what you want and what you get...

running along a narrow woodland path, feinting left and right and left again, dodging tree roots and the child that was chasing me, I slipped in the red-brown mud and landed on my knees... in my brand new white pants

I was eight and my best friend was chasing me and my mom was... well, I'm sure you can figure that part out for yourselves

then there was the time I got grass stains on my nearly new blue pants

colours of the earth that would not let go

I think of those two anecdotes every time I hear people talk about natural dyes and the challenges of getting permanent colour that cannot be washed away... I say ask a child

when I learned plants can be used for natural dyeing I was most intrigued and have experimented over the years

I do it in the most unscientific ways... reading books and searching information on the internet, my approach tends to be along the lines of whatever seems simple

mostly I follow the instructions but I don't let details hold me back - if I don't have something I try and figure out a substitute

sometimes it works, sometimes not

and I rarely write down what I do

mostly because I'm too busy doing it, then I have to adjust it, usually a second time, and then fiddle with something else unforeseen and by that time I've either forgotten the order of things or it's been such a hassle I'd never want to repeat it regardless of the results

usually though it's because I would rather start new each time and discover something different

my latest adventure with woad falls into the process being too long and convoluted to ever want to repeat

it all started on Monday afternoon when I picked the woad and began the pigment extraction, my goal being a nice pile of dark blue pigment to make watercolour paint with

when I got to the point of pouring the mixture into large jars to let the pigment settle I was pretty pleased with the initial results - it was a beautiful dark indigo blue and had a thick feel to it which made me hopeful

two days later there was no pigment at the bottom of the jars... none

I hadn't tested for the acid/alkali level as I had no litmus paper so the next day I went to the drugstore but it was almost $40.00 so I left it there thinking I would just add a bit more soda ash and see what happened 

I did that to all but the one small jar I had already been working with - it was out of sight so got missed... you know where this is going right???

anyway, soda ash added, nothing

Thursday I dipped paper in the beautiful blue liquid and got what you see below

pale green...

I gave up on that and added a chemical that you can use for dyeing with woad if you don't want to do a fermented vat (which I did not)

now darker green on one paper, pale blue on another... same pot, same dye - in fact, I only had one dye-pot and everything you see here came from it except the paper in the very first picture and the last two

then multiple dips of the paper used that yielded the green above

now I had mottled blue and green

(I have an additional 8 - 10 pieces of dyed paper ranging from pale to deep blue)

 on to thread

the one in the middle was one dip, the one on the left, two dips and the one on the right was three dips

same dye-pot, done one after another, stirring between each dip

the three on the left below were one dip, the one on the right two dips

then they were put in water with rust-vinegar added 

after the thread came fabric...

the one on the left was one dip, cotton

the right is two dips, linen

the next two are pale, green on the left and blue on the right

(the colours of these are all darker than they appear here - it's the dullest, most drab day here so hard to get a good photo)

these were the last as it seemed the dye was exhausted by then

I poured the contents of the pot back into the jar, just to see what happen and by morning there was 1/4" of grey-green pigment at the bottom of the jar

I decided to "wash" it (siphon off the dirty water and add distilled water, repeating through the course of a day or two until the water you siphon off is clear)

it was then I found the first jar, pushed to the back of the counter, hiding behind the mixer

clear water with a little bit of dark blue pigment at the bottom

I'm still shaking my head

today I made watercolour paint with both

greyish green and dark blue

if I'd not mucked around I would have got exactly what I wanted and this post would have one image and I'd have a nice tidy pile of dark blue pigment but thanks to a dyeing misadventure I have a pile of papers, fabrics and threads in many colours along with two colours of paint

I'm amazed at the colour range that came out of that one pot, how some things took it so differently from others

and very, very pleased that it's all colour-fast

this kid's still got it!