Dyeing with Daffodils

It made no sense at all. I had begged off all other commitments and was hunkered down to clean house, correct my short story for tonight's writing group meeting at my house (hence the urgency behind housework), so naturally along with vacuuming and mopping and picking up odd pieces I decided to dye some wool with daffodils.

OK it makes sense if you know about this other, formerly secret side of me. I play with wool and string and sticks and things. I met a friend in the bank who is a spinner-dyer and she said dye wool with daffodils, alum, and a teensy bit of dishwasher liquid in a jar in the sun. Solar dyeing. How cool is that.

I had daffodils nearing the end of their vase life, I had wool and when I remembered that I had alum--it was all systems go.

The hardest part was sunshine--peek a boo sun today.

OK so I remember what I did and you can try your own variation if you like.

I mordanted the wool first

a scant 100 gms wool (Merino off cuts)

a spring of mulberry silk--mostly to see the comparative uptake of silk vs wool

about 7-8 gms alum

about 7-8 gms cream of tartar---my scale was not reliable at the level I needed, so this was really guesswork

dissolved in metal pan in boiling water, about 6 cups

topped up with cool tap water

fibres in, shoogled a bit with a wooden spoon and left to come gradually to almost boil for an hour.

Left to cool long enough to vacuum the house, then rinsed in hand-warm water

Meanwhile 20 daffodil heads were soaking in very hot (out of the tap water) in a jar. I poured this into a plastic bowl inside a glass bowl, added enough water from the kettle to warm up the water-daff mix to about the same temp as the wool/silk and plunked it into the mix--I left the flowers there.

And covered with a large pan lid, set on top of some aluminum foil as a reflector to augment what rays of sun we had today.

I looked at it a couple times and shuggled it. The wool has taken up a soft lovely yellow; the silk looks virtually untouched. I'll take them out of the bath tomorrow and see what they look like.

I don't know why text went blue, but it seems a nice touch for a post on dyeing, so I'll take it as a gift--not a problem--and leave it.

Lovely yellow, slightly uneven dyeing --not unexpected. Wool may have had a bit of grease in it left over from process. Silk took less dye overall and took longer to take it in but it also is a lovely soft yellow. If I do this again, I'll do it with yarn rather than raw fibre and use my fine merino.

OK now I really have to concentrate completely on work at hand.