I have been getting ready to head off to Stitches West at the end of this week and wondering why my excitement level isn’t any higher. My bestest Fiber Trash Girls have been begging me to join them for the party, for the past several years. This is my group of friends who knit and spin together (sometimes frequently!) here in the northern Sierra foothill, as well as join me for an annual rustic retreat every summer at my high country cabin (where I raised my children and hiked through the snow every winter day for 13 years). They have been my staunchest supporters as I ventured into the world of being a CSA farmer and natural dye purveyor. So, of course I want to get a chance to hang loose with them!

They keep touting the Marketplace, and I am looking forward to seeing in person the work of some of my favorite designers (Romi, Stephen West, etc., etc.) and being inspired by the awesome creativity out there in the big, wide world. However, the truth is that this natural dye work I have been actively building up the past few years has transformed me considerably, and I am really most interested in seeing what other natural dye products are out there and how people are using them. I have discovered through some soul-searching as I contemplated whether I would go to Stitches or not that I am not so interested in commercially-dyed yarns any more, and am happiest with the three items pictured below, all made with naturally dyed yarns in the past year.

My favorite pieces in my wardrobe right now are these three pieces, all made by me and naturally dyed with plants from my fibershed. The two hats are from local yarns, the stripey one is my own handspun from Rambouillet from the Harvey Ranch in the beautiful Sierra Valley.

I am pretty sure that each of these wardrobe pieces appeared in earlier posts… the gold and blue hat is the Zelda Cloche, featured in my post about aspen leaves. The handspun one features several different colors, all from plants, and is loosely based on a slouchy hat pattern featured in Harvesting Color, by Rebecca Burgess. I added wooden buttons, from a northern California tree (according the the 40-year old card they were on, from a friend’s elderly mother’s stash), and the pieces of pokeberry-dyed felted wool under the buttons. I do have to confess that the pokeberry on this fabric (a second bath, after dyeing yarn) did not remain very colorfast, but it does still add a decorative element). The shawlette is called And So Are You, and is Rocky Mt. grey wool that I overdyed with lodgepole pine bark.

Most of the clothing I wear day-to-day is recycled, from consignment shops, friends and family and general thrifting… I also needed to purchase some work-world items this winter for the full-time job in child abuse prevention services that I took up about six months ago. I am finding it difficult to obtain all the clothing I want/need at prices I can afford, within my fibershed, and therefore am even more inspired to search out local supplies and make them myself. This is the cardigan I will be finishing in time to wear for spring.

I also have a lot of wool roving (local, from Mary Vega’s farm) to spin up and dye, and a large lot of merino fleeces (also Mary’s) being processed into sport weight yarn at Yolo Wool Mill for the final shipment of the 2012-13 CSA season and the upcoming 2013-14 season. There is a lot of potential in those local wools, including my plan to make this bag for myself. Therefore, this trip will include a bit of shopping, but mostly only if I can find small suppliers of natural or naturally-dyed yarns. My heart soars going out into the garden or the woods and gathering plants that I can turn into color to wear, and the commercial yarns just don’t give me the same feeling. I AM looking forward to seeing my Verb acquaintances made while building the indigo composting floor last year and seeing what they have brought to the market.

My dyework is mostly done on this 1940s-vintage Wedgewood stove. I feel very fortunate to have this workhorse of a propane stove, capable of a low simmer, as well as that big iron cauldron.

Just-planted Japanese Indigo

Now, the Autumnal Equinox is here and the days are dramatically shorter. The first shipment went out, and a second is in preparation for early October. It is the harvest, the gathering-in time, and so my two CSA helpers, Linda and Stephanie, came over today to both process dried comfrey roots for packaging, and learn the basics of dye work.

Linda and Stephanie clean and break apart comfrey roots to package for shipping.

We mordanted some skeins in alum, and cut French broom, growing across the road from my farm… an invasive in California getting put to good use. The broom went into the iron pot to simmer for a lovely medium-olive green – OD to some, while we added black hollyhock flowers to the alum pot. The hollyhock recipe we used came from Harvesting Color, Rebecca Burgess’ book, which can be purchased from The Fibershed Project website, and is a slow, low simmer for a few hours, so we set up another pot with weld, a gift from a friend. I hadn’t planted weld this year, but we were so pleased with the cool, ‘spring’ yellow that we obtained, I decided to put it on the list for next season. There are so many plants that provide yellow dyes, and I already am planning to harvest and dye with aspen again this year, but each have different qualities of color.. the beauty of natural dyes!

