At the Burrow DyeTable # 2: Long, Long Pot of Poke

My friend Laura came over to share in the fun of this dyepot.  I figured, while it’s still giving, might as well keep sharing.  She opted to bring some superwash skeins, which is cool, because I was curious how they’d take up the dye.   For the second exhaust bath, I opted to follow the exact same procedure as in the first dyebath with one exception:  After the 2 hour simmer, I left the skeins in the dyebath—for 2 days.   I thought it might help with fastness since the amount of dye in the pot is lessening with each exhaust.  During this time, the weather went from 80-some degrees to 30-some degrees!  Way to go, crazyass Missouri weather.  Pulling those skeins out of the dyebath was cold!  I let them hang out in the chilly air for several hours, and then I brought them inside to rinse.  For all of these pokeberry dyepots, I rinsed in a bucket of water with a dash of vinegar because my water is alkaline at pH 8.8, and I was afraid of that effecting the colour.  No soap or even Soak or Eucalan.  Rinsed until the water ran clear (or I ran out of patience).

Here are the results from the second exhaust bath (which is the third overall use of this dyepot):  Notice how much darker the two skeins on the left are.  They are both superwash.  The third skein over is a mohair boucle, and the rightermost (yeah, i just said that) is more Mountain Meadows Cody wool.  That boucle’s got some shine on it.  On a technical note, it’s really hard to photograph these colours accurately.  I’ve tried to get them as true as possible, but it took some doing.

And here is the line-up of all the pokeberry dyepot results so far.  From left to right you have:  Original dyepot, 1st exhaust, 2nd exhaust superwash, and 2nd exhaust wool.

I think that it’s interesting that we’ve moved from plums and raspberries to peachy-salmon tones.  I expected the colours to stay more in the same colour family and to just get lighter and lighter.  I did not expect it to jump to a totally different hue.  Now I’m wondering what I’ll do with them.  Oh, no!  I’ve got to look at patterns!  Lolz.  I’ve got to prepare for a kid’s class that I’m teaching on Wednesday, and I need my pot back.  But I’m tempted to do just one more before I let this one go.  We’ll see.  Until then,

Live happy, dye happy!

At the Burrow DyeTable # Two: Harvest Moon Dyeing

When better to dye with the bounty of a late summer harvest than under the harvest moon?   Saturday night I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning dyeing more yarn in the first exhaust of the pokeberry dyebath.   Ronin and the full moon kept me company.  We’re going to see just how much colour we can get out of this pot.

Dye Notes:

All of the dye notes for this first bath are identical in method to the first pokeberry dyebath.  The only notable exceptions are the following:

Yarn:  I used both Paradise Fibers 4-ply undyed wool and Mountain Meadow Cody.  Both were mordanted in vinegar as before, only this time because I was dyeing 250g fiber, I used 1.5 c. of distilled white vinegar.

Ratio of dyestuff to fiber:  I left the dyepot exactly as it was the night before, which means that it still had the 2800g pantyhose bag of pokeberries in it.  At this weight of fiber, our ratio is now only roughly 11:1, and that does not take into account that it is an exhaust bath which means a substantial amount of dye has already been used out of it.  So the actual ratio is incalculable.  By me anyway.

Dyebath:  The only difference with how I did this dyebath is that I paid closer attention to how much heat I actually had to give it to keep the temperature in the 160-180F range.  It was surprisingly little.  I brought the temp of the dyebath up while I mordanted the yarn in the vinegar/water.  Once the yarn was transferred to the dyebath, I kept a timer counting down 15 minute intervals.  From 180F, with no heat on the burner, it only lost maybe 3 or 4 degrees in 15 minutes.  So basically, I just fired up the campstove for 1 minute every 15 minutes to keep the temperature between 175-180F.  The rest of the time it was off.  This save SO MUCH propane.   Once it was up to temp, I only turned the stove on for 8 minutes in 2 hours.  And it allowed me to not have to worry about the pot overheating.  Instead I enjoyed the quiet of 2am and knit on my EarthSea socks.

