Smith College Botanic Garden Show!

The show is up at Smith and it is gorgeous! Actually, the show opened way back in September. It will be up until May, so you still have time to go see it. Here’s the sign that greets you as you walk in. It makes me feel famous!

The whole concept of the exhibit was the vision of Sarah Loomis, Manager of Education at the Botanic Garden. I am so grateful to have been a part of creating it. It’s incredibly satisfying to stand in the gallery and see how it all came together.

The first sequence of panels that you see as you enter the gallery space is the primary color sequence of blue, red, and yellow. The blues are from woad, the reds are from madder, and the yellows are from marigolds.

For each color I dyed three different fibers: linen, silk, and wool. In the photo above, the linen is on the left, silk is in the middle, and wool is on the right. Each panel is 9 feet long (or tall) and 16 inches wide. The wool gauze was very sheer, so those panels are doubled. I really love the color saturation of the two layers of cloth.

Depending on the lighting and the angle, the colors look different. Looking at it from the other direction (below) the wool is on the left, silk in the middle, and linen on the right.

It’s really fun to see how people are interacting with the cloth and the space. A sign at the entrance invites visitors to touch the cloth. And people do!

The long panels create a delightfully immersive experience.

There is space to move between the panels so you can be surrounded by color.

The interpretive panels are beautiful and informative, explaining further about the historical uses of each plant:

The interactive components are engaging and fun. My favorite are the clear boxes full of dried dye plant materials that you can open up and smell. Stinky weld, sea-weedy woad, fruity madder, mmm! You can see the boxes on the stools in the photo above.

There’s also an interactive screen with a slideshow about the steps in dyeing with woad. It’s a thrill to see that people take the time to look through it!

On the other end of the gallery are the orange and green panels. Honestly, they are more pink and peach than orange, but I still think they look lovely. The “orange” shades are from weld and madder together in the same dyebath. The greens are from woad overdyed with weld.

Again, depending on the angle and the lighting, the colors look different.

Not only does each fiber take up the dye differently, they each have a different texture, too. It’s just so rich and luscious!

March in the Dye Plant Garden

On March 15th I did a little spring cleaning in my school’s dye plant garden at Bramble Hill Farm. Here is the “before” picture:

That morning I pulled up the dead marigolds (bed furthest to right) and orange cosmos (bed furthest to the left).

The woad was up, but something had been nibbling it. I suspect rabbits, but I can’t be sure.

I checked back on things on March 27th. I noticed that one of the woad beds was faring a little better than the other (longer leaves) but was still suffering from some chomping:

Here was the bedraggled stand of amsonia on March 27th:

I didn’t get back over there until March 30th. I cut down the amsonia, which I grow because it is a bast fiber plant. Some years I cut it down earlier in the fall or winter, but this fall I obviously didn’t get around to it. Yay, the Amsonia fit in the back of the car. Barely!

I also cut down the dead bronze fennel, which was not worth saving at that point. Once I cut away the dead stalks and cleared away the fallen leaves, I was excited to see that there was already new growth!

If you bought some of the bronze fennel plants at my plant sale last summer at Sheep and Shawl, check to see if they’re up!

One of the things I love about gardening and dyeing with plants is the way that it requires me to look closely and be attentive. Close up, you can clearly see the new growth. It is eye-poppingly bright and practically shouting its presence. You can also see the architectural ruins of the old stalks, some darker blotches on the fresh fronds, which I think must be frost damage, and so many other intriguing details. At every stage of its growth, the fronds of the bronze fennel are just so soft and feathery.

However, from the view point five feet off the ground, there’s nothing that would catch the eye or demand that you stoop to look more closely:

On that last remaining stalk in the bronze fennel bed, I found an egg case. I think it’s another praying mantis egg case (ootheca!) so I didn’t cut it. Here’s the close up:

Welcome, spring!

Farm Aid Exhaust Baths

I have finally exhausted all the dye baths from Farm Aid! Here are some photos of the process, plus some of the ratios and measurements for each plant material. I didn’t keep close track of the times and temperatures during the demo itself because it was so busy. Each bath with the plant material heated for at least an hour, and some of them heated for longer.