Evening arrived with wools drying on the rack, and the hollyhock bath cooling and steeping overnight. Here’s a few photos of the hollyhock yarn… a surprise from what we expected. It is a lovely lavender!

Look at that beautiful color!

Our almost-finished yarns, dyed a beautiful lavender from black hollyhocks.

Aspen trees are one of the highlights of fall in my part of the world, and I was overjoyed to find that the leaves produce a true, brilliant gold dye.

Aspen grove at Sierra crest

Last week, I promised that the next CSA sign-up would result in adding an additional contest prize, a 200-yard skein of Nature’s Cauldron Farm yarn dyed in Aspen….. this weekend, I was out playing and came home to discover a new sign-up through the Fibershed Marketplace, so I am adding another prize to the contest!

Here’s a hat I knitted up in December, using my hand-dyed indigo and aspen yarns. For those who want to know details, the pattern is the Zelda Cloche, from Knitscene Winter 2011, and the button is from a discarded Jacob sheep horn, made at Meridian Jacobs and sold on the Fibershed Marketplace.

Remember, the contest runs until Midnight, PDT, on April 30th. You get an entry for commenting here, and more entries for sharing on Facebook or your blog (just be sure and let me know where you shared!). Good luck, and thanks to all for your encouragement as I head into my second season as the first natural dye plant CSA in the US:)

I had announced earlier this week that I would add another prize to the contest if my Facebook business page got up to 200 likes… and it did overnight! Whoo, hoo!! Thanks, everyone, for boosting my spirits and spreading the word about natural dyeing.

I am adding two undyed skeins of Romney wool from Mary Vega’s flock in Newcastle, California… she donated most of her wool clip to my fledgling CSA last season, and I had the wool cleaned and processed into 2-ply sport weight yarn by Yolo Wool Mills. It is in the bag shown on the right below, while local Shetland is in the bag on the left. The next CSA subscription that arrives before the contest ends April 30th at midnight Pacific Daylight Time will trigger another prize, some of this Romney dyed with the magical aspen leaves of the Sierras, so spread the work

Adding two skeins of the wool yarn in bag on right to the contest!

I am happy to say that the 2012 CSA season is already half filled! Thanks to the Fibershed Project, for letting me join in the fun. I am listed on their marketplace this year (as well as with Local Harvest), and Dustin is handling all the processing for me. My small percentage contributed is helping further the goal of having local clothing, right here in Northern California… a win-win situation. If you haven’t seen their site, take a look… they just finished a lovely spring photo shoot!

Since I am a glass-full type, you will notice I wrote ‘already half filled’ above. However, over the years I have been learning to be a businesswoman, so that little voice reminded me that I could also be looking at the situation as ‘You are only half full’. I decided it would be fun and right to do some promoting of natural dyes by having a contest, which will run until midnight Pacific Daylight Time on April 30th.

First the prizes, then the rules!

Grand Prize: An indigo-dyed pair of socks, made on my antique circular sock knitting machine (CSM) from Canadian wool. Why not local, you ask? The region is still working on re-tooling itself, and there is no mill that can spin a fine enough yarn to work with these fussy antique machines.

Sock in progress on the antique circular sock knitting machine (CSM)

Several pair of socks made on the CSM - note NONE are naturally dyed!

2nd Prize: One skein of my own Nature’s Cauldron pokeberry-dyed yarn.

Pokeberry-dyed yarn drying

3rd Prize: Your own copy of Harvesting Color, by Rebecca Burgess… just out last spring and one of the most user-friendly dye manuals around.

You could win this wonderful dye handbook!

Now, for the rules:
You get one entry for commenting, either here or on my Facebook page.
You get another entry each time you post about the contest, although Twitter doesn’t count, because I am not going to wade through there… so if you blog, or post on FB or Ravelry or Google+, let me know and I will follow up and give you another entry into the contest for each.
You also get yet another entry for each person who enters telling me “I heard about the contest from….”.
Last rule – contest ends at midnight PDT on April 30th!

So, lots of ways to get multiple chances to win, and more prizes will be added when I reach 100 entries, as well as each time I get a new CSA sign-up during the contest. Good luck!

I am pleased to announce that I am now accepting subscribers for the 2012 CSA season, through the Fibershed Marketplace. I will be offering a similar season as last year, and you can find more details here on the website. I have chosen to collaborate with Fibershed because we share common goals, and also to reach a wider audience in promoting natural dyes to artisans. The collaboration of myself and other regional artistans will lead to eventual construction of a regional cotton mill, a mill for producing finer weight wool yarns, and an indigo composting facility (see my most recent post, just below). Working together makes us all stronger! Your purchase includes a 10% contribution to expand their work in our ‘fibershed’ region.