After the 2 hour dyebath, I left the skeins in the pot to cool until morning—about 6 hours—and then hung them up to dry in the shade.  This time in the dyebath is about half of what the first skeins had.  This was not intentional, just the way my day dictated.

Then my friends Hollie and Patrick and I went to the Strange Folk Festival to check out all the crafts.  My friend E was there helping Martha with the baskets at her booth.  I wish I’d had my camera with me, because her booth and the baskets and carved gourds were gorgeous.  So inspiring.  E and I are planning to do a hickory stool workshop with Martha in the spring when the hickory bark is ready to harvest.  Am so excite!  After the festival, we came back to rinse the skeins—so they were hanging for about 7 hours.  They rinsed clean after only a few water changes.  They are slightly but noticeably lighter than what came out of the first dyebath.

Here are skeins from the original dyebath and the first exhaust bath together so you can see the difference.  We went from damson to raspberry.

I’ll be writing about the second exhaust bath in the next couple days.  I’m really interested to see how the reduction of dyestuff to fiber effects fastness.  I’m hoping these colours stick around for a long time.  I think they’re gorgeous.

Live happy, dye happy!

That’s Why I Call It Scientifical: Avocado Extraction Part 2

So here’s a quick addendum to the avocado extraction action going on.  First, I did the modification on the avocado pits in saltwater.  I decided, out of nothing more than pure curiousity, to modifiy the pH using washing soda rather than ammonia.  I had to add a fair amount of washing soda to get the pH up to where I wanted it—about 1.5-2 tablespoons.  That’s really quite a lot.  But we were starting at an acidic pH of 4.5.     Here’s where I messed up.  I didn’t measure the pH of my saline solution when I made it, so the long and short of it is that I have no idea if the acidity of this solution is due to the saltwater or the avocado pits.   And you know I need to know.  I did measure the pH of the leftover saline solution that I made a month ago, and it measures 8.6—just .2 lower than my tap water.  But, I don’t know that I can trust this reading, since pH can change over time.  Not unheard of.   I’m not a scientist, folks.  I know NOTHING.  But I have a lot of fun asking questions.  And playing with my pH meter.

Here’s the fun and interesting thing that happened with said avocado pit in saltwater + washing soda solution:  remember what this extraction looked like before?

Avocado pits in .9% saline solution = no colour

Well, look at what happened when we hit just over the pH 8 mark…

Chemistry. It’s funky.

I was expecting a little colour change over time.  The instant colour change was a surprise.  It’s definitely brown, but not terribly reddish.  It might end up being worthless for dyeing, but we’ll give it a month or so and see.

I also modified the extraction of avocado peels in vinegar today  I dumped out the vinegar (which was only slightly tinged brown), and I added water and ammonia.  No presto change-oh, but it will be interesting to see if any new colour will come out of the peels.  It’s bumped up to pH of 9.9 which should be good if soaking for a month in 3.4 didn’t trash them.

Finally, I’ve got a brand new batch of avocado extractions going—-this time in brown glass.  Doing a solar extraction.  One jar of pits in ammonia water, and one jar of peels in ammonia water.  Both are fresh from the restaurant last night, cleaned and chopped up.  Now we cross our fingers.

Live happy, dye happy!

Dye Day #1 Results: Eucalyptus

Orange.  Beautiful, deep, rusty orange.  That was what made me want to dye with eucalyptus.  I love orange.

Did you know that there are over 700 species of eucalyptus?  And none of them are native to Missouri.  Which meant that I was going to have to hunt for a source.  Somewhere.  Because no dyer’s supplies carry eucalyptus either.  But that wasn’t the difficult part.  The difficult part was figuring out which species of eucalyptus would give me the colour I desired.  In Wild Colour, Jenny Dean talks about dyeing with eucalyptus, and gives good instructions for how to do so, but very little information on what kind to use.   I was able to find a little bit more information online—mostly from blog posts by intrepid experimenters and comments from other dyers.   I think it’s important to say that if you Google “dyeing with eucalyptus” or some similar search term, you’ll get a surprising number of results.  But a lot of information on dyeing with eucalyptus, while fascinating, was not useful for this project because  A) it was for eco-printing rather than dyebath dyeing  B) used species of eucalyptus that I don’t have access to  C) didn’t get orange  D)  used bark rather than leaves or  E) did not include pictures of results.   By the way, that eco-printing thing?  Very cool.  So totally want to try that.

