Natural Dyeing Part 3

Ok, this is really from my second day of experimenting with dyes and techniques, but it is the third post since I already posted Day 1 and Day 3. On this day we did some experimenting. I tried to make the process easier and a bit more kid friendly. I made a crucial mistake though. I did not pre-soak in the mordant. My colors washed away much more and are not as deep as they could be.

Celery Leaves

We started with Hazel chopping some celery leaves. We were hoping to get some green yarn. Unfortunately, it did not seem to work for us. I don't know if the pre-soak would have affected it or not. Half way through the day I added baby spinach with more vinegar and water, but it still didn't do anything. I actually re-dyed this yarn on Day 3. My new method is to put the chopped vegetable, fruit, flower in the jar with the mordant and then add boiling water. This way I did not have to use the stove (I have an electric tea kettle) and Hazel could help more.

Purple Cabbage

The next experiment was really neat. I had read on Poppytalk (which I found through Pineterest) that using vinegar or salt with red cabbage gave different colors. (She does a neat table runner with natural dyed fabrics--I definitely want to try this at some point!) I wanted to try this. This is actually why I didn't pre-soak. I wasn't sure what to do with the salt at the time. Now I have found recipes on how to do it (on Pioneer Thinking). And the neat thing is I was telling a family I tutor for about the experiment and the student I work with said, "Oh, I know why. We just learned this in chemistry class." She was so excited to see a real life application of it. It has to do with the pH of red cabbage. For more information to use as a lesson or possible understand yourself check out this explanation on About.com (plus it is really a neat science experiment there).

Purple Cabbage 1) Salt Mordant 2) Vinegar Mordant

 Look at the different colors you can get with purple cabbage!! I was so amazed. (It might be worth it to try making the green with the ammonia as the mordant. I just don't know if it will work on wool.)

1) Purple Cabbage with Vinegar, 2) Purple Cabbage with Salt, 3) Celery Leaves/Spinach

Since I did not pre-soak with a mordant, I rinsed with a mordant or should I say post-soaked in a mordant. I do not recommend doing it this way. It is definitely worth taking the 20 minutes to pre-soak. Please learn from my mistake!!

Same order as picture above with original colored skein on top.

As you can see the celery leaves and spinach did not change the color for us. Oh, well. Day 3, I had more success with this skein. Hazel had asked to dye some blue, so I'm glad the purple cabbage and salt worked. Next time I will definitely pre-soak though!! My hopes is for a rainbow sweater for Hazel from all this great yarn! When we went back to Drumlin Farm this week I bought two more skeins. I may retry the red cabbage with pre-soaking and I may buy a good natural green dye since none of my experiments worked.

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Dyeing Wool Yarn with Vegetables, Fruits, & Flowers Part 1

While at Drumlin Farm I saw that they were selling yarn made from their sheep's wool. This year I saw an unbleached off-white natural (white sheep) color as well as the greyish color I bought last year (a combination of the black and white sheep wool). My first thought was that would be fun for experiments with natural dyes. I bought four skeins. Then the next week I bought three more after I did some research on dyeing wool yarn and talked to the handworks teacher at Hazel's Waldorf School. She suggested doing sun dyeing with Hazel and using onion skins. So I goggled sun dyeing and found a great blog post on Natural Suburbia. However they used food coloring instead of vegetables, so I kept looking some more. Pioneer Thinking offers some great resources including a list of what to use for each color. Lion's Brand has a neat article comparing colors that you get using a few natural dyes on wool yarn versus cotton yarn. (It got me thinking about what cotton yarn I have that I could use for a different experiment.) I also read several indepth articles on how to make natural dyes. I pinned all of these on my Children Crafts & Activities Board.

So Hazel and I went to the grocery store for dye ingredients. Ok, we went to the grocery store several times for dye ingredients. Mostly because I kept forgetting things or getting the wrong thing and some stores carried items and some did not. I also found some great large jars at The Christmas Tree Shop. I bought three of them so I have been working three at a time. On our first day, we used yellow onion skins, red onion skin and concentrated grape juice. Having read so many instructions, I soaked my yarn in water with a cup of white distilled vinegar for probably about 40 minutes while I made the dyes. I took each of my onion skins and put them in a pan with water (3 parts) and vinegar (1 part). I boiled the mixture and then let it simmer for a bit. Then I poured each one into a jar and put a skein of yarn in each one. For the grape juice concentrate, I put it in a jar with a cup of vinegar and three cups of water and then added yarn. Then we put the jars in the sun for the day.

I think Hazel was excited to do this since she actually was willing to pose in a picture with the jars.

