fleece

Walnut dyepots

When my cousin Polly came to visit earlier this summer, she brought with her an exciting gift. She had been walking the fields and byways of her Cambridge home, and discovered a walnut tree, dropping its fruit onto the public path. Patiently, and over several walks, she collected as many walnuts as she could, and brought this small collection for me to use for dyeing.

I’d used walnuts to dye fleece many years before – and with considerable success – which is why I was excited by her gift. A cursory search didn’t produce any of my notes about my previous walnut dyepots, but I still had a good collection of books on natural dyeing to turn to for advice.The large book in the photograph is Seonaid Robertson’s Dyes from Plants, and I found her recipe clear and relevant so I followed that most closely. Polly had brought me 27 walnuts (weighing 175g). Most of them had their outer hulls still in place and these were nicely black and rotten. Looked very promising!I brought them to boil in 6 pts of water, and simmered them and then left them to steep for several days. A wonderful witchy black and oily brew – looking even more promising!I added 100g of wet white fleece (BFL x Portland), brought it to a gentle boil and simmered and steeped for a couple of days. Wow – it looks promising!I finally decided I could put off the final dénouement no longer … time to see what sort of result I had got.Oh, crestfallen. That is all I can bring myself to say. Just so disappointing. The murky black liquid dripped away to reveal coffee-coloured fleece. It does smell lovely …. but worth it? … hmmm …As I said above, I had dyed fleece with walnuts many, many years ago – and got a great result. This was the reason my expectations were so high before this recent experiment. I did a serious search for my old notes – and finally found them.

My very brief notes were in a scrappy old knitting/spinning notebook, dated 1986. I was quite a new spinner. I was staying with my parents in Kent during the summer holidays with my two small children. A near neighbour of theirs had sheep – Cotswold sheep – and most generously offered me a fleece. I was too new to spinning to know much about different sheep breeds, but I readily accepted, and got straight to spinning – and dyeing. It was a beautiful, beautiful fleece, with long, lustrous, silky locks.

As it happened my parents had a walnut tree in their garden. Every summer my mother would pick the walnuts when they were green and pickle them. However, this year, she generously gave them to me. According to my notes, I had 4 ¾ lbs of green walnuts. They were cut in half and covered in water. That’s the end of my notes!! No record of how much fleece dyed, how long cooking took place…..perhaps my small children distracted me?! I just have memories of fantasticly rich dark brown fleece, fading to softer golds in later dyebaths.

However, there are further records in my notebook of what I did with the dyed fleece. I made my father a jersey – and I have the jersey now (my mother handed it back to me when he died). I also have the first swatch I knitted as I worked out my designs for his jersey. (The swatch – along with other swatches – is now part of a knitted patchwork blanket I made.) My notes record that this swatch was knitted in three-coloured tweed stitch, using white fleece (from a Shetland sheep called Charity), dark brown fleece (from a sheep called Ada – think it may have been a Welsh Mountain fleece) – and brown fleece (walnut-dyed Cotswold fleece). I wasn’t happy with this pattern – I don’t know why, – but in July 1987 my notes record that I started another attempt to make a Christmas jersey for my father. Here it is. Quite different, isn’t it? It looks to me as though I used the same yarns (but omitting the white) as those I used in the swatch above, and probably added a few more russet colours as well. The yarns in both the jersey and the pattern sample above have faded. They’ve also faded in this old hank of handspun yarn which I am pretty sure includes some strands of walnut-dyed silky Cotswold yarn.Re-reading and re-thinking these walnut dye experiments, I realise the problem with my recent attempt was that the walnuts were too ripe. After all, I recorded that I’d cut the walnuts in half in my initial attempt – that is far from ripe. And look: this is what I was left with after my recent dyepot. I think there are well-formed walnuts inside all that prune-like fruit.Perhaps I’ll presume on Polly’s kindness and try again next year. For now, I’m happy to remember this jersey I made my father – it was a great success and he wore it all the time. Here he is, still wearing it, Christmas 1993. ********************************************************

Addendum (for those natural dye techies)

I realised it might be helpful to see the dye recipes I consulted. This is from Seonaid Robertson: Dyes from Plants (1973)This is from Dye Plants and Dyeing. A Handbook. published by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Record (1964)This is from Anne Dyer: Dyes from Natural Sources (1976)Here is Violetta Thurstan: The Use of Vegetable Dyes (1975)And – should you wish to pickle your walnuts, this is from Mrs. M Grieve’s A Modern Herbal (repub. 1976)

Most spinners will recognise that uncomfortable moment when their partner remarks “And is that all the fleece you have? Really? Promise?” Crossing every digit, you mutter “yes, of course“, knowing full well there’s another stash buried deep in a little-visited cupboard upstairs.