But by digging around on some of the great links above, I was able to narrow down the field substantially.   I found a number of references to dyeing with “silver dollar eucalyptus”.  Well, guess what.  Lots of species of eucalyptus are commonly called “silver dollar”— cinerea, polyanthemos, cordata, gunnii… See the problem?  I realized that I was just going to have to close my eyes and pick one.   I finally settled on a variety that I could easily find locally:  eucalyptus pulverulenta, aka “baby blue”.  This variety is frequently used by florists in arrangements, which meant that I could buy it fresh by the bunch.  If fact, I actually ended up buying it at Trader Joe’s of all places, for $5 a bunch (which was $10 cheaper per bunch than my local florist was going to sell it to me). Be careful, though— lots of places sell dried eucalyptus for floral arrangements, but it’s been dyed.  Don’t use that kind!

So, I had the eucalyptus.  Now it was a matter of seeing if my research and varietal gamble would pay off…

Dye Notes:

Dyestuff:  Eucalyptus pulverulenta, “Baby Blue”

Part used:  Leaves and thin stems

Source:  Trader Joe’s super affordable floral section

Yarn:  Knitpicks Bare Superwash mordanted in 8% aluminum potassium sulfate and 7% cream of tartar; Lion Brand Fisherman’s Wool unmordanted

Ratio of dyestuff to fiber:  The standard recommendation here is a 1:1 ratio.  I used closer to a 2:1 ratio.  We had 160g of fiber in the dyepot, and I estimate that we had about 300g of eucalyptus.  This was the one dyestuff that I didn’t get to weigh, so I’m guestimating that this was roughly the amount used.

Preparing the dyestuff:   Most of the information I found said that eucalyptus dye results are incredibly variable.  Even results with leaves from the same tree can differ based on if you harvested leaves during a dry spell, after a rain, or from the sunny or shady side of the tree.  Amazing!  But most everybody agrees that the leaves that give the most colour are those that have been dried.  So after I bought my fresh leaves, I hung them upside-down in small bunches in the Snug to dry for 3 weeks.  It smelled heavenly.

Eucalypt drying in the Snug

Extraction method:  The leaves and small stems were crumbled up into a stainless steel pot, covered with water (tap, pH 8.8), and then simmered very, very, very gently for 1 hour.

Dyebath:  Yarn was added to the dyepot with the leaves still in, as this is what is recommended for the best colour.  The dyepot was hot at this point, and I was worried about adding yarn to it that way, but it turned out ok.  In the future, though, I’ll do what Rebecca Burgess recommends, and soak the yarn in warm water first.   The dyepot was then brought up to a super gentle simmer again and maintained for 2 hours.  Jenny Dean says that it takes 3-4 hours to get the colour out of eucalyptus, but we found that it happened closer to 1.5-2 hours.  The pH of the dyebath was 4.9.   Again, we were very careful not to boil it.  Boiling will apparently kill the colour and make you VERY SAD.

Delish-alyptus dyebath. Look at all that colour!

And now we pause to discuss the DELICIOUS SMELL that is the eucalyptus dyebath.   Delicious.  Wonderous.  Fantabulous.  I would compose odes to it.  I would sing songs about it.  It is worth it to dye with eucalyptus just to be able to stick your face over the dyepot and breathe in all that goodness.

Ok.

The results?  TOTAL SCORE!  Which means, we got orange, baby!

