Making Plant Hammer Prints on Cloth Washfast

Hammering plants in a fold of cloth releases juices more akin to a stain than a dye; although the colours seem to transfer, over time, most fade to brown, like blackberry or beetroot juice.  This photo is a year old, it shows fennel leaf still green and lemon balm, sage and mint leaves quite blurred, definitely gone brown.  If a leaf pattern prints out sharply, it might seem that in itself is worth the effort of thumping away.  When you realise the cloth can't be washed without muddying the effect, the usefulness of the whole performance is limited.  To get a dye out of the majority of plants, they need to be simmered in water.  To fix that dye colour onto fabric, a mordant is needed, which binds to fibres, then also to dye molecules.  I've done little dyeing on plant

derived fabrics like cotton, which need particular mordants, mostly I use wool or silk. These latter are easy to mordant with alum, a common food preservative also used in most deodorants.  Weigh the fabric, calculate 10% of the weight and dissolve that amount of alum crystals in a jar of hot water.  Soak the silk or wool, then leave it to float for 24 hours in a bucket of water with the alum poured in.  After a rinse, it will take up dye from a plant bath.  

The picture shows a silk blind dyed with weld, slowly fading over years in direct sun.  Though plant dyes vary widely, generally, the colours last a good long while and tolerate an occasional run through the washing machine. 
I thought hammering a leaf onto mordanted cloth must release a little dye, while admittedly, it would be a far cry from simmering that cloth in a bath with the concentrated power of a great bulk of plant material. If a hammer print is mostly a stain, perhaps even that could be fixed to fabric if the stain itself picked up iron differently to unstained cloth.  Iron, either as water in which rusty nails have been lurking or proper dissolved ferrous sulphate, is also able to mordant cloth or to modify dye colours.


I tested out a variety of leaves by hammering them inside a fold of alum mordanted white silk, then simmering the cloth in a weak afterbath of weld leaves which I had been using to make contact dye prints with iron solution added.  The silk went a weak tea colour, the prints did not lose their crispness and have all come out as darker shades of grey/brown.  
It survived a hand wash, so I put the fabric through a washing machine wool cycle at 30 degrees centigrade with wool wash liquid.  The pattern survived and though the colours were not enticing, they did not fade after a few weeks in full sun.

Grand plan, now.  A big piece of silk which had had a splodgey and disappointing dip dye in a Japanese Indigo plant vat last year was mordanted with 10% alum. One rainy day, I gathered leaves from all around the garden and settled down in the kitchen with my hammer, ready to design a lovely pattern.  Big mistake.  The leaves must have been too full of sap, under the hammer, they just squidged.  Bugger. Never mind,

on a drier day, I tried again, just experimenting with whatever plant material looked a promising shape.  I had had a vat of dried weld leaves fermenting and expected a strong Lincoln Green from overdyeing the indigo, modified with a drop of iron.  Must have heated it too much or left it fermenting too long, because the weld did not perform well, another weak tea colour instead of yellow.

Anyway, the leaf prints are wash fast. Oak, cranesbill and blackberry leaves came up darker, ferns gave the most striking pattern.  Expect I'll come back to this idea for something else, some time when it stops raining.

Dyeing Wool with Clematis Leaves

My companion, Elinor Gotland, must have been exhausted by her sailing holiday.  She slept for two days solid, drank a pot of tea, then dozed off again in the garden. Waking with a start, she stared blearily at the mountain of greenery I had piled onto the lawn.
"Did I drop off?"
"Sleeping Beauty, you are.  To paraphrase Tennyson
"She snores, her breathings are loud heard
In palace chambers far apart.
Fleecey tresses snortily stirr'd
That lay upon her charmed heart."
"And who do you think you are, a handsome Prince to my rescue, slashing away all rambunctious with your secateurs? Can't a ewe have a little nap in peace?  And I do not snore."
"Oh eyes long laid in happy sleep!
Oh happy sheep, in garden bed!
Oh happy snore, that woke thy sleep!
Oh sheep, thy snore would wake the dead!"
"Oh, give over.  Before you ask, this princess would rather be woken with a cup of tea than a kiss.  You've not so much pruned as gone machete mad, Beaut.  What is this wasteland of savaged foliage?"
I stuffed a huge bag with tangled clippings, ready for another trip to the skip.
"Thorns, ivies, woodbine, mistletoes, And grapes with berries red as blood, All creeping plants, a wall of green Close matted, bur and brake and briar - all to surround you, oh Sheeping Beauty.  Well, mostly, this was a very vigorous clematis.  Next door had started worrying about their roof tiles being invaded. I've never really been sure what time of year to cut back a montana and it got away from me rather."