As I mentioned in the first post, I used madder root, weld, orange cosmos, and marigolds. All the yarns at the demo were 4 ounces of 4-ply wool. They were pre-mordanted with aluminum sulfate at 1 tablespoon per 4 oz. fiber, and cream of tartar at 1 teaspoon per 4 oz. fiber. As I got further along with the exhaust process, I switched to alpaca yarns, pre-mordanted at the same ratios. All the exhaust baths were heated to about 140-160 degrees, kept at that temperature for an hour, then cooled overnight. Continue reading “Farm Aid Exhaust Baths” →

Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft 2018

On Memorial Day Weekend I did a dyeing demonstration at Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair in Cummington, MA. I’ve done demos there before, but this year was special. I was dyeing hand-spun yarns from a variety of sheep breeds, spun by Lisa Bertoldi of Weft Handwoven Linens, and supported by a grant from the Northeast Handspinners Association. (12/31/2023 Edited: Lisa’s website is no longer active, but you can read her bio on the Working Weavers Studio Trail website. Here’s a link to her old site, including some nice images of her dishtowels.)

Here was the table with examples of my own naturally dyed handspun yarns, some of my favorite books, fliers for the Northeast Handspinners Association, and a 6-pack of marigolds:

Continue reading “Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft 2018” →

Inside-Outside Part Two

In this post I will describe more details about the dyebaths we made at the Inside-Outside Conference in Keene on October 21st. We ran four dyebaths with madder root, marigolds, weld, and orange cosmos.  As usual when I am running or leading an event, I didn’t get any photos. Hopefully the notes provided here will be useful even if they are lacking in visual information.

First of all, the fiber we were dyeing was woolen yarn. We dyed four skeins, each of which was 4 oz. I had pre-mordanted the skeins many weeks earlier with aluminum sulfate at a rate of 2 Tbsp. per 8 oz. (2 skeins could fit in a pot). The skeins had dried in the meanwhile, and had been soaked in water on the day of the workshop to “wet them out”, i.e. make sure they were thoroughly wet before dyeing. Continue reading “Inside-Outside Part Two” →

Inside-Outside

On October 21st, 2017 I presented a workshop on growing and using dye plants with kids at the Inside-Outside Conference in Keene, NH. The conference was a collaboration of several local organizations, including Antioch University New England, the Monadnock Region Placed-Based Education Committee, the Harris Center for Conservation Education, the Caterpillar Lab, Symonds Elementary School (where the conference was held), and the Keene School District. The theme was “Promising Practices in Nature- and Place-Based Elementary Education.” You can view the brochure by clicking this link Inside Outside 091817.

The audience was K-6 educators from a variety of educational settings. I don’t mention this very often on this blog, but I actually am a teacher! I co-teach in a combined first and second grade at the Common School in Amherst, MA, where I’ve been working since 2004. Most of the time, I am in the classroom doing all the usual academic things: reading, writing, word study, math, science, social studies, arts and crafts. I do fiber and dye projects with kids when I can, and the rest of the time I squeeze it in on weekends and vacations. Continue reading “Inside-Outside” →

First Woad Vat of 2014

Due to one thing and another, I am not growing a lot of woad this year. I’m a little bit sad about it, but there it is. Nonetheless, I ran my first woad vat of the summer on Friday August 8th and had some interesting results. In the morning I picked 3 and a half pounds of leaves, which I did not expect to make a very strong vat.

Some blue color appeared in the stems as I ripped up the leaves, which was a good sign.

blue woad stems

Continue reading “First Woad Vat of 2014” →

Marigolds at the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair

I discovered something interesting about marigolds at Mass. Sheep and Wool. In a nutshell, an acidic dyebath yielded olive green whereas an alkaline dyebath yielded yellow.

Here’s how I found out. I made the marigold dyebath during the demonstration on Saturday May 24th. Here’s a photo of the marigolds in the dyebath:

marigolds in dyebath

Continue reading “Marigolds at the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair” →