Pretty brown and orange. My two favorite colours. :D

Note, that the superwash wool took in a much darker colour again.  Of course it did.  This picture isn’t quite true to colour, because the superwash actually is a more rusty-brown.  That Fisherman’s wool is pretty accurate, though.  That stuff came out mad orange.  I love it.  And bonus score?  The wool comes out smelling like eucalyptus, too!  I think I mentioned how good that smells…

Here is the eucalyptus drying later that day.  It’s been rinsed, but not washed.  Superwash is on the right this time.

Eucalyptus skeins drying right after dyebath.  You can see bits of leaves in it still.

For a comparison, here are my friend Kittyraja’s skeins.  I’m showing these, because she used superwash and non-superwash, but both of hers were mordanted with the 8% alum 7% CoT.

mordanted superwash and non-superwash

Super orange.  Awesometastic WIN!

Now, I haven’t written about the sad, sad part of Dye Day yet.  That would be the stinkyass osage orange FAIL.  The trauma is still too fresh.  But I will talk about how well the eucalyptus works to cover up the bad, bad smells and complete lack of colour of other failed dyebaths.   I overdyed this skein in the eucalyptus exhaust.   The interesting thing is that I first just plunked the skein in the cold dyebath dregs just to get the smell out.  And look at what it did—

Cold eucalyptus after-soak. Interesting colour…

It actually had a bit of a blueish cast to it. Mind you, this skein started out cream coloured.   I wish now that I’d kept at least a sample to see how it would have dried.  But I decided to reheat the dyebath to overdye the yarn.  This is what I got–a very pretty and not at all stinky golden yellow.

Skein overdyed with eucalyptus exhaust

I will absolutely be dyeing with eucalyptus again.  It was my favorite out of the whole day—a total sensory experience.  Absolutely love it!

Live happy, dye happy!

Volunteers, Part 2

It would be wrong to say that a plant only has value in my garden if I happen to find it pleasing for some reason or another.  I don’t want to limit my understanding of a plant (or animal or anything else) only to my opinion of it or my use of it, although I recognize that those two factors greatly influence what I choose to grow.   I would like to be able to appreciate plants for their plantness, to be able to see them regardless of whether or not they are beautiful or useful or delicious.  Maybe this stems from a desire as I get older to be seen just as I am, not judged to be good or not good, not reliant upon values or opinions.    Just to be.  To have a patch of this good earth where we can live under the warmth of the sun.   People and plants have a fair bit in common.

As for the volunteers in my garden…

I talk about plant uses below simply because it’s the most obvious part of what I’m learning about them.  It is in no way the only reason why I keep them.  I keep them in my garden because they belong there.  It’s my tithe to the genius loci (hums “Getting to know you…”).   It’s just how it is.  I am cool with being a weed gardener, although I prefer weed steward.   I don’t grow them, after all.  I just care for them and keep them.

Some so-called weeds fall under the category of “beneficial weeds”, meaning that they in some way help the plants that people actually want growing in their gardens or are in some other way of use to people.   So why are they called weeds at all?  I think only because they don’t tend to do what people want them to.  They don’t like to be obedient like good bedding plants.  Weeds are independent and resourceful survivors.  They don’t need us.

Queen Anne’s Lace

Many of these beneficial weeds are considered such because they attract predatory insects or provide some type of companion growing relationship to other plants.  One such plant is Queen Anne’s lace.  Although not native to North America, it has become widely naturalized and is seen growing with abandon in fields and roadsides all over where I grew up.  It is one of my favorite flowers as much for nostalgia as anything else.  I recently learned that Queen Anne’s lace is a beneficial weed in that it provides shade for other plants, attracts wasps (which kill pesty insects), and is said even to boost tomato crops if interplanted with them.  So sayeth Wikipedia, so it must be true.

QAL

I brought seeds of Queen Anne’s lace from the Farm a few years ago and planted them in the dry, hot west bed which runs between the house and driveway.  I’m always looking for hardy plants to grow there, as the hose won’t reach it.  Plants in this bed must tough out the summer on their own.   Early each summer, our driveway is lined with Queen Anne’s lace that has seeded itself everywhere but where I planted it.   It’s a little piece of the country,  a balm to me here in a city I don’t want to be in.   It was only fairly recently that I learned that Queen Anne’s lace is also a dye plant.  I haven’t had the heart to to cut off the flowers to dye with, though.