For our second trip to the grocery store we bought more red onion. The skin from one onion was not enough to really do much. Then we went to another grocery store for beets and frozen blueberries (only because I kept forgetting them). We added more onion skins with more water and vinegar to the red onion mixture. The yellow onion skin did not seem to be doing too much to the yarn, so we gave up on it and added blueberries with water and vinegar to that mixture.

The order pictured here from left to right, red onion skins, blueberries, grape juice. We let them sit in the sun for a good part of the day. The grape juice however seemed done so I rinsed it until the water ran clear (I used the hose). Then hung it to dry. Later in the day we rinsed the other two and hung them to dry as well.

The order above is blueberry, red onion skin and grape juice. The grape juice is my favorite color thus far. To see exactly how they compare to where we started.

The blueberry and grape are to the left and then the red onion skin is slightly darker than the original skein.

To add more educational side to this activity you could discuss the history of natural dyeing. Wikipedia provides a nice history on natural dyes. It is interesting to do something that has been done for 5000 years!! Dorthea Calverley also has a nice history more having to do with pioneers of the US. I will be sharing two more days of dyeing (at least) including some more educational ideas.

To see the other days check out Day 2 and Day 3.

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Exploring at the Wildlife Sanctuary and Painting

On Wednesday we had our class at the Mass Audubon Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary. We skipped our class at Drumlin Farm this week since Hazel claimed to feel like she was going to throw up on our way there, however half an hour later she wanted lunch. I'm not really sure what happened, but she seems fine now. Anyway, at the Ipswich River Sanctuary we jumped in puddles and chased the other 3-year olds. Oh, and Hazel made a friend and held hands with her on part of our walk. I took a picture of them, but did not get the mother's permission to post it on line, so I won't. After a short walk we went back to the vernal pool to see if we could see some frogs this time. And we did!! We saw two different ones. The first one pictured above was pretty brave with all the kids around. Then one of them got a bit too close and he jumped in the water, but he stayed where we could see him with his eyes out of the water the entire time.

A little ways down we saw a big bull frog. He had different coloring than the first and was sitting on a log (again until someone got a bit too close).

While checking out the second frog, we saw a fast moving turkey (many of the kids missed it by the pool) and one of the kids found a slug. He even stuck his eyes out for us!

Then it was time to go back to the Nature House for our craft. On our way back through the field we saw the turkey again.

Then for our craft we made bird nests out of air-drying clay and grass. Then the instructor gave us a bird for it.

Then we ran some errands and came home. After lunch we finished our fairy garden and did some painting.

We have been reading the book Brown at the Zoo by Christianne C. Jones. It starts by talking about the colors--primary and secondary and that brown is a tertiary color. It then talks about how you can make it. The book goes through all the things that are brown at the zoo. It is in a series of books about colors. We decided to try to make brown in the different color combinations with Hazel's paints. Basically you can mix the three primary colors or you can mix any two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel (red and green, yellow and purple, or orange and blue). We tried to make different shades by mixing the different colors. Some combinations worked better than others, but it may be the proportions we (Hazel) used.

Then she wanted to do some more paintings from The Color of Us. So we mixed yellow, white, black, and red in different proportions to explore the colors we would get. I let Hazel have a bit more control with the mixing this time.

Then we started over with some new mixtures and got this.

Then Hazel wanted to paint with blue. She said these were blueberries, but I thought it could also be pictures from The Dot by Peter Reynolds. We kept saying we were going to make some dot paintings, but never quite got to them.

Then she asked to use watercolors and she came up with the following. I think she had blueberries on the mind!

Just a reminder that Sharing Saturday will start tonight and you can visit the wonderful posts shared last week still, and Happy Family Times will end tomorrow, so go link up. And I'm still hosting a link party for Mother's Day gift ideas.


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May Day at Drumlin Farm

Happy May Day!! Last year I made a miniature May pole for Hazel's seasonal table. Not sure where it is now. I will have to look for it later. This morning we made this May Day Basket. I used a printable from Fantasy Jr. Hazel practiced cutting so some of the flowers ended up square and we added some flower stickers we had.

For May Day we went to Drumlin Farm. Here in Massachusetts it was a cold, rainy day. Hazel was excited to see the puddles! We really need the rain so it was good to see it, but not a lot of fun with the cold temperatures.

Puddle Jumping!!

In our class today the focus was on hearing. We got there a bit late due to the horrible traffic in the rain. The visitor was just coming out of her cage when we got there. The visitor today was an American Kestrel, because she makes lots of noise.

