Firstly, can I just start by saying that
there are so many puns that you can make about madder. It’s madderness!
So summer is rolling along at an alarming
pace. Can you believe it’s August already? I mean, where has the time gone?
Well, a relatively large portion of my
time over the last few weeks has been taken up with a combination of knitting,
spinning and dyeing (because nothing says suitable activity during an English
heatwave like the production of knitwear, am I right?). There are quite a few
different things that I’ve been working on/experimenting with, some of which
are complete, some I’m still working on and probably all are deserving of their
own blog post so over the next little while I will try to make that happen but
for now let’s talk about madder!
For my first jaunt into the realm of natural dyeing I decided to try my luck with madder powder. My first observation about the natural dye process was that it’s nothing if not long winded! I thought knitting was a big enough test of patience but I think with all the soaking, mordanting, cooling time etc. this might just take the cake. I’m learning that it’s just one of those things I’m going to have to embrace about the process. After all, in such a busy world in can be nice to relax into a slower pace for a change and it allows time to multi-task and catch up on reading while you're waiting.
The packet I had only contained 25g of powder
and I used about 100g of white fleece so the result was definitely more orange
than red but still pretty vibrant. I also experimented by dyeing some ‘Humbug’
Blue Faced Leister in the left over dye bath, which I stupidly didn’t take a
picture of. It stayed predominantly brown but with an orangey tint.
I didn’t leave it long before I started
spinning it up. I decided it was time to get a bit more experimental with
spinning different colours together. I used a mixture of both of the fleeces
that I’d dyed with madder and added dashes of some natural dark brown fleece I
had lying around, as well as the bright blue we’d dyed before (see previous post). The blue and the peachiness of the madder just looked really good together and made it a bit
fun.
Finally, I plied it with a camel coloured machine yarn and voila!
I’m pretty chuffed with this yarn to tell
you the truth. I have a little over 200g of it and it’s going to become a cowl
for myself. Happy days!
Emma, I hope you had a fantastic cycling
trip!
Over and out!
Anna x
p.s – stay tuned to see what happened when
I tried dyeing with avocado stones and blackberries!
We decided to keep things simple by experimenting with acid dyes. If you are a Londoner and you haven't already, you should really get yourself along to the 
Making the most of a brief spurt of good weather we were able to dry our fleeces out in our sunny (if somewhat unkempt) garden.
Neither of us are really sure what happened here. For some reason the colour took to some parts more than others and ended up with an almost tie dye effect. We rather like it!
Here's some of our fleece after carding. Candy floss anyone?