Dyeing with Cosmos

Posted on September 30, 2026 by Robin

Cosmos flowers are gorgeous and the cosmos dye is one of the most reliable and easy-to-use natural dyes I have found.

Bright orange cosmos flower with green leaves behind.

I have grown cosmos in my dye garden for at least three years. I don’t plant them now. They are already growing by springtime, and at that point there are so many that I need to thin them aggressively.

Bright orange and yellow cosmos flowers after picking.

I pick off the flowers every three days or so to keep them flowering. I use some myself and I dry the rest to package for sale.

I wanted to do as valid a test as I could for this year’s cosmos collection. The three pots have two skeins each–Brown Sheep Co. Nature Spun wool yarn and Timm Ranch wool yarn. Nature Spun is U.S. grown and spun and Timm Ranch is even more local, five miles away.

These are the yarns in no particular order after hanging them to dry.

I’m glad that I kept such good track of the yarns and the process because I was surprised by what I found. Each pair of yarns in this photo were in the same dye pot. The darker yarns are Nature Spun and the lighter yarns are Timm Ranch. They all had the exact same treatment. In fact I had tied each pair of skeins so they stayed together through the whole process including the final rinse.

Every time I picked flowers I weighed them fresh and dried. I used all those values to calculate the ratio of dry to fresh flowers and found that dried flowers are 18% of the weight of fresh flowers. If I want to use 100% WOG (weight of goods) I would use 10.2 grams dried flowers for a two ounce skein. To dye with 75% WOG, use 7.65 grams, and to dye with 50% WOG, use 5.1 grams dried flowers. I wound 210 yards from cones for each skein, based on the yards/pound of Nature Spun yarn. The actual weight of each Timm Ranch (TR) skein was 2.3 ounces for 210 yards. I used the actual weight to calculate the amount of flowers for each pot.

Here they are grouped by type of yarn. I can’t see a difference between the 100% WOG and 75% WOG dye pots. The third skein of each group (50% WOG) is somewhat lighter, but not by much. That dye pot had little color left in it at the end. It looked as though there was still dye in the 100% WOG pot and after I finished rinsing these six skeins I added a four ounce skein that was already mordanted.

That four ounce skein is the one at the top right in this photo.

For more fun with cosmos try shifting parts of the skein with a dip in base or acid. This was a previous batch that I dyed. These are all TR yarn and the skein on the left is right from the dye pot. The middle two were dipped in a dilute lemon juice solution and the two on the right were dipped in a solution with the addition of washing soda. Yay!!!

The previous batch of cosmos dye flowers are sold out. I will have the new ones at Lambtown and on the website sometime next week.

Today on the Farm

Posted on January 18, 2024 by Robin

There was a lot I wanted to accomplish this morning before people came for a dye day. So when I woke up at 5-something I got up. I went to the barn for chores.

The sunset really was this intense this morning.

Every so often the Wednesday Weavers meet in person instead of just on Zoom. I know this isn’t Wednesday, but it was the day that several people could come for dyeing. I had planned to wind some warps to dye, but ran out of time after catching up with email and computer stuff and hemming Year to Remember blankets and photographing them.

This is a custom blanket for the birthday year and place of the recipient. Each color represents a 10 degree range of the high temperature for the day and I weave two threads for each 365 days of the year starting with January. This customer chose her colors.

These are three more blankets on that same warp. In this case, they represent 2023 in Vacaville and show how the stripe pattern will be the same for a given year and location, but the colors can be completely different. These will be listed on the website when I have time.

This is one of the three blankets in a “lifestyle” photo.

I think seven people came for Dye Day. I don’t do this for this group as an official class. They have all become friends and I can provide the space and materials to have a fun day. Fortunately we avoided rain today and even had a bit of sun at times. Usually we choose to do either protein fibers or cellulose because they use two different dyes and procedures. This time I got it all out.

I ended up dyeing some chenille warps that I found in a bag when I cleaned out the dye corner a month ago. These are four 7-yard warps of 4 to 5″ wide each. I think I must have wound these years ago to use up white and light colored yarns that I don’t usually use for my chenille scares. The narrow width means that I intended to wind solid colors to mix with these painted warps when they go on the loom.

After we finished I finally came to the house to sit awhile and immediately got a text from Dan to say that there was a sheep with a coat problem and the other sheep were all panicked. I found April with the coat neck behind one front leg with the rest of it wrapping around underneath. She couldn’t get her foot away from the part on the ground so obviously wasn’t walking correctly. The sheep would panic and run away from her. But she wanted to be with the rest, so she’d follow.

