dyed in a limited edition of 32 skeins. Available in the Yarn Store.
However many years ago I began dyeing natural colors—seven, maybe eight—this was the first color I dyed: 2% wof (weight of fiber) Osage Orange and 0.5% wof Logwood Gray; meaning that to dye a pound or 454 grams of yarn you weighed out 2% or 9.08 grams of Osage and 0.5% or 2.27 grams of Logwood on a triple beam balance like those used in chemistry class, dissolved them in hot water and added them to the dye bath before you added the yarn to be dyed, keeping the temperature near boiling for an hour. Then comes the rinsing and spinning in a washing machine before the skeins are ready to be hung on a line to air dry for a day or two.
Only 16 skeins of this color were dyed. Available in the Yarn Store.
Never have I seen this shade of the natural dye, Osage Orange, before; it had always been a straight up yellow and now it leans toward orange. I wondered why it was called Orange and not Yellow, and now I see.
The mineral composition of the well water used for dyeing last week must be different from when I dyed Osage last Spring and that difference must have changed the shade of the color, so dependant upon the mineral content of the bath natural dyes are. This is not only a local color and but it also is a temporal color; a different season with more or less rainfall has altered the mineral composition of the water table.
Dyed in an edition of 16. Available in the Yarn Store.
This is orange and not orange. Only natural madder root on wool could make a color this fascinating. I'm not fond of oranges but I do like this hue for how unusual it is because it isn't. The color edition was limited to 12 two oz. (50 g.) skeins (140 yd.) and there are 8 remaining.
Available in the Yarn Store.
This is a lovely dark indigo on our Saxon Merino superfine worsted yarn. The blue dye comes from the plant indigofera tintoria which grows in warm climates. The leaves are soaked in water and fermented; the precipitate from the fermentation is mixed with lye, pressed into cakes, dried, and powdered. This is how I buy it as an extract.
The original Levi's of 1870 were made from denim which was dyed blue with natural indigo. But with the production of synthetic indigo, perfected early in the 20th century, this newer and cheaper blue was used to color denim and has been the dye of choice ever since.
In the early 1970's, when I was in Marrakesh I heard of the Tuareg, a nomadic tribe of the Sahara commonly called 'The Blue Men'. They wear wool robes dyed with natural indigo that comes off on their bodies to help protect them from the harsh desert sun as they are fair skinned, some with blue eyes. "The word Tuareg comes from an Arabic word meaning ‘the God-forsaken people'...It is said that a Tuareg can live for nine days on nothing but three dates: he will eat a skin one day, the meat of a date the next and on the third he will suck a stone. On the tenth day, however, he will die. In the final desperate bid for life Tuaregs have been known to tie themselves to the tail of a camel and hope that they will eventually stumble on water." CNN Traveller
The indigo yarn above is dark and even; the dye lot was limited to 24 two ounce skeins; further dips in the indigo bath with undyed yarn will result in a new, lighter blue because the indigo in the bath has been used up or oxidized. Adding fresh indigo to the bath is the way back to dark blues but this probably changes the chemistry and very possibly the color. Natural indigo blues are always a little different; even though resembling one another in hue, we see them as unique and number them separately in a limited editions.
Available in the Yarn Store.
The more I dye the less control I want over the color that comes out of an indigo bath. I check the pH by feeling how slippery my fingers are rather than using a pH meter; I look at the iridescent foam on the bath and its indescribable color, a color without a word and I am reminded of Wittgenstein in the Tracticus when he says that a picture can depict anything but its act of depiction. Is this color like that, impossible to depict? But still, it is there. It is a presence and truthfully I can tell you it is not this green above that came out of it. You cannot know what color it is, you can only know what color it isn’t.
Indigo over weld quickly. In 2 ounce skeins, only 4 were dyed. Available in the Yarn Store.
When you get a indigo overdye you don't like, or one you already have, you can dip it in the bath again, and then again if you like.
This is weld overdyed several times: the first dip didn't get the dye into what we call the "neck" where the skeins are tied together; getting the neck on a second dip resulted in an overall color too much like one I already had. I dipped it again and got this medium blue with varied undertones of aqua. Interesting, not one and not the other.
These dips last a matter of minutes, the skeins are then pulled from the bath and we watch the oxygen in the air react with the greenish (oxygen reduced) indigo and turn it fully blue in seconds; all this happens right before our eyes.
4 oz. skeins, 250 yd. in length; limited to 4 skeins. Available in the Yarn Store.
Last year when I had a hat on made from yarn of a similar hue a woman smiled and said, "Men look good in pink."
This color is from a dyebath used twice; the first dyeing produced the saturated Madison Avenue Madder #9; then more mordanted yarn was immersed in the diluted bath and 45 minutes later out came the subdued Pink Man #2. In 2 oz. skeins, 125 yd. in length and in an edition limited to 24.
Available in the Yarn Store.
A quick dip in the indigo bath of a weld pre-dye; 4 oz skeins 250 yards in length in a limited edition of 8 skeins. The color reminds me of the weathered bronze statues in the park.
Available in the Yarn Store.
Weld is the base color of this indigo overdye. The plant grows in Nothern Europe and had been recently unavailable. We tried to seed some weld last year but the crop failed. When it is available the extract sells for $300 a pound but when it is scarce it sells for much more; along with cochineal, weld is my most expensive extract but because it's used in a concetration (3%) that is twice that of cochineal it becomes the most expensive color I offer.
This color, where the blue teals play like nymphs on the river greens, is dyed in an edition limited to 16. Available in the Yarn Store.
The variables of indigo overdyes are many: the concentration of the indigo, the amount of oxygen dissolved in the bath and its pH, to name but a few. Each overdye is unique; this one is a limited edition of 8.
The yarn is a worsted weight in a 4 ounce skein measuring 250 yards in length. Because it is twice the weight and twice the length, it is twice the price, $38.00 per skein. One skein knit with #17 needles will make a scarf, quick to do, that shows off the special loft and softness of the yarn. But with limited edition yarns it's always better to buy more than you think you'll need so that you don't run out.
Available in the Yarn Store along with other limited edition colors.