Truth be told, the pink clematis made the back of our semi look like a fairytale cottage every May and I hadn't had the heart to exercise proper control.  The flowers were over, half the plant is down now and the place looks awfully bleak.  Still, we both agreed the kitchen seems much lighter and brighter, now the back door is no longer approached through a tunnel of leaves. Though I hadn't heard of getting

any dye colour out of clematis leaves, there was little to be lost in trying.  I crammed a pot as full as I could, added water and simmered it for a couple of hours.  After sieving out the wilted leaves, the water had turned a pale ginger - see centre jar.  Adding vinegar to acidify the jar on the right made the fluid slightly paler, adding dissolved soda ash to alkalinise the one on the left definitely deepened the colour.

"Look, Elinor, when I alkalinised the whole pot, all the froth turned green!"  My companion did not get up to see, she just waved a limp hoof in a dismissive gesture.
"'Fran prunes, scarce knowing what she seeks: she boils the plant, drops wool in there. If colour flies into her yarn, She trusts to light on something fair.'  Misplaced trust, I'll bet. Heaven knows why you don't stick to the classic dye plants, usually beige from the others, isn't it, then Beaut?"
A skein of white wool weighing 60g and premordanted with 10% alum was simmered and left to cool in the dye bath.  I always worry that prolonged soaking in alkali will harshen wool fibres, but this Cotswold yarn seemed to cope ok and came out greenish yellow.  Not a bad result, next time I prune the clematis, I will

put a smaller weight of wool in the pot and see if the colour comes up better.  A silk scarf was contact dyed in the remains of the dyebath with a little iron solution and came up greener that the camera shows.  The leafprints were made by various hardy geraniums and new leaves from coreopsis plants not yet in flower. At the sight of silk, my companion finally got off her arse, hauling herself up among the clematis shoots with much fuss and groaning.
"I'd have thought you'd be all fit and limber, after a week climbing the rigging and tacking to and fro, sailing around the Mediterranean."
"Catamaran, motor, autopilot, party boat." With this, Elinor slumped into a fold of the scarf and shut her eyes again.  

All precious dyes, discover'd late,
To those that seek them issue forth;
For iron in sequel works with silk,
And draws the veil from hidden worth.
And o'er the hills and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim
Beyond the night, across the day
We chase those colours, bright or dim.

Hammer Printing Fresh Leaves onto Cloth

Putting a bit of plant material inside a folded calico cloth, then walloping it with a hammer, creates results surprising to those of us accustomed to simmering up plants to make a dye bath. The colour that mordanted wool takes up from a prolonged warming in a plant dye bath rarely corresponds to the original plant colour - for example, weld leaves turn wool acid yellow and acorns give pinkish shades.  After a brief hammering on a hard surface,

once the flattened plants have been scraped and peeled off the cloth, their colour seems to transfer direct.  In this trial, a bluebell and some violas printed blues, celandine flowers yellow and leaves printed green.  The more juicy and fat the plant, the more colour appeared on the cloth, a thick leaf print being a solid deep green shape, while a thinner, dryer leaf had detailed tracery, but released too little sap 

to create a clear image.  The bluebell was so squashy as to lose all definition and the hawthorn leaves were so young and fragile that parts of them got mashed into the thick weave of the calico, impossible to remove.

Trying to find a balance of detail and substance in a hammer plant print, my most pleasing results came from young leaves, freshly grown this May on deciduous trees. The next photo shows an 

apple leaf and a plum leaf.  The stronger prints on the left are on the cloths which were under the back of the leaves, the patchier, paler prints on the right are on the cloths on the top surface.  A similar effect occurs when you print from leaves by simmering them wrapped in an ecobundle with iron - the reverse of the leaf gives a much clearer print.

While hammering is wearisome and noisy, the results are

gratifyingly quick, compared to other methods of plant dyeing. Here is a close up, showing my record of the best kinds of leaves I tried this spring. Pretty as the effect is, the printed cloth can't be washed and a small trial last year suggested that all the printed colours will eventually

turn brown. Thinking there must be some use for hammer prints, I sewed the calico onto cards, using scraps of plant dyed silk to look like spring blossom. When the leaf prints turn brown, they will, after all, still be leaf prints, evolving all by themselves.