Click here to order. I am willing to ship anywhere in the United States, and the slightly higher cost this year is purely to cover the increased cost of postage. If you live locally and want to suggest a work trade, please email me separately.

Dahlias are one of several flowers that dye well

Last month, I had the great good fortune to participate in a workshop with Rowland Ricketts, who is probably one of very few people in the US who understand and employ the traditional composting floor method of processing Japanese indigo plants into a lasting dye powder. This workshop was sponsored by the Fibershed Project and hosted on Marin Carbon Project land, where there is now a fabulous building, incorporating two containers for walls that have storage, and a roofed composting floor for regional processing capabilities.

Ready to begin floor construction

Rowland is THE Textile Department of Indiana University, and studied indigo and its preparation for nine years in Japan. His artwork can be viewed here.

As a part of introductions, Rowland gave this great talk to get us started… Please take the time to listen to his philosophy about how making things brings meaning to our lives.

Then, we began building the layers that would comprise the composting floor. Lighter work, with many to create. The purpose of the elaborate composting floor is to serve as drainage throughout the 100-day process of composting the dried plant matter into dye powder. This building will be able to handle about 450 cubic feet of material, piled on and covered with rice mats, while the decomposition takes place. The sand, rice hulls and clay composition will help to wick away the moisture created during the process.

John dumps the first layer of sand

Four inches of sand forms the first layer.

Rowland demonstrating the advantages of the Japanese sand tamper

Smoothing down the first layer of sand

While tools help some, the best method of compacting the sand into that dense layer is stomping with our feet! The next layer is four inches of rice hulls.

Spreading rice hull layer

We needed to don our masks for this step… Rowland was envious of us living so close to rice-growing country, as it was not a difficult matter to get the rice hulls, a by-product of the vast California rice-growing industry. He needs to travel several hours to procure his rice hulls.

Dyan methodically stomping down the rice hull layer

Once the rice hulls were compacted to the proper level, an additional layer of sand was added to keep them in place. We needed to add it carefully, measuring and leveling while not disturbing the rice hull layer.

A second, thinner layer of sand will hold the rice hulls in place

The clay layer, only an inch, comes last. Rebecca had been able to procure regional clay, from the Sierra foothills, however it was a very fine texture that required much effort to compact into place. Stomping was tried (nice skin treatment for bare feet!), but rolling worked better.

Rolling to compact the clay layer

Molly rolls over the clay layer to compact

The process truly took our group ALL day, and being January, the day was actually too short. I needed to leave as the shadows were lengthening at about 3:30 PM, in order to drive across the state (yes, I know it looks skinny on the map!). While the processing facility is located within my fibershed region, we are at opposite sides, with Nicasio being in the coastal foothills, and my home in the Sierra foothills… I made it back long, long after dark. A smaller team finished up the clay layer the next day and I intend to go back soon to peek in on the composting process. Of even greater importance, I will be sharing in the process by storing up the vegetation from next summer’s Japanese indigo crop and taking it to the facility to be processed next fall. I had originally attended the workshop thinking of building a facility here, but came away grateful for the possibility of collaborating to keep an ancient tradition alive.

Back in the fall, our local mycological expert Daniel Nicholson asked for some help in preparing for the first-ever Nevada City Wild Mushroom Exposition. This new event would mark the 14th anniversary of the Fungus Foray hosted by Yuba Watershed Instituteand would engage more of the public in the magic of the fungal world. Daniel provided me with several dried samples and I began to simmer up some dye results.

I put together a display board for him and attended the Foray, being totally amazed and sucked in to the world of ‘shroom hunting…. turns out that since we had a very wet early fall and live in the foothills transitional zone on the western side of the Sierras, there are hundreds of species to be found in a relatively small area. The group has been monitoring about six collection sites through the entire history of the foray and turns in site records to the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

Display regarding dyeing with mushrooms

The mushrooms I used are not desirable edibles, in fact they fall into that interesting (and large) group that is neither tasty nor poisonous… best for the dye pot! As you can see from the examples on the board, I got a nice range of colors from only four different mushrooms.

Dermocybe simmering with alum mordanted yarn

This is my favorite, a lovely rosewood color.

As you will see below, simmering the same mushroom in rusty water in an iron pot produced a strong medium brown. Not bad!!