Well, here is my coloured fleece stash – and yes, I promise: this is all of it! Honest.A full coloured fleece assessment was called for yesterday as I checked over my spinning projects.

Earlier this year I’d decided the time had come to dye some more fleece. It was spring, and my palette was strongly influenced by the colours of nature.Up close and personal, as the wet fleece begins to dry you can see what gorgeous colours these are.A little bit of acid lime to pep it all up.I couldn’t help letting a little bit of fuchsia creep into the dye pot.I had it in mind to knit a cardigan for myself. I was very taken with Julia Farwell-Clay’s Tambourine (which appeared on the front of the Spring Issue of Pom Pom Quarterly). I love the rondels on front.Withstanding all the temptations of amazing indie yarn producers, I was determined to spin the yarn for this cardigan myself. After all, I had all this fleece, and I loved spinning. What I found I was doing was spinning odd little hanks that weren’t really enough for anything much. Yes, they would work for the odd scarf, but I really had enough of those.

So, I assessed my fleece … did some carding … and got spinning. Here’s the product: some lovely variegated green yarn.I wasn’t satisfied.

Let me explain. It looks lovely as hanks, incorporating all the flecks and variegated colourings that I like. But when knitted, it was rather dull and muted.If you go back to my fleece “puddle”, you’ll see why I was disappointed. Look at that glorious top note green on the top of the pile. It’s being swamped by the darker greens lying below.Back to the drawing board…err, dye pot. And a completely different colour palette.All these yarns (and they encompass wool from Shetland, Jacob, BFL and other sheep, mohair, silk) are rainbow-dyed using acid dyes. You can now purchase excellent small dye kits which are complete in themselves (in the old days you used to have to add vinegar, washing up liquid, levellers etc). And modern acid dyes are very safe – I wear a face mask, rubber gloves – and I clear all food stuffs from the kitchen before I start. In recognition of the possibly undesirable effects of the exhaust, I pour as much of it as possible into the ground. It’s not a small undertaking, so I set aside a day for dyeing and will dye at least half a fleece at any one time (making successive dyepots, reusing the exhaust from the previous dyepot).

My first dye pot and I got berry colours – nice, but a bit darker than I wanted.Next lighter redder, orangier colours – very pleased with this, but a bit taken aback when folk greeted my instagram pic with the statement that it looked like body parts! Wonder what you think?Finally some blues as well.Now, lets go back to where I was at the beginning of this blogpost. A fleecy assessment.When you pull the fleece out of the baskets and boxes and bags, you realise just how much coloured fleece I’ve got here (this is a very honest post). This fleece has come from a lot of sheep!It looks even more abundant when I start to make plans and move this gorgeous stuff around.

I have several projects in mind.

First, I’ve decided to try spinning some blue yarn for the Tambourine cardigan. Secondly, I’m putting together some nice brightly coloured fleece to take to spin when I’m demonstrating with the Tweed Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers at the Border Union Show near Kelso at the end of this month. Last year I took some fuchsia fleece and it was a great success with the young beginner spinners. This is what I’ve come up with for this year.I’m very taken with the orangey/scarlet/red tones that I’ve dyed so I’ve allowed myself to put a little bit aside for some comfort knitting this winter – I’ll probably end up with just a few skeins that will make a nice scarf. Doesn’t it look cosy in it’s basket?I’m also very excited to start spinning the basket of blue fleece. Hmm – I’ll have to think this through – shall I card, or just spin? Perhaps a bit of both. The difference is that carded fleece will give me gently variegated colours. If I just pluck the yarn from the basket to spin as is, I’ll get much more sharply contrasted colours – and you’ll see I’ve added some red and green mohair for sparky little contrast.I’ve already started to spin the fleece for the Border Union Show. It looks great!The rest of the fleece gets packed away in the baskets for other projects other days. There are colours in my bags and boxes that are leftovers from ancient projects that I worked on a long time ago. I’m always careful to make the fleece unappetising to moth before it gets packed away. But I’ve left some fleece out for the cat to enjoy for a bit.

Happy cat, Poe!

Edin’s Hall Broch

Last week Stephen took me to Edin’s Hall Broch. He had discovered it on one of his longer walks, but I had never been there before – indeed, had never even heard of it.

As it turns out, Edin’s Hall Broch is a very remarkable place, and I am surprised more people don’t know about it. Or perhaps they do. Perhaps it’s just another closely guarded Borders/Northumbrian secret.