Crochet One-Skein Wonders for Babies - Book Review

"Getting broody, at your time of life?  I think that ship has well and truly sailed, Beaut."  
I put my copy of 'Crochet One-Skein Wonders for Babies' down on the table with a small slam.
"Elinor, there can't be many sheep who can act the total cow quite as well as you.  One of the many glories of 'my time of life' is having kids old enough to shovel in their own food, then wipe it off the other end without my assistance.  I'll have you know Storey Publishing sent me this book to review."
"Mmmoo - dy! Hot flush, is it, dear?"

Although not much interested in babies, I was greatly attracted by the notion of a One-Skein Wonder and had been leafing through the book with something special in mind.  A specially fabulous, multicoloured skein of handspun yarn, bought at WonderWool. Turning the shiny, heavyweight pages, there were plenty of large photos which illustrated the finished objects well, avoiding the temptation to focus too much on cute shots of the tiny models.  The editors, Judith Durant and Edie Eckman, had chosen their 101 patterns from dozens of different designers, which made for a good range of styles to choose from.  Divided into sections entitled Hats + Caps, Tops + Dresses, Bottoms, Bibs + Washcloths, Toys, Blankets + Sacks and finally, Bags + Accessories, the cut edges of the pages are colour coded by section with the name of the pattern on each page, written vertically down the edge.  I can see this would be really helpful, if you came at the book in the natural fashion, with a particular wish to crochet, say, a cardi for your baby.  However, if your starting point is one skein of wool, 100g in weight, with the characterful irregularity of handspun averaging out about worsted/heavy double knitting, then sorting out a project requires a bit more effort than just choosing from the pictures in one section.

As is usual, each pattern is written for a named brand of yarn and although the weight and length of a standard ball is specified, you have to guess from the photo whether a project is likely to be in lace or chunky.  Very useful to find at the back of the book an index to projects by yarn weight, so I was just in the process of flipping to and fro by page number, reviewing all those suitable for worsted.
My companion planted a hoof on The Pinwheel Vest, designed by Lorna Miser.
"Now there's a blast from the past.  Haven't seen a top like that

since the 70s."
"Oh, yeah.  Play that sax, daddio. This project is going to be one hip, hot, diggitty dog."
"Hate to bring you down, man," said Elinor, dryly.  "but it says the one skein you need weighs 200g."
"Drat, drat and double drat.  I'll just do the central motif in the 100g of groovy colours and then spin up some Black Welsh Mountain fleece to crochet the rest."
This pattern is given both round by round and as a chart, clear and simple, I only went wrong once or twice and soon worked out why. 

Though all measurements are given as both Imperial and metric, US crochet notation is used without a conversion table for the UK terms.  The glossary does describe how to do every one of the many stitches included and the book index is truly comprehensive. Despite my gauge working out considerably bigger than stated, I realised with mounting excitement that way more than 50g wool was left after the back wheel was complete.  I carried on, crocheting faster and faster, in order to finish before my 

ball of yarn ran out.  Made it, with about 50cm to spare.  Obviously, it would never take a whole skein to make many of these tiny baby patterns. This book would be very handy for using up leftover yarn of less than a whole skein, if an approximation of the actual yardage needed had been given for each pattern.  Second consideration, how come my Pinwheel Vest turned out nearer age seven size than 18 months? While I am ready to admit my tension is loose and my

judgement of handspun yarn weight is questionable, this is quite a disparity.  To get the crochet gauge correct, I had to go down from 5.5mm to a 4mm hook and use a double knitting weight yarn - well, ok, approximately dk, since this one was handspun too.

It seemed to me a cracking book, well organised and full of functional and pretty items, great for treating the tiny darlings in your life to a really wonderful one skein. Before committing to such a ringing endorsement, I thought I had better crochet another pattern, just to check the tension gauge issue.  These bootees came out exactly the size they should. Crocheting from this book has turned out great fun and I'm actually delighted that the Pinwheel Vest will fit my youngest niece.  She'll be such a hep cat. Had it come out even larger, I'd have worn it myself.  Better not let Elinor see the bootees.  Negative vibes, man.

Crochet One Skein Wonders for Babies
Edited by Judith Durant and Edie Eckman
£12.99 published in the UK May 2016
ISBN 978-1-61212-576-3

Wool at Chelsea Flower Show

"You'll never believe it, but this year's Chelsea Flower Show starts with a fabulous flourish of floral wool!"  I sailed into the kitchen, full of news.  "The whole entrance to the Royal Hospital was totally carpeted with knitted poppies."
My companion paid close attention as I carried in my bags from the trip.

