What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Now we get to the final post regarding my experiences at the Golden Gate Fiber Institute's Summer Intensive 2009. I learned so darn much!

I took two classes - Natural Dyeing with Darlene Hayes, and a spinning/weaving class with Judith Mackenzie McCuin. My photos focused on the first class - the color just astounded me - so that's going to be the primary thing I talk about in this post. Not to say learning to weave with my own handspun wasn't great - it was! But that resulted in a really cute silk noil scarf for one of my sisters, and she can't see it til the holidays. So, no photos! It's a surprise! Suffice to say, weaving with your own handspun is fun and not as scary as I thought it might be. Can't stand Cricket Looms, though, the little loom we used for class. Not after weaving on a proper Baby Wolf! But that's another story.

So, on to the dyeing class: I had taken a dyeing class just a month before the week at Point Bonita, and thought I knew about what I'd see. Nope. The colors I'd seen to date from natural dyes were subtle, subdued, and while quite lovely, not what I'd have called super eye catching. The colors we ended up with in this week of class, tho', wow! Fantabulous!

We started with some very simple dyes and techniques, and throughout we mostly used the raw materials for dyes - no extracts for us. Things like onion skins...

Black walnut hulls...

And of course, bugs...
Specifically, cochineal bugs. You're not going to find a better red anywhere than those little bugs. For some of those basic colors and dyes, we then experimented with afterbaths - pots of ammonia or iron to dunk the yarn in as it comes out of its dye bath - to see what colors things would turn. The cochineal in particular went a bright berry color after a dip in ammonia, and an awesome wine red with the iron. Pretty nifty stuff!


We didn't stick to just "tried and true" natural dyes. For fun, we got an experimental dyepot going with mistletoe.
That last one ended up kind of drab, but when dipped in an indigo bath a few days later I think it turned in to one of my favorite colors for the week. Anyone have some mistletoe they might send my way??? :-)

After the dye pots, we went in to trying some contact dyeing. The premise there is that you take some mordanted yarn (or silk hankies, or scarves, really, whatever you like), you sprinkle your dyestuff all over it, you wrap it up in plastic wrap, and let it sit for a few days. If you have some sunlight to warm things up, that helps. I did two skeins of yarn, one that used osage orange, dill, and eucalyptus leaves, resulting in a varied yellow yarn I'm quite fond of, and another that used logwood, iron, cochineal, and black walnut which I didn't like at first but have since changed my mind.

We eventually go to Indigo day, and as one of the students said "Nothing can't be improved by a dip in indigo!" Indigo vats are a heck of a thing, I have to say. First, you put enough lye and oxygen removing stuff (thiox, aka Spectralite) as well as your indigo so that the resulting dyebath is a rather toxic looking green. Yuck. Then, with gloves on, you slowly dip your yarn or other material in to the vat. Count slowly to 30. Pull slowly out, avoiding bubbles or drips that would add oxygen back in the vat. As you pull it out and oxygen hits the fiber, voila! You watch it turn that famous blue right before your eyes. It's magic. It's what they should have shown in my chemistry class in high school to really get me engaged.

After a few dips in indigo, with 15-30 minute "rests" so the indigo can react with the oxygen before adding more, you've got a rather amazing array of colors, based on the under-color of the first dyeing.

Saturday, we were given free reign to dye what we wanted with the dye stuffs on hand. It was the BEST.

There was so much more, including lichen dyeing (one my absolute favorites), more about after-baths, pointers to additional readings, and so on. On Sunday, I collected all of it together and created a Wall O' Color. This is now my screen background because it makes me So Darn Happy!

And that's what I learned on my summer vacation! Morgaine released the dates for next year (second week of August) and I've already blocked off my calendar. I look forward to seeing all my new friends there and learning who knows what. It'll be worth it, whatever it is.