That is one reason that I am not a big fan of coats, but look at the fleece underneath. We are only three days away from shearing and I wasn’t about to risk this fleece at this point. I had changed coats a few weeks ago. The point of changing coats is to go up a size so that the fleece doesn’t cot (felt on the sheep). But I guess this one had a leg strap that was too loose and eventually April got tangled up in it.

I found another coat of the same size. I wanted to tighten up the leg straps. Here are the tools.

The solution is to tuck a small rock under the coat and hold it in place with an elastrator band.

Now the coat fits just right.

The day isn’t over. I need to do chores right away and then I’m presenting a slide show to a weavers guild over Zoom. Got to go.

Keeping Busy on the Farm

Posted on September 30, 2017 by Robin

I’m keeping busy.

Most of the photos are from yesterday but this was a few days ago. I like this view.

Morning chores. Do you see the grass on this ewe’s back? The dallisgrass is tall right now and it’s sticky. (From the web: Once dallisgrass seed heads ripen they can be infected with an ergot fungus. Infected seed heads are black and sticky.”) It is so strong that it trips me up when I walk and get my feet stuck under it. The sheep are coming in with it draped around their necks. They are dirty because all the dust sticks to the dirt. We’ll need rain to get them clean again.

The sheep were going into this paddock on the right. I pulled the net fence out of the dallisgrass and put it back in so that it tipped the other way so hopefully they don’t get their horns in the fence.

There is a 3-wire electric fence here that you can barely see. I stomped down the dallisgrass on the side of the paddock they’ll be in so that the fenceline is more visible. The only way this fence works when the grass is so tall is that the flock is used to the configuration of the paddocks.

The ewes don’t even want to venture in when it’s that tall. They walked in and then came back to this part in the lane where they could graze normally.

Catalyst-Buster

The rams spend most of their time right now at this fence looking for the ewes. At night there are always a few ewes hanging around here. Tomorrow is the day, boys.

A good contrast of lilac and black and white coloring. Also typical 2-horn and 4-horn contrast. That’s Catalyst on the left and Buster on the right.

1019-dyed yarn

This photo is from a few days ago. These are yarns I used as the warp for two shawls that I just finished weaving. There will be photos of them after they are washed. These are dyed with weeping willow and hollyhock.

More recent dyed yarn. Weeping willow on the left and coreopsis on the right. The three shades are successive runs through the same dyebath. All that color from 8 ounces of flowers!

Eucalyptus

I set up this pot outside. Eucalyptus getting ready to add yarn.

I am moving onto plans for a sunflower series of chenille scarves for my upcoming show. I finally got to the warp dyeing part.

There will be more photos as I progress with these.

Warp chains–two scarves each.

While I was dyeing yesterday we got a hay delivery. Eighty more bales to go in the barn.

Redbud leaf

Color inspiration next to my dye table. Redbud leaf. It is incredible what you can see when you look closely.

Ginny in her usual behavior. He’s not going to throw it, Ginny.

Dyeing with Davis Spinners Guild

Posted on October 23, 2016 by Robin

I like it when guilds want to hold their meetings at my place. I usually get to those meetings!

Today, DSG member, Jen had offered to set up several natural dye pots. We used several heat sources to heat the dyes. Jen brought all the dyestuffs along with plenty of pots and jars and we all dyed sample skeins of wool.

Pomegranate rinds.

oak-gall-dye

Oak galls.

onion-skin-dye

Onion skins.

peach-leaf-dye

Peach leaves.

black-walnut-dye

Black walnuts.

A watched pot…

jens-cotton

While waiting for the pots to cook we chatted and spun. Jen spun brown cotton directly from the bolls that she grew herself.

madder-dye

Time to check the yarn. This is madder root dye.

Removing fiber from one of the pots.

Jen had wood shavings from several exotic hardwoods and extracted the dye by soaking them in vodka. (She wondered about what the guy in the store thought when she asked for the strongest, cheapest vodka in the biggest quantity that he had.) We used one pot to dye with all five of those extracts by using half-gallon jars in the pot. red-heart-dye

Look at the color of the Red Heart!

peach-leaf-dye-2

Here is yarn dyed with peach leaves coming out of the pot.

These are the yarn that I dyed. From left to right: oak galls, black walnut, Red Heart wood, peach leaves, onion skins, pomegranate.

The dogs were allowed to join us after awhile. Ginny, ever hopeful that someone will throw a toy for her.