"Don't suppose you remembered to visit the patisserie?"
"Mille feuilles bought fresh in London, this very morning!"
Even an open box of cream cakes could not shut me up for long.
"The Great Pavilion was spectacular and the exhibitors have so much expertise.  I've ordered a clematis viticella which ought to survive on that gate arch where the jasmine died."
  

"Did you see Monty Don?"
"No, but there were TV cameras and presenters everywhere.  Surreal, to be mingling with the planterati, in real life."
"Oh, never mind mingling, I'd steal the show, Beaut.  A glamorous ewe always turns heads."
"You would certainly have been the only sheep in Chelsea.  There was a goat, though, centre stage, and one of the Fresh Gardens was full of dye plants and it had fleeces and yarn in it, see."  I showed Elinor my photos.
"Mmm, lush dye colours.  Bet that orange came from coreopsis.  The blue must be woad, ooh, yes, look at that flowering woad plant.  How come they only got such a titchy little space? Wool deserves a proper, grand show garden."

Splitting a slice of cheesecake between us, we contemplated a Dyed in the Wool scheme that would warrant a spot on the show's Main Avenue.
"Hawthorn bushes, all covered with May blossom, surrounded with swathes of their pale gold dyed silk.  Silver birches and a gnarly apple tree, piles of branches, stripped to make bark dyes."
"A great big iron cauldron on a 

tripod over a fire pit and a huge copper ram, to represent the metal mordants and modifiers."
"A classic spinning wheel, with hand carders and combs."
"Spindles dangling from a tree like fruit, fat with scarlet madder root dyed yarn."
"A boundary fence of open shelves with a whole range of solar jars, full of petal colours soaking into wool, diffracting the sun like stained glass."
"Ooo, yes, and in the background, some history, a mediaevel 

monastery - most of the monks' wealth came from monopolising the wool trade."
"Actually, there was one stall selling sheepswool - as garden compost. How times have changed."
"Could you manage a vanilla macaron?"
"Rude not to."
We ate our cake in remarkable harmony.
"Which was the best, then?"
"Well, there were two that truly stirred the soul. Cleve West's garden filled my heart, then Andy Sturgeon's broke it.  I've never cried over any garden before.  In my opinion, the judges gave the top award to the right designer."
Elinor licked a bit of cream off her hoof.
"In my opinion, it was the chocolate gateau."

Upcycling Old Woolen Suits

Last summer, I dip dyed two cotton cushion covers in a Japanese Indigo plant vat, overestimating the strength of the remaining indigo. Hoping the washed out blue result would pass for shabby chic, beach style, I put them up for sale in Crafts by the Sea.
"No takers, then, Beaut?"  My companion, Elinor Gotland, looked up from her knitting and caught me smuggling the dusty cushions back into the house.
"Well, business has been slow for everyone.  These just need to be spruced up."

"Face it, Beaut, shop soiled or not, those cushions are as dull as tea without sugar. Speaking of which, you really should try this lemon and ginger kind."  I can't much be bothered making ordinary tea, now I've sworn off sugar.  Elinor just hates waiting for a caffeine withdrawal headache to force me toward the kettle.  She stared at the cushion covers.  "I was thinking clouds, but no, sheep with a blue rinse, that's what those blotchy tie dye patterns remind me of."
Refreshed and revitalised by my fruit tea, I positively raced upstairs to find himself's old navy winter suit.  I went through a phase of buying 100% wool jackets from charity shops, certain the fabric would be marvellous for some future project.  This ended when I discovered that deconstructing them takes an age, so much interlining, padding and double seaming shapes a man's suit that they are probably bulletproof.  When you finally peel off the woven wool surface, much of it is rigid with stiffener, ironed on to the inside. Remembering I had saved that navy suit anyway, after some rootling in more likely spots, I found it in the boiler cupboard with all the others.

Iron on backing does mean you can cut out a shape from fabric and it won't fray at the edges.  Sew it on, add a couple of cuff buttons for eyes and some art yarn to be grass and voila, Blue Ewe cushions. Celestial sheep.

Rather than stripping a jacket down, it is possible to upcycle whole sections.  The intact garments survive a washing machine wool cycle and a press with a hot iron far better than the dry clean only label suggests.  Instead of being a beast to unpick, the pockets can prove useful. This file cover, with handy pen holder, was made by wrapping the complete lower half of a brown wool jacket round a file and oversewing the top and bottom edges. Adding elastic to hold on a pencil sharpener and a rubber was overkill, such things could just as well go inside the front pocket, really. Next, a pocketed cover on a notebook, decorated with extra buttons from the button stash, then a pocket on a pencil pot.