Omphalotus olivascens, also called "Jack O' Lantern", unmordanted

This batch had been soaking in a jar for years, presumably with copper tubing for mordant; when I dumped it into the pot, there was no tubing…maybe mislabeled? Jack O’ Lantern has given many dyers some wonderful shades of purples. It’s a good thing I didn’t know this as I was working, since I was excited to get this shade! I will be trying it again in the future, gently and carefully hoping to get optimal purple results.

Dried Omphalotus simmered in iron pot produced darker green

I wound small skeins for the dye display board and actually sewed them onto the paperboard. The remainder are taking shape into the Inspira Cowl, as seen below.

My pile of mushroom-dyed yarns

The photo is upside down; dyes used from top include lodgepole pine bark (pale gold), olive green (Jack O' Lantern mushroom), Dermocybe with iron mordant (brown), Dermocybe with alum mordant (rosewood), Sarcodan (gold in middle), Jack O' Lantern on unmordanted yarn (light sage green).

I am way behind on getting this information out… took some time off for the holidays, and am now swamped in annual business paperwork. I will share more later about how my first CSA season has gone, but suffice it to say that I will be here for the coming season. I will be collaborating with the Fibershed Project both to promote shareholder subscription and to share in composting Japanese indigo into dye powder. I also listed the CSA with Local Harvest; if you are not familiar with this sustainable food resource, check out their website.

Happy Dyeing!

When I started this CSA Farm adventure, I planned to grow enough Japanese Indigo (Polygonum tintorium) to dye yarns for my subscribers; after all, the plant grew well in other parts of California and normally, we have a wonderful growing season here in the foothills. Nature, and the seeds I got originally, had other plans for me. The spring was cold and wet. The first round of seeds withered and died, the 25% that even bothered to germinate!

Japanese Indigo plants beginning to flower

Thanks to Dustin, I was able to get another batch of seeds going, but I didn’t have real plants until early August.

Well, unfortunately, the days are already getting shorter by August, and by the time I was ready to transplant the seedlings, I opted for large pots instead of putting them in the ground.

Portable Indigo Garden with Guard Cat

They could be moved around to take advantage of the best sun, and I even ended up bringing them indoors in late October, protecting them from an unusual early snow! All that babying kept them growing, though far slower than if they had gotten a proper start.

It was clearly obvious that my paltry Japanese Indigo garden was not going to produce enough mass to dye yarns for my shareholders, as planned. Around the same time, I decided to start an instant indigo vat with pre-reduced indigo crystals from the Indigofera tinctoriaplant (sub-tropical ‘true’ indigo), in order to tie-dye shirts for the children in our early childhood program. We had just gone on a field trip to the Pumpkin Patch, where we were surrounded by swarms of children, mostly other peoples’, and realized that readily identifiable shirts for such occasions would be a real blessing.

Indigo tie-dyed tshirts for children's program

I was so excited by our results that I quickly dyed up a bunch of yarns, in awe of the oxidation transformation each and every time.

Indigo-dyed yarns in the process of oxidizing

It only took 30 seconds to a few minutes of submersion in the vat to soak up enough dye for good coloration, though I was running around trying to keep from dripping, cleaning up after myself as I ferried the yarns outdoors to drip and dry. I managed to dye the blue yarns I needed for my Sky Scarf project, and get a few pounds done to package up and sell.

I also ordered enough supplies to put together indigo vat kits for my CSA shareholders. While I was a bit uncomfortable about going afield from my original intentions for a local-only CSA, I decided it was better to share the magic of blue in a different way than I had originally planned, so that I could honor my commitment to those good charter supporters who helped me launch my farm.

Meanwhile, my potted Japanese indigo garden was being ferried in and out of the house, depending upon the weather, and managed to keep going, though as most plants look around here in November, not at its finest. There were flowers but the stems were getting spindly. I couldn’t locate the chemicals that my recipes called for. Then, one of the members of our online “Found, Stitched, Dyed” forum posted about using vinegar to process her Japanese indigo plants, with beautiful results. I decided to try her detailed explanation, since my plants needed to be harvested… I found it was the hardest thing to cut off those first few stems, after begging and cajoling and pampering these plants! I chopped up my plants with the blender, and the smell reminded me of wheatgrass juice.

I followed the instructions, using a jar to soak my strainer fabric and then a skein of handspun yarn, and was pleased with the results.

Light blue yarn dyed in Japanese Indigo

Very different from ‘true’ indigo, but a lovely blue, nonetheless!