The Natural Dye Studio

I don't often blog about other companies yarns. As an indie dyer I have rather a lot of stock and to encourage sales do most of my projects in the same yarn. But I have followed this company for a while and bought the odd skein here and there. The Natural Dye Studio is the brain child of Amanda Perkins. The company is joined by her husband Homer and daughter Daisy. If you follow this blog you know I have an interest in natural dyes and dyeing and have practiced (in the true sense of the word) the art for the last 25 years or so. I mostly sell synthetically dyed yarns and keep my naturally dyed yarns for my own projects.

Natural dyeing is a very time consuming skill and so this company has my admiration as they do this for a living. They are one of only two companies I know off that dye and sell yarns to knitters dyed with plant Colours. Amanda has honed her skills over a number of years full-time and her careful choice of luxurious yarn bases really make her dyes glow. If you thought natural dyes produced a pale, neutral palate, visit the NDS website and be amazed by the depth and brightness of colours she achieves. Photos don't really do the yarn justice.

I bought a handful of yarns on my recent trip to the UK in February with the idea of weaving with them. I picked 4ply BFL wool yarns with a high twist as I knew they would be sturdy enough for both warp and weft. I added a couple of my own naturally dyed yarns although they only represent about 10% overall.

The colours here are a bit distorted as it was indoor light.

I use an End Feed shuttle made by LeClerc which really do help make lovely straight selvages. The tension can be adjusted on the shuttle to match the yarn you use. I finished the shawl with a crochet edge (because the edges looked too plain). The sett for these yarns were 12dents per 2.5cms. I twisted the fringes and washed the shawl which did not change much in length and width. There was very little residual dye colour in the wash water. Pressed the cloth has lovely drape and I'm really pleased with it. Number 2 is on the loom.


The shawl took me 1 day to warp (for 2 shawls) and weave with lots of interruptions from the phone and customers. I always choose simple weaves for the work loom as I know I'm going to be up and down a lot.
I made it even simplier by changing the colours when I felt like it with no formal plan. Easy weaving.

When you take into account the time and effort, not to forget the skill that The Natural Dye Studio put into their yarns I feel the price is extremely reasonable. Naturally dyed yarns should command a higher price since the dyestuffs are more difficult to source (be it plant material or their extracts), more expensive than synthetic dyes, require very different procedures even for individual colours (indigo is a vat dye for example) and are time consuming as many of the colours require a pre-mordant bath and greens are usually dyed in a traditional dyebath followed by a dipping in the Indigo vat. I think the amount of work is probably unappreciated by the bulk of the yarn buying craft community.

 Therefore it is difficult to earn money based on the amount of time you put in and the extra costs that most of us indie dyers don't have. Regardless of the general lack of knowledge surrounding natural dyes, the colours are very special. There is a yellow base to all the colours (which is hard to replicate with synthetic dyes) which means they all blend beautifully together.

They have a luminous quality and in weaving where colour is laid over other colour this produces a really pleasing effect. Other shades are produced by this crossing of the threads.

So Thank you Amanda and team. I think there will some more NDS yarns joining my stash.

Before and after the dyebath

It's always a risk putting dye onto handwoven cloth. But anyway I've always been a bit impetuous with my crafts, taking scissors to my knitting and crochet, or in this case scrunching and over dyeing.
It is a sample despite being a scarf and it has given me a guide to what I want to do next.

Still weaving

All on the same warp.
The hand dyed alpaca semi solids are so much more interesting to weave with than commercial yarns. I love the subtle shading and depth. 2 scarves on the same warp. One finished and the other one is getting some resist threads woven in at the same time. I'll pull these threads to scrunch up the finished fabric and add a bit more colour with dye. These are 'samples' for a bigger project.

Plant colour

From eucalyptus bark and leaves, fresh woad leaves, NZ flax, and other plant material I found from around the garden. Some of these were soaked in alcohol to extract the colour. Most I dyed last year. I'm planning a garment. The yarn is all NZ handspun wool with a bit of alpaca. Just have a couple more colours to add to the mix including maybe some natural coloured fleece.

A far country

Totnes - a favourite town

 
 Our recent trip to visit our family in the UK in February was a quick three week affair which passed in a gluttony of meals out with different groups of people, visiting and a general impression of talking and listening a lot. I visited my family eight years ago previous to this trip.
We found a little time to visit our old haunts in between family commitments.

