Pots of Purple Carrots

So I mentioned I was on a roll with dyeing one day. 

That day I dyed with the 4 lichens, I was also dyeing with red cabbage

and these purple carrots. 

When I dye, I often go big. 

Though it can seem very daunting to get it all set up,

once I've got it set up,

the actual dyeing time is a snap. 

I just sit back and wait. 

Maybe poke at a pot but really it's just waiting. 

So I often go big, adding several more pots. 

Like this past summer when I found myself dyeing 10 pots at once. 

It was great!

This is the last of the dyeing from that day and I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. 

I've been itching to get better at linen dyeing so I gather my next days will be about perfecting my scouring and mordanting tecniques for vegetable fibers. 

Have I mentioned before in another post my plans for the dyed yarn?

I've got 12 skeins or so spun up of various Maine primitive breeds.

I've also got;

2 New Mexican Churro fleeces, one from Bob I got at the State Fair back in September in N.M., and 1 from Antonio at the Santa Fe Farmer's Market though I went to his ranch for the fleece. 

1 Maine Island Fleece from Lee Straw

1 Maine Scottish Black Face from Nina Fuller in Hollis at Lily Brook Farm

And I think 1 more from Sue Pondview Farm in Limington.

I have a feeling there is another floating around in that closet of mine...

These last two farms I had a blissful time helping them out sort and skirt fleeces in exchange for 1-2 fleeces. It was an idea I had to be near sheep, help out in a way that I knew how and get paid in fleece. I hope do do it again this spring but with a growing belly, I'll need to wait and see. 

Anyway, when I get through this winter spinning all that, and it will happen, I will then have a big ol dyeing time this spring. Just as soon as this 4 feet of snow melts. Oh and after these next 3 (!) storms we have coming this week. I always wondered what it would be like to live in a northern Scandanavian country. I think I know now...

Anyway, I cannot wait for both spring and for dyeing. 

I've got all kinds of plans for that wool. 

Logwood

mushrooms

queen ann's lace and goldenrod I froze from last year so I could use it this sring and rose hips!

And there will be much more. 

So about these carrots. 

I had wild success the first time I did this back in Santa Fe on vacation. 

Probably one of my favorite posts because it was such a time of self discovery for me to be in a completely different place and still find a way to do my work. It really inspired me.

In a place like Santa Fe, in September, working with solar methods from raw plant materials, works really well. I got temps up to 110f in the jars over several hours. It was perfect. 

As you'll read about the carrots from that post, 

I only use peels from 2 medium purple carrots I got at the farmers market. 

So when I got home and tried to find purple carrots, there weren't any availble quite yet. 

I waited a few weeks and then when I finally saw them at a local market, I went a little nuts and bought a lot. To be fair, they were very scrawny and I was a little puzzled why they were even put on the shelves. They weren't really the baby size, but more like pencil size carrots. Anyway, I stashed them away planning on using them in the spring for some Easter color:)

Well, about 2 weeks ago I discovered them in my fridge, a little moldy. 

I had been checking on them every few weeks and they did just fine up until that point. 

So I knew it was time to get to work. 

Though I'm not saying that waiting til your food is moldy means its ready to dye. Fresh is better. However, I rarely dye with good healthy foods, as I don't believe in wasting it. However, these carrots were so tiny and stringy- I had planned on getting some, using only the peels and roasting the rest but there was nothing to peel and no "rest". 

I really didn't want to take the time to peel every single one as it was a pain in the butt. I did this.

Then, because in Santa Fe my experiment was solar dyeing with them, creating a long slow heat, and here it was the beginning of Janurary, in Maine. I put them in here and then next to the wood stove. 

In this long tall jar is a skein of kid mohair silk that I get online at elann.com.

Wonderful source for yarns. Have gone there for years. And now I use them for my test yarns in classes and for test dyeing.

Also there are bits of vintage lace. 

No mordants. 

Don't you just love that color?!

It's so different than it was in Santa Fe where the color was so grapey there. 

Because I had a lot of carrots, I split up more into two pots because I had a lot I wanted to dye. 

3 skiens of hand spun Maine double ply Finn. I get Finn roving from a lovely lady, Diane at the Maine Fiber Frolic. Her tent is always off the side and she always has a few Finn sheep in a pen and Shetland lace shawls hanging in her tent. Very small, with lots of natural colored roving, and spun yarns. It's my favorite tent of the whole thing:) 

Anyway, I also had a few other vintage textiles in a pot. Again nothing was mordanted. 

I chose this path because when I did my tests in Santa Fe, I found that the unmordanted samples, especially on wool were almost brighter then the alum ones (??!!) kind of crazy I thought, but I thought I'd go with it. 