Plantain

Another favorite volunteer plant that I take great delight in is plantain.  It is the bane of lawn gardeners everywhere.  Little do they know how much good is packed into this unassuming plant.  There are lots of types of plantain, the most well known being plantago major, or broadleaf plantain.   What grows in my yard is another common type of called buckhorn, ribwort, or English plantain—plantago lanceolata.   Give it a nice spot in a garden bed, and it will grow HUGE.   And it also does fairly well in the cracks of my sidewalk.

Plantain is edible and said to be very nutritious.  It was actually brought over by European settlers as a potted herb for both culinary and medicinal purposes.  I’ve read that a tisane of the leaves is very effective for coughs, although I’ve not tried it.  I have, however, used it to good effect on poison ivy.  I just chewed up the leaves and stuck them to my forearms over said offending rash.  Hey, I was desperate.  But for something more sophisticated,  Sarah Powell of the excellent Lilith’s Apothecary gives a wonderful DIY recipe for making infused oils or salves of plantain and violet.   Her Etsy shop is full of fantastical goodness, too.

Goldenrod

It’s taken me longer to love the goldenrod.  To be honest, it’s been a pain in the ass—always growing in the most inconvenient places.  I try to give it a home in the west bed, it wants to grow with my herbs.  I try to give it a corner in the east bed, it wants to make a wall across the sidewalk.   I feel obligated to give it a home, as I’m dedicated to the idea of native gardens.    So, when this year a big bunch of it came up around the telephone pole at the end of the driveway, and I said good, you can grow there.  Peace for both of us.  It’s gotten taller and taller, and I’m learning to like goldenrod.   You have to be patient with it—it starts out tidily enough, but soon gets leggy and straggly, and it takes until late summer/early fall for it to bloom.  But it is beautiful when it does.   Goldenrod is also a dyeplant.  We’ll see if I have the heart to use it.  I can’t help but feel bad about cutting down the flowers it worked all season to make.  But a dyer’s garden is all chopped off stems and no flowers—like something out of The Addams Family.   If I want to dye, and I do, I have to make peace with that.

goldenrod phone pole garden

Goldenrod is much more widely accepted as a garden flower now.  It also has been used traditionally as a medicinal tonic.  It is also considered a companion plant, beneficial for attracting and hosting predatory insects.   Every time I look at goldenrod, I think of Little House on the Prairie, Melissa Gilbert style.  Maybe I will dye with it after all.  Ma Ingalls would be proud.

Elderberry

Finally, we have sambucus canadensis, the American elderberry.  These sucker up all over the place, but this is the first one to grace my yard.  I am thrilled.  Elderberries have a ridiculous number of uses—culinary, medicinal, dye, winemaking.  It provides food for birds and other animals, too.  Care must be taken with it, though, as parts of the plant, including unripe berries, are somewhat toxic.   I am mostly interested in the berries for dye.  But I am also content just looking at it.  It’s very pretty.   There’s something very seventies about elderberry.   It’s all beaded headbands and macrame and Mother Earth love.  Maybe it’s those great big flowers.   I smile every time I see it.

elderberry

Elderberry farming is slowly but surely becoming a thing here in Missouri.  A few foreward looking farmers as well as Missouri State University are working both on developing elderberry farming techniques and marketing.  I hope it catches on—in a sustainable way.  What better to grow than a native plant with such a variety of uses?  I’m glad to be a volunteer elderberry farmer.

I talk to my plants a lot.  To me, they seem to have spirits, personalities.  Maybe that’s my synaesthesia talking, but that’s how I experience it.  One is not like another–even the same species.  I do my best to be a good steward of the land and to balance my wants with the land’s wants.   And while it’s fascinating to see all the different ways that plants are useful to me, I am trying to see past that to how a plant is intrinsically valuable to the earth.  There are connections from one living thing to another that go far beyond what we observe, especially if our view is narrowed only to how we are affected or benefited.   Part of cultivating awareness here is just watching and listening and letting things grow.

