Medieval plant dyes (and modern)

As long as you have red, yellow and blue you can mix and match to make almost any colour. Some of these dye plants are more resistant to fading in sunlight or getting washed out of the fibre than others.

Any plant name that is in bold is a perennial (or biennial).

Red - 

Medieval European- Madder (Rubia tinctoria), Lady's Bedstraw/Cleavers (Galium verum)

Other- Amaranth (Hopi red dye), Dyer's Alkanet, Henna (Lawsonia inermis) (shrub), Joe Pye Weed, Dyer's Woodruff (Asperula tinctoria), Brazilwood (tree)

Orange - 

Medieval European- any yellow + Madder, or just Madder itself

Other- Dyer's Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), Orange Cosmos, Black Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldstrum') (edges into dull yellow)

Dye, you fool!

Madder and dyer's chamomile. Dyer's chamomile smells just like chamomile tea, so my daughter didn't hate this as much as weld. Thank goodness she wasn't around for the woad.

I always used to get orange out of madder, but I've got the hang of it now. This is the madder with dyer's chamomile. The picture doesn't do the colour any justice. It's a quite nice tangerine.

My Love/Hate Affair with Weaving

This picture (above) is my latest project. I'm trading handwoven fabric for seamstress-ing. I am not very good at sewing, and my daughter will only come to medieval events with me if a) there is archery, and b) she can wear an Italian Ren dress. Archery is easy. We have the supplies and lots of events have the opportunity. However. I cannot sew. Working flat and trying to imagine 3D is pretty much impossible for my brain. If I had a dress dummy I could drape it, but alas. So, enough 18" wide twill to make a Norse apron dress here we go!

I love the repetitive action of weaving. It's very meditative. I find it difficult to weave in the summer, but in the winter I love it. I'm also a total dork, and I like to put on the Lord of the Rings movies (not the Hobbit- those movies were designed to sell video games and toys, especially the first one), and sit there and pretend I'm an elf. I have to say that the new tv series which has been announced is like Schrodinger's Catastrophe... Anyways.

Linden trees are extra-ordinarily useful

This tree is also commonly called basswood and lime wood (possible corruption of the Old English and Proto-Indo-European word lind (flexible). It is not related to citrus trees). The N. American version (Tilia americana) can be found from Mexico to Alaska, and there are two genus in Europe (little leaf- Tilia cordata, and large leaf- Tilia platyphyllos), which can be found in southern Norway and Sweden, down into Italy and as far east as the Black Sea. The little leaf genus is far more widespread, and can be found up into Russia and North-eastern Turkey as well as Spain.

More dyeing with weld

It looks like a kid scribbling a sun according to my daughter.

I think that I finally got this one down. Weld is so very easy to work with. It brings on a bright colour even with the high mineral content of the water from my tap. It's given me the confidence to try some of the other, more difficult colours...

And a very apropos colour for the spring solstice that just passed.

Onwards and upwards.

Natural dyes

I've been experimenting with natural dyes this week. I bought a 100% lambswool twill blanket at a thrift store for $6 and made it into a Skjolenham hood and an Anglo-Saxon jacket. Unfortunately, it was beige. I dislike beige. Intensely. So, I thought that I could try re-dyeing it.

That was this week's experiment.

I tried the hood first because it was smaller, and I would be less unhappy if it failed horribly. I used powdered weld extract, and it came out a gorgeous dark spring green. Considering I used weld to colour and alum as a mordant it should have come out yellow. I suspect that the original mordant on the blanket was copper (which turns weld green).

Next was the jacket, and it wasn't as much of a success. I suspect that the larger volume of cloth in my kettle (ie. canning pot) made the movement of both mordant and dye a bit more constricted. As well, I was using ground up madder root, and I possibly didn't let it 'extract itself' long enough before putting in the cloth on the first attempt. So, it came out a bit motley. I washed it thoroughly in the washing machine and tried again. It came out a much more uniform colour. It may have gotten a bit too warm as it has an orange-ish tinge to it, also, the probably use of copper as the first dye mordant would have done that as well. I did find my dye thermometer afterwards, though, which is good. I won't have to guess at any future temperatures for dyeing.

The joys of moving.

With this warm weather my saffron popped up. I hope they can weather this weather and last until fall... *sigh* I've nick-named that grey squirrel that lives in my backyard 'Stew'... Because that's what I'm going to make him into eventually when I snap because he's eating my saffron bulbs and other things that he likes... The chicken wire is slowing him down a bit, thankfully.

Community garden plot

We're moving back to the city we think of as home in about six weeks. It's exciting, and a bit stressful. And, as we're going to have to rent for at least a year while we build up a down-payment for a house... I'm not going to have much in the way of a garden for that time. This irks me. But, at least it will be mine. All mine, muahahahahahahahahaha*cough* Ahem.

I did manage to luck into a 10x10 plot in a community garden. It's not terribly near our new house, but it is very close to a friend's place, so I'm hoping to mix gardening and tea. It has been difficult trying to contact the community gardens, as none of them have contacted me back, except the one where I got a garden plot. I'm assuming this is because they have long waiting lists and not much volunteer time.

A good friend is sending me some flax seeds. She headed me off at the pass when I bought the wrong kind... There are more than one kind of flax, apparently. One is annual, the other is perennial. The perennial is a hardy garden plant and a good native wildflower. There are two varieties of annual- one which is better for seed and one which is better for fibre. Thankfully, she's sending me the fibre variety, and I'm sharing the perennial with her for her garden. The rest of the perennial kind I'll be spreading on a field this weekend. When the proper fibre kind gets here I'll be spreading it over half my community garden plot. You have to harvest the flax for fibre just after it finishes flowering, but before it sets seed, so I'll leave a patch on one side to grow some seed for next year. Maybe a bit to eat, too, just for the novelty. The flax plants get a bit tough by then, but it might make a nice bit of cordage.

I got permission for this in advance from the garden co-ordinator so I didn't get into any trouble. It was a strange request, but there you go. I'm used to whimsical looks from people.

Then comes the retting (rotting) process. I hear it's kind of smelly...