Boiled Grass and Cat Piss

John has developed a deep interest in 'Natural Dyeing', although there really isn't all that much 'natural' about it, in many ways. :-) I remember, with amusement how my friend Ted (Knitter guyTed) sniffed when I told him. His only comment a trenchant : "Oh, the boiled grass and cat piss method."

However, as he does, John has entered into it very deeply and has been experimenting and dyeing with all sorts of mordants and plant material over the past weeks, as well as devouring book after book on the subject. Being a horticulturist by profession, I guess he has a leg-up on all this stuff, and also has access to a lot of plants that are being pruned etc. at his nursery. I must say that I am amazed with some of what he has achieved, although we do joke about our 'house brown' as the identifying hue of much of his work.

On Saturday we went out gathering various plant stuffs that John wanted to experiment with. He had spotted in the area a stand of wild helianthus (a 'Sunflower' family) that he wanted to try. So we went harvesting. It was a beautiful day for it, and enjoyable, baring a 'soaker' achieved while jumping the creek. We got some of the sunflowers, quite a lot actually. (We also got permission from the owner of the land, always a wise - and polite -- thing to do.)

And there were also some abandoned trees of various sorts, including a couple of ornamental crab apple and some pear trees. So we picked some of the little apples. That was a picky job, they were smaller than cherries. John had come across in one of his books a description of the lovely rosy red pinks you can get from them. (Hah!!)

However, we pushed on. And picked. And had a nice chat with various people who wandered along, trying to figure out what these two madmen were up to. And the weather was good. (Did I mention that?)

John had read that you could get some colours from pear tree leaves, and since there were some of them around, we gathered them as well. There was also some nice fruit just hanging unused and going to waste, so I gathered some of that to take home as well.

After getting what we wanted, we piled back into the truck. John had remembered seeing, in the ditches around our place, some wild asperagus. So we gathered some armsful of the ferns, and since they were the 'female' plants, they had the lovely red berries attached as well. He also got a bunch of willow boughs. And then, at another spot, scrambling precariously up the side of the embankment, we gathered a couple of buckets of goldenrod flowers. We had to look for a bit to find some good ones since they are past their peak here, but we managed, eventually. Then we headed home, hands sticky, with our stuff.

He started the preparation of the liquor for dyeing. Here are a couple of picturesof two of them in the process. The helianthus being made

ready for the pot, and the goldenrod in its bath simmering away.

Of course, all the yarn requires mordanting in order to take the colour. John had been preparing if for days ahead. For this batch he decided to use Alum and he also wanted to experiment with Tin as a mordant, so he prepared various yarns using each. He got some really good colours with some of the stuff, and others were pretty insipid. But he is a note taker, much better than I, so he will move on from here, having learned a lot, and trying other stuff. No cat piss yet, though. :-)

Finally, here is the result of our work on the drying rack, outside. Not bad. We didn't use all the mordanted yarn and plant material we have. That will be for another day. I also find it frustrating to get a true photograph of the colours. Some of them are more vibrant than they appear here. But it gives you an idea. I am pretty pleased with it all, and there was some good learning done each time we do this. I think John is so clever!!