Thanks so much to Jen for organizing this and bringing all the equipment and dye. And thanks to the Davis Spinners Guild for being such a fun group!

Fire & Sky in Chenille

Posted on January 9, 2016 by Robin

The Artery is having a show called A Family Affair. We invited members’ family to include artwork in the January show and I invited my sons and DIL. They entered photos and I planned to weave chenille scarves to accompany the photos.

The vibrancy of the photos inspired my idea for the scarf colors. I didn’t want to just choose yarns off the shelf. For one thing I didn’t have the right colors, but the main problem was that I didn’t want stripes. I wanted to have colors that flowed in to one another over the length of the scarf. That means starting with white (usually) yarn and dyeing it.

Oops! Not enough white or off-white chenille yarn on the shelf. I had enough of that for two warps of two scarves each. That would be one warp for Chris’ fire photos and one for Matt and Kaleena’s mountain photos. I wanted more than that so that some could be “practice” warps. More about that later.

I also assumed that I had dye in the colors that I wanted because…well just because…just like I assumed that I had white chenille in the shop. I got the box out of the garage and pulled out all the containers that had yellow or orange or red (fire scarves) and blue or (mountain scarves) in their names. I was OK for Fire. I had wound the two white/off-white warps but wanted to start with something else to try out the colors.I still have some warps leftover from my Yarn from the Box project in colors that won’t sell. I used these yarns with the plan that I would eventually dye the warp. Now was the time. I started with yellow but it didn’t cover the colors very well so this warp went to oranges and reds.That was the “practice” warp. Now it was time for the “real” one and I decided to use just these colors.You can see the yarns that I used weren’t all the same because I didn’t have enough of any one shade. Here is where my photo documentary of the process has holes. This was a cold, damp day. I was bundled up in overalls and Carhart jacket and wool layers. I had footwarmers in my boots but I had to keep switching from warm gloves to rubber gloves, neither of which lent themselves to taking lots of photos. And it was getting late in the day and I was starting to lose the light. So no more photos of these warps after dyeing. I wasn’t satisfied with the dye job on the white warp so I wound another but this time used yellow yarns because I didn’t have anymore white. I dyed this in those same colors. IMG_2895_medium Dona was at the shop the day I was trying to get these warps to dry. She took this photo of them hanging near the heater. Back to the dye day. These were the blues. It was getting late so not many more photos.Here is one of the Mountain Sky warps. 948-951 chenille scarf I wove seven Fire scarves (two were finished the night before the show so aren’t photographed here) and five Mountain Sky scarves. 951-2 951-1 949-1 950-2 I will do another post of how the Artery show looks.

Dyeing with Cochineal

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Robin

Last week my long-time friend, Irene (owner of Cotton Clouds) visited with new friend, Rocio. Rocio is an expert natural dyer and she showed the rest of us how to dye with cochineal. We started in the theater (aka garage) to watch a PowerPoint presentation about cochineal.Cochineal is an insect that lives on a particular species of cactus. It is harvested and dried.The red color becomes obvious after the dried insects are ground.

These are some of the scarves that Rocio has dyed.

Dyeing with cochineal is a multi-step process and those steps differ depending on whether you are dyeing protein fiber (wool, silk) or cellulose fiber (cotton). Participants were able to dye both.

Preparing mordant bath.

Squeezing out fabric.

Mordanted scarves and sample pieces hanging to dry.

Adding ground cochineal to the pot.

Stirring one of three pots we had going. These pots simmered while we moved on to the next step.

Rocio showed us how to use varying concentrations of mordant solutions to create different shades of color. From two “mother” solutions, one with iron and one with alum, we ended up with nine different concentrations.

When stamped on fabric you get those shades seen in the squares.

When the cochineal pots were ready they needed to be strained.

Fabric was dyed…

…and rinsed.

Leftover dye was saved and now is in my freezer waiting until I have time to use it.

Rocio and Irene with some of the scarves dyed that day.

Since I was the hostess I didn’t have time to dye scarves but I did make a sample using the different mordant concentrations. Rocio says that if I wash this in a wheat bran solution the gray areas will turn white. I need to try that.Happy dyers at the end of the day. Oh..dogs were there too. Look at Rusty’s blog for photos.

Odds & Ends…or what do I do all day?

