Hi Susan, Anita and the rest of you all,
My husband is a furniture maker, so has supplied me with a variety of wood
sawdust and shavings. [...]
So you might try a cabinet maker shop in your area - most have plenty of spare
sawdust! :)
Nice idea.
Have you tried oak bark as well? It also contains tannin, mordanting
isn't necessary.
Will be interested to hear from others about getting a good brown with natural
materials, particularly walnut hulls.
wrnk, you're right! It's a great thing to have a forum where we can discuss a
topic like the precise tuning of a spinning wheel, with complete understanding
from others (and no fear of being labeled weird)
So now here's my experience with walnut hulls:
Two years ago I collected about 5 fresh fallen walnut hulls, as much as
possible green with very little brown spots, where they got damaged, and
put on a series of tests on mordanted and only washed white wool.
I gave the fresh hulls into a glass teapot, filled to the brim with cold
water, added some washed and some alum mordanted white wool, put it on a
stove and a fresh tealight beneath it. After the tealight burned out, I
took out the wool, put in some new skeins (one washed, one alum
mordanted) into the hot liquid still containing the hulls and another
fresh tealight to the stove.
In this manner I put wool in three times altogether leaving it to simmer
by the heat of one tea light until it burned out.
I received a dark chocolate brown on the washed skein and a slightly
lighter dark brown on the mordanted skein on the first attempt. The wool
of the second "tealight simmer" resembled a dark and a middle tan (again
the lighter colour on the mordanted wool), while the third draw produces
only beige tones, indifferently if the wool has been mordanted or not.
Though the little skeins were often put up into sunlight with some other
plant-dyed skeins do display the range of natural dyes to people, the
colour of this skeins didn't fade.
Some friends of mine tried to dye a big amount of woolcloth with hulls
they collected over a few month, don't know now it they dried them or
put them into the deep freezer, but the result was a light brown-greyish
tone. Maybe they had too much wool to dye with not enough hulls.
Ilona,
enjoying a great warm "Altweibersommer" (means: old women summer,
because all the spidernets now visible may look like old womens fine
hair - but take it as Indian Summer)-day on the balcony while knitting
and reading.
To stop mail temporarily mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
with the message: set nomail To restore send: set mail