 

 

Volunteers

I don’t know a lot about plants.   I mean, I took botany in college as a requirement for my then bio major, but I don’t have that deep-seated intimate knowledge of plants that some people do.   I do ok growing them.  Houseplants and I get along so-so, usually better if I ignore them most of the time.   I garden better in the country than I do in the city.  The way I see it,  successful gardening has a lot more to do with the plants’ tenacity and will to live and propagate than it does with me having a green thumb.   My thumbs are just ordinary thumbs after all.

Japanese Knotweed

But plants fascinate me.  I love them.  Which is why I am trying to be a better gardener.    But it wasn’t the desire to grow more vegetables that sparked this love, nor was it a blossoming need to fill flower beds (see what I did there?), although both of those things are true.   It was weeds.  Well, truthfully, it was one particular weed that made me start looking around at the fascinating world volunteering their growth all around us:  Polygonum cuspidatum.  This plant was growing in our yard when we moved in to our house 7 years ago.  Didn’t know what it was. It looks like bamboo, and the bees are crazy about the flowers.  Swarms of bees.  So many bees, in fact, that the kids had a hard time playing in the back yard where this plant had absolutely taken over a 30ft section of fence.   So I took a sample of it to the Missouri Botanical Garden for an ID.   Japanese knotweed, they said.  Invasive.  Get rid of it!   So I did.

At least I thought I did.  Because the next year, it was back.  This time instead of pulling it, I dug it up.  All the roots I could find.   But the next year, it came back again.  Turns out that ANY little knob of root left in the ground will sprout.  And it didn’t help that two of my neighbors let it grow all along their fence-line.  So this time I dug, removed roots, and put down weed barrier.  Well, all I had was newspaper, but I laid down a ridiculously thick layer of it all along the back fence, and then recovered it will soil.  And this seemed to work.  For a while.   The polygonum is back, but in pull-able amounts.   And in the seven years that I’ve been battling the polygonum, I’ve had a change of heart.  I’ve decided that I just can’t hate a plant that is so damned determined to grow.   So, I give it a little space now—just a little—and keep it from choking out the rest of the garden.  We have a tentative truce.  Not enough for me to take pictures of it, though.

Lady’s Thumb

My relationship with other weeds is much friendlier.   After I learned about the polygonum, I started looking around at all the other plants growing in my yard.  Part of this, I think, was just the newness of owning my own patch of land for the first time, which meant that every plant was potentially precious just by virtue of it growing on my soil.   One of the first I noticed was this little sweetie:

I think this is Polygonum pensylvanicum

As best as I can tell, it is polygonum pensylvanicum (used to be classified as a persicaria), also known as smartweed and lady’s thumb among others.  Most consider this a very invasive weed.   It is really quite lovely, however.  It braves the intense heat of the summer without withering, and it blooms for a very long time.  It’s also pretty easy to control by mowing.  So we let it grow in mounds in places where it seems happy and where other things are more reluctant to grow—like things I intentionally plant.   This plant is native to North America, and I found information suggesting that it was used medicinally by various tribes for diarrhea and hemorrhages.   Some species are said to be edible, although they are reported to be very, very peppery.   I have no desire to eat them, but I find this kind of information interesting.

