{"id":2353,"date":"2013-10-15T22:21:07","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T22:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/?p=2353"},"modified":"2013-10-15T22:27:26","modified_gmt":"2013-10-15T22:27:26","slug":"alchemy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/?p=2353","title":{"rendered":"Alchemy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s that time of year again\u2026..time to head south on Pandora<\/em>.\u00a0 But before I go back to living onboard there is SO<\/em> much I want to do on land!<\/p>\n

My small guild always has a natural dyeing workshop in October, and I\u2019ve been looking forward to this all summer!\u00a0 Bob and I made our plans to head south based on the date of this dyeing workshop.\u00a0 My 4 lbs. of goldenrod was collected for this workshop, and I also planned to reconstitute my indigo vat.<\/p>\n

Everything about natural dyeing seems like magic and alchemy\u2026. The recipes are as old as civilization and some of the processes seem downright absurd!\u00a0 Who figured out these strange concoctions and procedures??<\/p>\n

I mordanted two 100 gram skeins of my handspun white alpaca with alum and cream of tartar.\u00a0 I had two small hanks of fine linen (80\/2) which will be for sampling bobbin lace designs (one for me and one for a friend), and I had a 100 gram skein of raw silk in the lovely natural color with black flecks.\u00a0 I have not mordanted linen before, so that was my first challenge.\u00a0 It requires some tannin along with alum.\u00a0 Sure would have been great if I\u2019d realized that in time to order tannic acid online.\u00a0 Barring that I had to find something natural growing nearby or lying about.\u00a0 My only option, since I didn\u2019t find any oak galls on my trees, was to cut some sumac.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m ready to tell that story\u2026. suffice it to say that henceforth, I will only cut sumac that is in flower so I can see that large red\/brown flower stalk of the safe sumac. … \u2018nuff said\u2026.<\/p>\n

The dyeing workshop was fantastic!\u00a0 It was held in Bozrah, Connecticut, a town I\u2019d never even heard of before this event.\u00a0 The drive there was stunning for an early October morning.\u00a0 I drove along my side of the river for a bit, crossed the historic Haddam Bridge, and the drove along the east side of the river before turning northeastward toward Bozrah.\u00a0 It was a beautiful morning with mist on the river burning off as the sun rose higher, and the trees almost at their most brilliant autumn color.<\/p>\n

Our workshop was in the garden of a lovely rambling farmhouse with numerous outbuildings.\u00a0 The gardens wound their way through the property giving privacy to each garden \u2018room.\u2019\u00a0 The tables for the dye pots were set up on a slate terrace near the kitchen door.\u00a0 The hostess uses one of the prettiest outbuildings for her weaving studio, and we all sighed and wished we could weave in such a bucolic setting!<\/p>\n

Our dyes of the day were marigold, jewelweed, black walnut, onion skin, goldenrod, golden marguerite, indigo, and an orchil lichen.\u00a0 Quite a nice selection!\u00a0 I dropped one skein of alpaca into the onion skin bath and put the other one in my goldenrod.\u00a0 When they were finished I had a wonderful combination of deep pumpkin from the onion and a beautiful gold from the goldenrod.\u00a0 I wanted to get a green by dipping my goldenrod skein in indigo.<\/p>\n

My indigo did not reconstitute, even with the addition of both thiourea dioxide and more dyestock.\u00a0 It got the slightest bronze bloom but never turned yellow green.\u00a0 It stayed blue.\u00a0 When we dipped a trial piece in it the blue rinsed out completely.\u00a0 Ugh.\u00a0 One of the other women happened to bring a little indigo \u2018kit\u2019 and we mixed that up in an extra dyepot.\u00a0 So I did get to dip my goldenrod-dyed alpaca to make a mysterious, very interesting green.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say that it coordinates as well as I\u2019d hoped with my pumpkin colored onion dyed skein, but I love both colors!<\/p>\n

The true excitement of the day for me was that lichen dye pot.\u00a0 The woman who brought it has this particular lichen growing on rocks on her wooded property in Connecticut.\u00a0 Lucky woman!\u00a0 She is very careful not to take much of it, and the little she takes has lasted her for years.\u00a0 I could not believe what a deep purple we got when we put in our various skeins of yarn.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0The lichen she uses is the one pictured at left on the cover of Casselman\u2019s book.\u00a0 It can be light green in wet weather or grey in dry weather, but the underside of the lichen is always a very dark almost-black.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps the lichen dyeing seemed the most like alchemy to me.\u00a0 Sharon said that the fibers dyed with lichen need to stay wet for 24 hours and then dry in natural sunlight!\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t that sound magical?\u00a0 Well, I certainly wasn\u2019t going to tempt fate, so I brought my three lichen-dyed skeins with me down to the Chesapeake so they can get their sunlight under the dodger on Pandora. It\u2019s been quite cloudy in the Chesapeake so I hope that won\u2019t affect my color.<\/p>\n

So\u2026 after my day of dyeing I returned home to throw some things in a bag in order to leave for Annapolis early the next morning.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been on board for a few days now, and we are heading south to Beaufort, North Carolina.\u00a0 I will get off the boat there and Bob\u2019s crew will drive my car to me so they can get onboard and I can drive home!<\/p>\n

Annapolis is such a pretty city!…although I am reluctantly missing the beautiful fall colors of New England. \u00a0It was the last day of the boat show as we left the harbor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We sailed to Solomon\u2019s Island yesterday and on to a little creek just south of the Potomac River today.\u00a0 We should be in Hampton, Virginia, by the weekend in order to participate in a big cruisers\u2019 festival over the weekend.\u00a0 We are already seeing many friends from our trip south last year.\u00a0 It is such a small, small world\u2026.<\/p>\n

This is the Thomas Point lighthouse that we passed on our way to Solomon’s Island.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s that time of year again\u2026..time to head south on Pandora.\u00a0 But before I go back to living onboard there is SO much I want to do on land! My small guild always has a natural dyeing workshop in October, and I\u2019ve been looking forward to this all summer!\u00a0 Bob and I made our plans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dyeing","category-sailing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2353"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2361,"href":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions\/2361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}