Dyeing Yarn with Goldenrod

This is a blog post I started last year, when I was in a yarn dyeing frenzy.  It sat as a draft with pictures for months and months... But last week I dyed with Goldenrod again (but forgot to take pictures) so I thought this would be a fitting post.  I have talked about yarn dyeing a few times on the blog, including this post with a more detailed description of the process.

Goldenrod is a wildflower (or weed, depending on who you ask) that grows in empty lots, along highways, and pretty much everywhere in Ohio in the late summer and early fall.  Last year a coworker filled a trashbag for me with the Goldenrod plants growing in his backyard.  This year I was able to scavenge some from an empty lot down by the railroad tracks.  Last year I used the flower, stems, and leaves to make the dye bath, but you can also get nearly the same color from just the flower heads.

I simmered the plant for about an hour before straining out the plant material.  I bought a big mesh ladle thing from the Chinese grocery store and it works great for this!  Meanwhile, I prepared my yarn by mordanting it in a solution of alum.  The yarn came out a beautiful, bright yellow.

I made a TON of dye that day, so I also dyed two additional skeins of yarn and treated them with an iron afterbath.  To get the iron solution I soaked a bunch of rusty nails and other metal bits in a jar with water and vinegar. Then I put the solution in a pot and heated it to almost a boil.  One skein I dipped from the dye bath into the iron bath for about 20-30 seconds (the color changes right before your eyes, it is amazing.)  That one came out a lovely light green.  The next skein I put into the iron bath for longer, probably 1-2 minutes, and it came out a dark forest green.

Dyeing Yarn with Queen Anne's Lace

 

Another one of my natural dye experiments this summer was with Queen Anne's Lace.  In the summertime Queen Anne's Lace is a wildflower that flourishes in empty lots, along highways, and any other green space that does not get mowed.  These flowers remind me of spending summer "up north" at my grandparent's cottage as a kid.  They grew everywhere and where my favorite flowers to pick.  Now that I am making natural dyes, I knew I had to use Queen Anne's Lace somehow.

 

 

I started by going down to the railroad tracks one August day and cutting giant handfuls of Queen Anne's Lace like I was making a bouquet.  I needed at least 4 oz. of flowers to dye one skein of yarn.  Then I went through the cooking process, strained off the flowers, and dyed 3.5 oz. of wool mordanted in alum.  (You can read more about the dyeing process on my these previous posts.)

 

So far this has been my favorite dye as far as aroma.  Since Queen Anne's Lace is in the carrot family, it has a kind of spicy carrot scent while cooking.  The final product ended up being a light, bright yellow.  Stay tuned for more posts about ecodyeing!  I've dyed about 30 skeins of yarn this summer and fall, and now that the weather is cooler I'm catching up on my blogging.

 

Indoor Gardening: Part 2

A while ago I wrote about planting a window box of vegetables in my post Indoor Gardening: Part 1.  At the same time I re-potted my Jade plant and potted a new little succulent.  It took me a while to get some good photos of my newly potted plants, due to lack of sunshine and lack of time at home.

This is Jimmy, the gangster plant.  I got him as a gift in the summer of 2010.  This is the only plant I've been able to keep alive this long, so I'm pretty attached to him.  Over the winter he started losing a lot of leaves.  It turns out Jimmy had outgrown his terracotta pot.  I bought this nice blue glazed pot at Home Depot and replanted him in a cactus potting mix.  Since then I've seen a lot of new growth, and Jimmy is doing very well.

I bought this little succulent on my trip to Home Depot.  After planting it in a small green glazed terracotta pot, I noticed some leaves shriveling up and falling off... I was worried my luck with succulents had run out!  Turns out that new clusters of leaves started growing in where the old leaves fell off, just like with my Jade plant.

I also planted Basil seeds in another pot.  The sprouts are doing very well.  I had about a dozen sprouts come up, and I thinned it down to the 4 biggest ones.  Hopefully I will have lots of fresh basil this summer!

I moved the window box to my living room window where it has lots of sunshine.  The bok-choy is doing phenomenal.  I will probably be able to cut off enough leaves to eat in another couple weeks.  The onions are growing very well, but the leaves keep falling over.  I probably need to stake them up for support.  The celery... is not growing as well.  One of the two stalks died a few weeks after planting.  I think I didn't leave it in the water long enough before planting.  I started two more celery bases (because I had them, and I might as well!)  This time I let them stay in the water long enough to grow several good roots.  Hopefully that will help.

So that is what's going on in my little indoor greenhouse.  I feel like instead of being a "cat lady" when I get old, I'm turning into a "plant lady"... And I'm okay with that.

Indoor Gardening: Part 1

A few weeks ago I found an interesting blog about craft, diy, food, and gardening called 17 Apart.  One of the articles I found especially interesting was about re-growing celery from the base.  I happened to have some celery in the fridge, so I chopped off the stalks, put the base in a dish of water, and waited.  Sure enough, little celery leaves started growing out of the center!  This got me thinking that maybe I could grow a whole little indoor garden to hold me over until my local CSA starts up again in June.  Even if I don't end up with a lot of edible produce, it will still be a fun project.

I also read a post about doing the celery thing with bok choy and gave that a shot too.  In the week and a half it took me to plant everything and finally get around to writing about it, the bok choy has grown significantly and I planted it next to my celery.  (I realized the leaves went down farther than I expected, so I later trimmed down the white parts to speed things up.)

Meanwhile, at work we have had a bag of onions in a bowl on top of the fridge for a very, very long time.  One of them had begun to sprout, so I figured: Why not grow onions?  When I pulled the bag of onions down from the fridge I noticed a second one had sprouted.  After work I took a trip to Home Depot and bought a plastic window box planter, two bags of organic potting soil, and some supplies to re-pot my houseplants (more on that later!)

Stay tuned for updates on my mini-garden, and re-potting my beloved jade plant in Indoor Gardening: Part 2.