                                                     A sunny day on Dawlish seafront.

After a decade and a half of living elsewhere I felt very much a visitor and observer in England. The country and I guess the family has moved on without me. In fact (for now) it has left a feeling of ‘not belonging’ anywhere. I’m sure this is shared by many emigrants who leave their place of birth particularly as adults. I have no ‘history’ here in NZ outside of the past 15 years and in my birthplace I have no ‘present’. I have missed the later lives and deaths of three of our parents, marriages, births, joy and upheavals of my siblings and the many milestones of their offspring.
There is always a price to pay with any major life decision. I like living here and we have created a relatively good life for ourselves. This is my home, it is where my children have grown into adults and become independent. It’s just sometimes the ramifications of my choice resurrect feelings I thought I had come to terms with, I guess it’s the cost of revisiting a place/people that hold your past.


  

   The trip however, did bring lots of pleasure, not least spending time with my mum, brothers and sisters, one of them being my twin. I got to visit ‘Spin a yarn’ and enjoyed some time with the knitting group who meet there. I unexpectedly sat beside someone I had previously met more than 20 years ago at a natural dye class on Dartmoor. I spent a delightful morning revisiting Coldharbour mill, now a working museum in Uffculme on a very chilly day. I reluctantly crept past a class of weavers on the top floor of the building studiously working at their looms. I couldn’t resist buying a few skeins of the yarn from the shop (although choice was limited).

                                           Coldharbour mill
  

                                                           Carder

                                            old spinning frame

                                                     Loom

                                            Weaving a Devon Tartan

                                                    Bob

                                            Glassmaking in Bovey Tracey

The weather was pretty good for February with only one really wet day. The effects of January’s torrential rain in Devon were still apparent.
Our two children managed to fit in a trip to Glasgow to visit two of their cousins and London.
I was reminded of how far away I live after 30 plus hours of plane travel, but on arrival a beautiful sunny morning in Christchurch made me glad to be home.
   

  

There and back again

So much for posting whilst overseas. My phone went into a 'no service' tantrum after leaving the fair shores of NZ and has only now come back online.
So the 3 week visit to my family is now a memory although the jet lag lingers on.
I didn't get to visit all the woolly places I planned but did attend two knitting/crochet groups and visit an old mill as well as fit in a little yarn shopping.
The weather for a February in Devon was mostly pretty good and I'll post a few photos later on when I have time to sort through them all.
I did get to knit on every flight and carried my knitting around every airport in my hand luggage. I saw a fellow crocheter at one airport sitting nearby.
Below are photos of Tottiford reservoir and Coldharbour mill.

Natural dyeing

Although I enjoy dyeing with chemical dyes and can achieve an incredible array of shades and colours, I still love my time spent fiddling with my natural dyebaths. Whilst the yarns are 'hurried' through the process of synthetic dyeing and I can achieve 10 or 15 kilos in a day, dyeing with plants and natural dye extracts has to take on a slower pace. The yarns need to be mordanted first in a separate process and benefit from a few days for the mordant to mature on the fibres before taking their slower wallow in the dyepot. Dyeday considerations include ambient temperature in the dyehouse, controlling the heat source so it doesn't 'overcook' the colour, testing the PH levels of the liquids, allowing the fibres to steep in the dyepot as it cools down, applying an acid or alkali finish to alter colours, keeping track and recording processes so that colours can be repeated (if I'm lucky), and mistakes avoided. Experimenting with different fibres, as even different types of wool yarns will alter the colours, and finally washing the yarns with a neutral PH detergnt and rinsing well

The alpaca yarns in this box for example take the colour in a soft way and not only appreciate more time spent in the dye liquor but also benefit from being left to cool overnight in the dye and to achieve a deeper saturation repeating a second dyebath to layer more colour onto the skein.

 Surprisingly, natural dye extracts have been around for sometime but are now much more widely available. Compared to collecting your own plant material they can be expensive. They are quite concentrated and a little goes a long way. Like other dyestuffs you can exhaust the colour from the extracts by reusing each dyebath. They do extend my colour choices and cut down on the time and energy required to extract the dye from  plant material.
Did I mention that I love the smell from these dyepots including the indigo aroma.