Things I learned today: birds have hollow bones which is why they can fly. This bird weighs about the same as the glove our instructor had on to hold her; her ears are located at the top of the thick black stripes behind her eyes. Once again she had kestrel wings for the kids and moms to feel as well as an owl wing. The owls wings are very soft on the edges to help with the silent flight. After our visitor we made a fun craft which is perfect for this week and Cinco de Mayo!! A shaker noise toy out of a toilet paper roll and rice. Staple one end of a toilet paper roll shut. Decorate the outside how you want. Put some rice (amount up to you) and then staple the other end in the other direction to make neat shape.

Then we headed to the chicken house. We timed it well because there was still a hen out for another program so we got to pet it.

Then we got to go into the Staff Only section where the chicks are. We missed the hen house last year so we didn't get to see the chicks last year. They had three chick cages with different ages in each one.

Youngest

Then we went to see the newest babies on the farm.

Can you imagine having 11 babies? Oh, my!!

My piglet is piglet weight!

Then class was over so we walked over to see Midnight, the pony. Then wanted to check on the seeds we planted last week so we walked through the sheep and goat barn. All the goats and sheep were inside!

We thought this one was in the best spot in the whole farm! Eating and warm!

We checked our swiss chard, but it hadn't sprouted yet. Oh, well. It has been too cold here lately. Then we went to the gift shop to buy some bird seed and headed home.

Adventures Outside Using our Senses and Imaginations

We spent much of the day outside on Saturday. Hazel has decided that the stuffed llama I got for my first Mother's Day (Heifer fundraiser--Buy a Llama for Your Mama) is a dog and it is Ducky's dog to be exact. Well she has me tie a string on to it as a leash and she drags it all over the place inside and out. Above she is running with Doggy. She would do this and then say Mommy needs to take a break now Doggy and come sit with me for a few minutes and then be off again.

As I have posted we are taking a class at Drumlin Farms on using our senses around the farm in the spring. This week we discussed sight. So today while outside we decided to pay attention to our senses. The first thing we always discuss is the sky--at least ever since we read Blue Sky by Audrey Wood. This book just shows different skies and labels them like blue sky, cloud sky, rainbow sky, etc. So now we always notice the sky and label it. Today was definitely a blue sky day.

Then we got to see a bird's nest--a sparrow's nest to be exact. We have a sparrow family that always nests on our house. So I pointed out the nest to Hazel today.

We also saw and heard lots of birds especially after we filled the birdfeeder.

Taking an idea from Living and Learning at Home (I featured this at Sharing Saturday this week), we drew pictures of what we saw, what we heard and what we felt today. I labeled all of our pictures so we would know what they were--especially Hazel's.

Hazel decided to go barefoot so she felt the grass on her feet as well as the woodchips. She didn't like the feeling of the woodchips.

She had fun filling the birdfeeder and carried the birdseed bag herself. She also liked walking on her stumps in her bare feet. I thought it would hurt, but apparently it didn't.

When we talked about what we see she mentioned the clothesline. I guess that is because we hung the clothes out when we first came outside.  Here are the pages from our journal.

 Then it was lunch time, so we had lunch outside.

Nothing like bringing in another sense to the day. Daddy wasn't home so he wasn't there to complain about having to eat outside. Hazel really wanted to so we went for it. After lunch she wanted to go for a walk. She decided she wanted to go in her stroller. I'll share in another post about our walk.  Then when we got back, Hazel was still a bit tired so we made her a place to rest.

After resting she wanted to play train. So we took the train to the zoo.

Hazel spots a red kangaroo out the train window...apparently we are visiting her pen pal in Australia.

She warned me it would be a long train ride and thought I should bring a book. I won a giveaway over at This Cosy Life which included a book, so I grabbed it.

I read the first chapter aloud with many interruptions to ask "Are we there yet?" per Hazel's request. Then she wanted to hear the first chapter again. Then I read the second chapter and at the end of it we were there and got off the train.

Then she played hide and seek with the sun. The sun went behind some clouds and she asked me where it was. I told her it was playing hide and seek so she went off to seek it. When it came back out she claimed to have found it. Then she went to hide from the sun.

I guess since she is in shade she is hiding from it.

Hazel's Talking Electric Toothbrush--or at least that is what she said it is

Next the chalk came out. She had fun drawing and then asked me to make 3 hopscotches for her. One for her, one for me and one for Daddy. She told me what to put in each box. She also drew two squares. It is the first time her squares actually looked squarish.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Mallard came for a visit. (Hazel had been asking me all day if they would.) We fed them some bread.

Hazel loves feeding them!

They were still out there when Daddy came home so we fed them some more. In fact they may be nesting out there. They seemed to not like us seeing them in one part of the brook.

After that we went out for ice cream--but I'll share that for Tuesday's Happy Family Times post. Hope you had a great weekend!!

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