It felt so right to place them on our woodstove instead of turning on our oven, which would have been fine. But the woodstove is already there and I knew my pots could handle it, I thought why not? 

I kept a thermometer in there at all times to always keep an eye on the heat. It never got above 180 which was what I wanted. It did take longer then the oven and that was also what I wanted. A long slow heat. 

Here is everything washed and drying also by the woodstove. 

I was very surprised and disapointed at first by the grey tones in the wool when in Santa fe the wool took on a lovely deeper/ brighter purple.... Though to be fair, I didn't so an exact ratio comparison. 

But the kid mohair/ silk skein, looks perfect. 

And the vintage textiles also look perfect. 

I was very happy with those. 

As I'll most likely be using these Finn skeins for knitting something for my baby, I think I'm going to go for a deeper purple and dye them in my umbilicaria later on. 

They aren't shown here, but I continued to dye with the carrot baths another 3 times. I kept throwing in vintage cloth and lace and just letting it sit. No heat to see what would happen. 

I finally let it go and dumped it when I noticed one morning a fine white film on top. It did pretty well though for about a week and 1/2. And all it was was carrot juice:)

The batt below here is dyed with lichens that you can read about here.

If you have any questions about dyeing with purple carrots, or have done some yourself, I'd love to here your story. Leave me a comment:) 

You can also follow me on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and FB at 44Clovers. 

Decoding Red Cabbage Dye

Oh dear. 

Cabbage.

You know I really tried to avoid experimenting with red cabbage. 

I just had a feeling it wasn't going to work. Don't know why. Just a feeling.

But Pinterest got the better of me. 

I love Pinterest.

I am so inspired and love organizing my various boards and day dreaming with my computer over all the loveliness people do. 

Which includes some lovely cabbage dyed fibers. 

I just knew, I KNEW that heat and alum would not do it. 

Now I work a lot from my gut. And the notes I take. 

I did not study this in college. 

Though if I had had the choice, I know I would have. 

nor did I study science and in fact in school I HATED science. 

So much. 

Now it's really costing me because all I have to go on is my gut. 

However, a stong gut I do have. 

I drew my pre-clusions from my blueberry experiment last year. 

With heat and alum I got grey from those juicy Maine native jewels. 

But when I soaked a vintage silk hankie in a cold bath with no alum or other mordant, I got a closer purple. 

Something started to sink in.

It is tricky to know what is simply a stain and what is a pigment and what is a dye.

Golly, aren't they all the same?!

I want to know. 

But in any case I took that rotting head of red cabbage, chopped off the moldy bits, hacked it up, put it in my stock pot that I use for soup- wait, yes, I DID use a pot for dyeing that I will use again for food.

BECAUSE I used only food items in the pot, cabbage and a scarf:) No mordant. Don't worry. 

In went this strange and tightly woven silk scarf I got from Japan on ebay. 

Cold water.

And the scarf was not mordanted with anything. 

No ph mordifiers in the bath. 

After an hour or so. 

I think a few days went by. 

Every few hours I'd turn the scarf in the bath. 

Sometimes pulling it out, wringing out the dye and admiring the color work. 

When I was done dyeing it, I rinsed it and no color ran out. 

With these jars, I filled each up with the cabbage bath from the large pot,

stuck in the same amount of pre soaked samples in each jar. 

In each jar was 

wool

alpaca

kid mohair/ silk

silk

cotton

linen

and a sample each mordanted with 

alum

copper

iron 

and nothing at all. 

So a whole set.

In the top jar that is purple, no ph modifers where added. 

This is the color of the cabbage bath on its own. 

The pink jar has a splash of vinegar.

The teal jar a dash of baking soda. 

Seeing that color change was magic!

However, I second guessed my gut and set them next to the wood stove thinking that maybe the very slow warming would have a positive effect...

Ummm... not so much.

I dumped the liquid from each jar and started again with fresh dye liquid as I had plenty from that stock pot. 

Added the same modifers to the same jars and set them in my mud room 

where they actually froze over night....

That's ok, interesting things still happened. 

This here are all the samples starting with the vinegar batch

nothing batch

baking soda batch.

All laying on the dried silk scarf. 

Which really was the most successful of all the cabbage. 

Every few days or so I check in on that scarf to see if the color is still there. 

And it is. 

I'm not quite sure what to do with it. 

Not thin enough to work into a felt. 

Not warm enough to wear right now. 

And I'm not keen on putting it in my shop as I don't know when or if it will fade. 

For so now, It'll sit pretty.

So what did I learn from cabbage dye? 

Red cabbage dye loves silk with no mordant and maybe a modifer. 

Red cabbage loves linen especially with baking soda. Lovely light but bright blues.

Red cabbage and wool are not friends. Though if you sweeter the deal with a modifer, 

they learn to live togther.