Sweater or Vest yarn!

A selection of complimentary colors all dyed with plants from my backyard gardens. 600 yards $100, or all 1200 yards $190.

Backyard Dyer Kits

Choose Coreopsis, Marigold, or Madder Root. Includes 100 yards of yarn (Pacific Northwest medium wool), packet of dye plant material, instructions. All you need is a canning jar and boiling water. $30.  

Autumn Dye Pot

Mixed vat: sumac leaves, 1 soaked walnut, tansy flowers, dyer's chamomile leaves, cochineal exhaust.

Tansy regrowth after mowing.

Off the needles!

Color Craving shawl, one year and one month in the making. Hand spun (70%) and commercial yarns. All dyed with my home grown plants.

The True Cost

Screening at Vashon Theater October 6.  Wasn't able to post this in time due to technical difficulties. See it on Netflix. 

Vashon Island Fibershed booth at the Vashon Sheepdog Classic

Flowers for Color

Cotton & Linen Napkins

Dyed with dahlia flowers (the pale ones) and indigo overdyed with iron solution made with rebar, vinegar, and water.

Garden Tower in August

It has been a challenge keeping everything watered this summer. High temperatures and almost no rain dry out soil fast. There is a soaker hose on some of the beds.

Hand knit fingerless mitts

At the Farmers Market. Vashon wool dyed with madder root.

Dye Flowers

Two coreopsis tinctoria flowers.

Farmers Market

Homemade apple cider vinegar.

Spinners Rock Dye Day

Indigo, eucalyptus, coreopsis tinctoria plant tops, hand painted roving with natural extracts.

Dye plants growing!

Japanese indigo, marigold, black hollyhock, coreopsis tinctoria.

Yellows Golds Oranges yarn.

Farmers Market June 27

Summer Flowers are Here!

First clipping of dyer's chamomile flowers.

Vine Charcoal

Made from grape vine, cherry and rose prunings.

New Market Yarn May 30

Prototype loom

And sampling different yarns.

Backstrap Rigid Heddle Loom

Prototype loom for teaching. DIY project.  Scrap yarn, not naturally dyed. Need dowels or sticks for end bars and more durable heddle and shed stick.

1st Grade Weaving

The culmination of 30+ classroom hours artist residency with three first grades: Spinning, Weaving, and Dyeing in World Cultures. They picked, carded, spun, dyed, wound yarn balls, and wove.

Farmers Market May 9

April 2015

Garden Tower all set up! The center tube is a worm bin to make compost castings.

Farmers Market

Growing and Harvesting Dye Producing Plants

Seed "Tapes" for first graders to plant

Yesterday I presented the chemistry lesson to the first grade class: how mordants work to adhere dye to wool. The metal salt forms an insoluable "lake" with the dye molecules.

And did you know that alizarin could replace cobalt in some batteries, thus making them non-toxic?

Vashon Island wool dyed for artist's residency, first grade

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L to R: madder root, dyer's chamomile, logwood, cochineal, coreopsis. The logwood, cochineal, and some of the madder were purchased. All other plants were grown in the Helix dye garden.