Most of you noticed a long time ago – my new online shop, Astrids butik. Most of your orders moved there during the latest months, so I have now finished the move and closed the old shop on this page. THANK YOU so much to everyone who shopped here. Without you, my little company would […]
MIDGAARDS HAVE
pH is very important when using natural dyes, and people have always used available resources to control pH. The easily available bases in the past – and even the deep past – are urine and wood ash. Urine is pH neutral when fresh, but forms ammonia when stored, causing the pH to rise. There is […]
Safflower is a complex dye plant. It contains red and yellow dyes, and they bind to different fibers. Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) is one the oldest domesticated plansts. It arose in present-day Syria more than 5000 years ago from a cross between 2 or 3 wild species from the genus Carthamus (this is known from studies […]
Remember these jars? They had been fermenting for over a week, and the color of the liquid didn’t change over the last days, so I decided it was time to try them. The front jar contains the pit and peel from 1 avocado and 1 Tsp salt, the other one the same with the addition […]
I want to show you a new design I’m working on! A pair of socks using a thicker sock yarn, which is 350m/100g and 75% wool/25% polyamide. This skein is dyed with fermented avocado pits and a pinch of cochineal: The stitch pattern partially comes from a Japanese stitch library, so this time I’m not […]
I love color gradients! They somehow make the colors pop in a different way! I kept imagining a warm gradient, from red to yellow. Sometimes such daydreams stay just that, but with this, I have come incredibly close to what I imagined: The red end of the gradient is madder, while the yellow end is […]
My experiments in dyeing with avocado pits were quite successful if I do say so myself (although a couple of skeins needed a little boost of cochineal). But what about the peels? They can also be used for dyeing, and since I remembered reading that they give a slightly different shade, I kept them separate. […]
Recently, I have wondered how much it is really necessary to heat wool when you mordant it. To the usual 80-90C? Or would 60C be enough? (Yes I wondered about that because I ruined some yarn, and I think I overheated it!) So I turned to the knowledgeable people on Ravelry’s natural dyeing forum for […]
Once your eye adapts to spotting lichens, there is one in particular that beckons to you from just about everywhere – bright yellow Xanthoria parietina, growing on stones, fences, and branches. It’s even in my holiday snapshots from last year, taken at Dybbøl, where the Germans beat the Danish army back to the stone age […]
My recent attempt at dyeing with fermented avocado pits was only partially successful – I got three nice pink-ish test skeins out of it (on the left, dry) but two skeins of sock yarn came out a drab beige (still in the pot, so wet, which makes the color look nicer than it is) So […]