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Robin

I am always behind, but this year I feel more behind than ever in the weaving department. I read the blog of a production weaver I know and she commented that any weaving she does now through the end of the year is “extra”. Everything for this season’s sales is finished. What? I should have woven my scarves and blankets LAST January? I thought about it. I also thought about it in March and July and August and September. I knew that I’d get to it in October. What have I been doing when I should be weaving? Here are a few examples beside the obvious sheep farming, Lambtown, etc.

Last week I hosted a field trip of middle school home-schooled kids and their families. We spent a couple of hours in the barn and at the shop. After lunch I guided them through a needlefelting project. They all made up their own designs. This is one student’s work. Cute, huh?

I taught a Learn to Weave class a couple of weeks ago.

Here is the scarf woven by a brand new weaver. She used Zephyr Jaggerspun yarn and doubled it in warp and weft. It turned out great!One of the students couldn’t come back on the second day of the class and she finished her scarf today. This is a close-up. She used Jaggerspun Maine-Line yarn. I taught three students in a Rigid Heddle Scarf class, which, by the way, I will offer again once in December. No more other classes until January. This is the blackberry jungle growing (for those of you who know the farm) just north of Faulkner’s pen–in fact part of this IS the fence-line for Faulkner’s pen. There is an engineered septic system under those shorter blackberries that is supposed to be maintained and inspected every year. This is what I did on Sunday after working another several hours on the final Lambtown reports and finances. There is still a lot of blackberry work to do but at least the septic guys can get to the valve covers. Farm Club was here all day on Saturday and helped with the list of chores on the clipboard. We didn’t get to all the barn cleaning, but did a lot of other stuff. Maybe I’ll ask Rusty to write a post about that since he hasn’t done much writing lately.It’s the time of year that the pomegranates need to be picked or they will split (if we ever get any rain that is).

When I take the dogs for a run across the road I see all the black walnuts going to waste. Here is what to do with them. Boiling black walnuts.

Add white yarn.End up with brown yarn.

Maybe I’ll get to the loom tomorrow…after I take my kids to the airport.

Color Everywhere I Look

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Robin

It’s been awhile since I wrote a blog post–at least on paper…well, on on the computer. But you know what I mean. I write a lot of them in my head but they don’t always make it here. So I was looking at my latest photos to see which in-my-head blog post to put here and these are the things that caught my eye.

The dye class that I taught last week.

The v-shawl class that I taught last week.

Socks that Jackie made for me but it hasn’t been the season to wear them.

The color wheel class that I taught at Lambtown on Sunday.

Georgia O’Keefe’s Purple Petunia which is now on the loom.

But when you think you’ve found the most fabulous colors of yarn, fiber, and dye, you walk outside and see this:

A sunset from last week.

I think I need to find yarn in these colors.

Rainbow Dye Class

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Robin

Six people and a dog joined the fun in yesterday’s Rainbow Dye Class.

Lamb Festival

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Robin

The Lamb Festival (used to be Lambtown) was last weekend. I was so busy that I didn’t get very many photos of the event. I have been on the Board and organized the classes for 3 of the last 4 years, but I have already given notice for next year. Someone else can have a turn…maybe someone that doesn’t have quite as many things going on as me. I had a vendor booth, taught, a class, managed the registration table, and showed sheep all at the same time. How? Thanks to my good Farm Club friends and others. Jacki, Shelby, Kathy, Tina, and Anna all helped. Shelby showed the sheep with the help of my husband. Too bad we don’t have photos of that. Granite, the ram lamb that won Reserve Champion at Black Sheep Gathering received a Champion ribbon although I’m not quite sure how the divisions were set up. Here are a few photos.

This knitted vest was awarded “Best Item of 100% Jacob wool”, sponsored by meridian Jacobs. Isn’t that gorgeous?

And here is some beautiful Jacob novelty yarn.

My friend, Nancy Jane Campbell, did a fantastic job of organizing the Sheep to Shawl contest and the Spinning Contests. One of those was a spinning triathlon which included blind-folded spinning as well as spinning with rubber gloves.

The Lamb Festival was on Saturday but we had addional classes on Sunday, three of which were held at my place. While I taught a weaving class and Nancy Campbell taught knitting at the shop, Rebecca Burgess set up in the barn and taught Natural Dyeing. Here are some photos of the class samples.

These are yarns that Rebecca brought with her. Rebecca has a fascinating message and you’ll hear about it in future posts. It’s too late now to explain more but if you google Fibershed you’ll find out about it.

And what was happening at home? I put these 4 ewes in with Savor before leaving for the Lamb Festival and when I came home they were all marked. I think my sheep are ready.

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.

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