For those of you who (like me) don’t even know what a broch is, here is a brief summary of received internet wisdom.

There is much debate about their function and purpose. What is agreed is that they are only found in Scotland, they are superb examples of drystone architecture, and they are round. Nobody is sure whether they were built for defensive purposes or to be lived in as farmsteads.

But ooooh – I do love the word “Broch”! I roll it round my lips and savour the sound – quite different from any other word I know. It wasn’t really that special a day to be out. As you can tell from our photos, the day was dull, and it was quite sharply cold for May. But it was still a comfortable – and very interesting – walk from the carpark, about a mile and half from the ruins.

After a short walk through a forested area, you cross the Whiteadder Water by the Elba Footbridge. The Whiteadder Water then runs parallel to the walk as you climb the hill up to the broch.The Whiteadder Water is magnificent here, swirling dramatically over craggy rocks. But, wait – is there a yellow conspiracy afoot?! There’s masses of gorgeous clumps of golden scented gorse, many of the trees are in that early flush of colour when the leaves are transparent yellowy-pale-green, – and to cap it all we saw a Yellow Wagtail bobbing around on the rocks in the stream! Where the scenery wasn’t yellow and green, it was silvery-white. The lichen is as much an ornament on these blackthorn trees as their own blossom.Our route takes us on up and up. The sheep gaze down anxiously at us from the ridge, not sure whether we are friend or foe. Don’t worry, sheepy friends, we’re travelling up to the right of this pylon.

Ah yes, this pylon. We were happily admiring the beauty and wildness of the place when we realised that there was a huge great plonking pylon – no, a chain of pylons striding across the valley. How fascinating that we’d subconsciously “subtracted” it from our awareness. How strange too that we object to wind farms but seem oblivious to these earlier man-made monstrosities.The way is well-signposted. But look behind the sign, and there’s a telling indication of modern farming. That’s the old drystone wall broken and crumbling, and it’s been superceded by an ugly barbed-wire fence (which you can just see in the foreground of the photo). How very sad.Nature gives and it takes. En route we found evidence of the harsh reality of nature red in tooth and claw. Somebody’s dined here….perhaps the sparrowhawk we saw wheeling above?However the kindly sheep have left me some lovely bits of fleece to collect – it’s the softest and cleanest fleece I have found out and about for a long time. Wish I could catch a sheep to take some more fleece home with me!Finally, we get to the top of the hill, and there – amid a lot of other stone ruins (it’s a prehistoric hill fort) – is Edin’s Hall Broch! (You get a really good idea of the whole site with this aerial picture on the Welcome to Scotland website.)The people who built this place knew about dry stone walls – they could teach modern farmers a thing or two. Just look at the size of the stones at the base of this building!The size of the walls too is enormous – at their maximum they are over 5 metres wide.There’s a proper entrance, and what must be a front door slab lying on the ground beside.On either side of the front entrance, there are guard rooms.Set in these huge walls around are well-built steps and more rooms. Perhaps the most intriguing thing about this place is that this is one of only a handful of brochs in the Lowlands. They are mostly found in northern western Scotland. And this broch is not like the northern brochs – it’s too large in diameter for starters, so there are doubts that it was ever roofed. As you will see on the information board reproduced below, Historic Scotland have come up with the hypothesis that somebody in the 2nd century AD travelled south bringing broch-building skills with them and adapted them to this Border locality.Who knows?

What we do know, however, is that when this site was first excavated in the late 19th century, a number of artifacts were found (these were donated to the Museum of Scotland). They include a stone spindle whorl, a piece of jet ring, an amber bead, an oyster shell, bones and a fragment of a glass bracelet. Very much the normal sort of possessions of people’s lives – food, ornamentation, and the means to clothe oneself.

I’d read about spindle whorls recently in Rebecca’s Needle and Spindle blog. She describes so clearly what an vital part they had to play in basic survival tactics – and that would have been especially the case in these colder northern climes.

So – I’m once again stretching my imagination back to the people who lived here, and I’m finding that they (like me) enjoyed a bit of bling. Ancestors of the modern sheep grazing around would have been of value to them for clothing – just as they are to me.

The modern world interrupts my old-times reverie. Well – a slightly more modern world. Down through the trees, on the other side of the Whiteadder Water, there’s a glimpse of an intriguing house – actually another Round House. Apparently it’s The Retreat, built in the late 18th century by the Earl of Wemyss as a shooting lodge. You can’t help wondering if he was referencing the round broch on the opposite hill in his choice of architecture…… It looks very comfortable and well-appointed compared to the exposed stony broch of the ancients.