Excellent dye

[vaneramos]

Last weekend djjo and I tried two more dyes from natural materials obtained locally. One of these experiments produced our most exciting results so far.

First we used black locust pods, gathered on Queen Street Hill in Guelph, with tin mordant. This produced a light tan colour, nice but unremarkable.

Next we used mountain ash leaves cut from a small tree that leans over the cottage (I spent a little while on the roof with pruning shears). Nancy J. McGuffin's Dye Plants of Ontario promised "a rich golden copper" from copper mordant and an ammonia rinse, and that's what we obtained. After the first bath there was still plenty of colour in the water, so we added more mordant and dyed a second batch of fibre. Surprisingly, this produced just as strong colours.

The results with silk and silk/wool were especially exciting. Unfortunately the photos don't do them justice.

Shown first are three skeins of Fabel superwash (nylon/wool), for comparison: first the black locust (top), then the mountain ash first bath, and mountain ash second bath. The second photo shows everything we dyed, but I'm too lazy to go into a thorough description.

I'm so excited about the mountain ash that I would like to use it to dye enough yarn to make a sweater someday.