Creeping Charlie

Another beautiful plant that likes to grow in my yard is creeping charlie.  It’s probably my favorite volunteer because of the gorgeous ground cover that it provides year after year under the trees and bushes I planted at the back of the yard (formerly Japanese knotweed territory).   It is most beautiful in  spring when it is in full bloom, although the greenery stays pretty lush for most of the year, dying back only after a deep frost has occurred.  It tolerates the whole summer without ever being watered.   It is easily manicured into a border by mowing.   Creeping charlie has medicinal uses and has also historically been used for some culinary purposes, although the safety of this is disputed.   Again, I don’t want to eat it, I’m just happy that it volunteered itself as ground cover around my back tree garden.

creeping charlie

This is a picture of the area where it is now growing with abandon.   I linked because the tags are helpful.   In this picture,  all these trees and shrubs are only a year old in the ground, and the creeping charlie is just clustered around the base of each.  Now it has spread across the entirety of the back fenceline in a lush, deep ground cover.  I’ll have to get a good picture of it next spring.   It’s really pretty.  I’d take a picture of how it looks now, but my camera is borked, and the phone camera is just barely getting me by—by which I mean that every time I take a picture with it, I want to throw it against the wall.  I miss my camera.    Here is a patch of it, though.

creeping charlie = great ground cover

Pokeweed

Pokeweed.  Pokeberry.  Poke.  Phytolacca americana.  It grows all over the farm where I grew up in the Ozarks, and I’ve always loved it’s magenta-stemmed and purple-berried gorgeousness.   I remember the first time I  really noticed this plant.  I was maybe 14 years old and was out riding fence with my dad.  We came out of the woods and into one of the upper pastures, and I saw this giant magenta plant full of long clusters of purple-black berries.  It had to have been 7 feet tall, and the stem was very thick.  It looked like something from an alien planet—far too exotic for some farm in Southeast Missouri.   But no, it was just poke.   I was taught that it’s poisonous, and it wasn’t until I got married and was blessed with the chance to meet my husband’s wise and wonderful Gran that I learned that in many parts of southern Missouri (and indeed the South), it is eaten as “poke salat”.   Gran says that she was sent out as a child to pick the young, tender leaves to cook.   Still, it is regarded as a highly toxic plant, regardless of how many people grew up eating it every spring.   Poke is apparently also being researched medicinal use for both AIDS and cancer.  Way to go, poke!

Poke has only chosen a few places in my yard to grow.  Here we’ve got a beautiful specimen of pokeweed growing up beside the compost pile.

Pokeweed, soon I will dye with you!

I am more comfortable with the greens from my garden or from the local farmer’s market to bother eating the poke growing in my yard.  No, I’ve got a far better purpose for it in mind:  dyeing yarn.    Using the berries to create the dyebath produces the same gorgeous magenta colour as found on the stems of the plant.   For a long time, it was not considered a fast dye (meaning that it either washes out or bleaches quickly in the sun).  But a local dyer named Carol Leigh developed a way to make the dye fast by mordanting the fiber in vinegar.  I discovered this in the very awesome book Harvesting Color by Rebecca Burgess, who studied with Leigh when researching recipes for the book.  Now I cannot wait to try it this fall!  It takes a lot of berries, so I’ll be harvesting at the Farm, too.

Dandelion

One of the most abundant and welcome volunteers in my yard is the noble dandelion.  You can make wine, tea, salad, medicine, and dye all with this one weed.   I say weed only because of the number of people who try to eradicate dandelions from their yards.  They know not what they do.   Dandelions make me smile.  I happily give them all the space they want to grow.

i love dandelions

Violets

Then there is the wonderful violet.  Often overlooked, but this is a mistake.  Violets will grow like nobody’s business if you just give them a chance.  They are edible and medicinal and generally a lovely plant to have around.  Right now I’ve got violets growing for me in pots, in all of my garden beds, around my roses, and in my yard.  All volunteers.  Anything that works so hard to grow so prettily deserves a spot in my garden.  I freely admit to talking to the violets.  We’re friends.

a big colony of violets in the west garden bed. gorgeous when they are blooming, and lovely ground cover the rest of the year.

That is all for now.  The rest of the volunteers will have to wait for Part 2.  I hope that this encourages you to take a closer look at all the cool weeds growing around you, and maybe think of ways of giving them space in your garden and in your life.   Taking the time to develop a more intimate awareness of  these plants has enriched my life.  It has helped me remember to be aware of what is right under my feet, and it keeps me from taking things for granted.