Exhilarated by all this Putting of Saved Up Stuff to Good Use, I could hardly bear to chuck out the scraps. Sew a couple of small squares together, stuff them with waste material, needlefelt on a scrap of wool and felt the whole thing in a hot wash. Stitch a brooch pin on the back and you have a wool badge.

I went to show them to Elinor.
"Mmm, try one on then, Beaut. Oooo, Suits Ewes."

"Oh, very funny.  Just wait til you see how I have woolified my sunhat."
"Well, this hat ticks all the boxes for Chelsea Flower Show.  To be the Belle of the Great Pavilion, all you need now is a ticket."
"Actually, Elinor, I have two."

Adding Beads to Lace Knitting

The April knit along on Boo Knits Ravelry Forum was a mystery pattern called Danse Macabre. Everyone knew it would be a lace shawl and a fair sized one at that, given the yarn yardage.  I hadn't enough handspun lace weight, but after a particularly miserable dentist appointment in March, I cheered myself up in the wool shop, buying two balls of Debbie Bliss Fine Donegal in deep red with tiny slubs of blue, orange and black, with a view to joining in. Danse Macabre is supposed to be knitted in silk yarn with beads added, even in the plain upper part. Each week in April, a section of the pattern was released and people shared photos of their progress. Though I intended to do without, I soon wished I had bought 

beads, seeing how pretty all the other versions of this shawl were looking.  Past attempts at beading have been misdirected - first I thought they had to be threaded on to the yarn in advance, which I did making Butterfly Wedding - it was a nightmare.  Nevertheless, when I came across a pile of beaded bangles with all my yarn slub colours, lying in a pile in a charity shop, it seemed Fate was taking a hand.  Using a bit of fuse 

wire to poke through the loop of any stitch marked for beading, I bent up the wire ends together and slid a bead down.  The holes in the beads were just big enough, though a tight squeeze getting over any slub in the yarn. Painfully slow going and as you can see from the photo, the beads did not stand out.  Never mind, press on, they looked quite funky in real life and I could already feel how the knitted fabric was gaining drape

and swing from the tiny added weights.  As the stitch count increased and the complexity mounted, it got harder to keep up with the Ravelry Boo Knits pack. Watching a Youtube video and buying a tiny 0.5mm crochet hook speeded up the beading no end. You load your beads onto the shaft, keep the hook standing up in a mug on your right hand side and simply take the indicated stitch off the needle with the

 tip of the crochet hook and slide a bead down over the yarn. Danse Macabre was a cracking knit, with clear instructions and never dull, each section revealing unexpected and pleasing lace patterns.  The bead pattern adds another dimension - or it does if the beads show up.  Lots of knitters used similar bead colours to yarn colour, only a few of the glamour shots of the finished shawls really demonstrate the full beaded effect.  My beads are lost in the slub.

The border of Danse Macabre is wonderful, a sort of paw print of big holes, using a technique new to me.  Thinking a lighter yarn could enhance the impact of beading, I grafted the border pattern onto the narrow body of another Boo shawl, Dragonfly Wings, this time using a pale grey Shetland yarn. Technically, this worked out fine, but I now realise multicoloured beads are not the best way to draw the eye to a bead pattern. 

My last attempt at beading this border pattern intrigued my companion.
"Knitted yourself a merkin, have you, Beaut?  Planning to pole dance in a vajazzle G String?"
"I prefer to shake my thing in big pants, thank you, Elinor.  This is just the set up rows for Danse Macabre with a couple of extra increases to do the border pattern with one repeat only.  The white beads do show up well, but I'd never lace knit a whole shawl in black alpaca."

I rubbed my aching eyes and closed them, silently resolving that in future, I'd choose pale yarn in a solid colour and add deep, glossy beads.  Deep, dark times indeed, the dentist has forbidden me to put sugar in my tea, if I want to keep my teeth.  I was jolted out of my ghastly, gummy ruminations by Scarlatti, blaring from the speakers.  Elinor turned the volume up even higher.  Flinging the tiny shawl about her shoulders, she stamped her hooves and whirled into a wild fandango.

"Never mind the big pants, get your castanets out, Beaut.  No-one is too decrepit to Danse Macabre!"