Harvest

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Robin

I thought I wrote about my mulberry harvest but I can’t find that post so I’ll include it here. I was going to tell the story about harvesting mulberries and dropping the bowl after touching the electric fence and then trying again only to have a sheep tip the bowl over. I’m sure I wrote this post–maybe its the one that as I as writing I ran out of room in my 15 year old free WordPress account and had to figure out what to do. Here’s that story.

The mulberry tree.

I have learned that mulberries ripen over time and you can continue to harvest for quite awhile. The berries fall off very easily when ripe, but that also means that a lot fall simply because it’s windy. Also, this tree is very tall. If I wanted to be serious about the harvest I’d need to put down a clean sheet or tarp and then try hitting the branches with a long tool of some kind. This is not in a convenient spot for that since the branches hang over either side of a fence and the irrigation ditch is under part of it. And don’t forget the electric fence.

I did end up with a couple of pies after two different harvest times.

The idea for this post started because of thinking ahead to the blackberry harvest. I know that the blackberries are usually ripe during State Fair. It looks like we’re right on track for that because they aren’t ready yet. State Fair is at the end of the month.

Look at the harvest that we’ll have–although I can’t reach a lot of those. There happens to be an irrigation ditch in front of this too. It’s dry most of the time, but it still makes it more difficult to reach the top half of these. We’ll be gone for up to a week after the fair so my farm sitters may benefit most from this harvest.

Here’s an unusual harvest. I list puncture vine seedpods on the website for use in craft projects.

There was an order today so I had to go find some more outside the pasture fence.

Dye plant harvest is beginning. I don’t have time to do any trying right now so I’m weighing the fresh flowers and drying them. This is Cosmos. Some of this is for sale here on the website. That is from last fall, but the dried flowers dye just as well as the fresh ones.

Dahlia flowers are also ready to harvest. They will continue to bloom if I can keep up with watering during this heat wave.

Dyeing with Oxalis and Weld

Posted on June 15, 2024 by Robin

Back to my regular blog posts. It’s time to pay attention to the dye garden.

The weld appeared on its own where I grew weld last year. No work on my part except to clear out the old and dried out plants from last year. I didn’t pay any attention to the weld bed until the plants started to dry out. That happens after it flowers and produces seeds. I’ve never paid much attention to the specifics of growing weld (it is so easy!) and was thinking that it was all annual growth. I just looked up “growing weld” and read that it is a biennial. How did I not know that? I think I’ve had first and second year plants in the same bed and wasn’t paying attention. All I know is that it makes a great dye.

As the plants dry out the leaves fall off the stems. I pulled out some of the dead plants and then scooped up what leaves I could. I also harvested fresh leaves from stems I cut off green plants. I was thinking that the leaves make the best dye, but looking up weld again I realize that people use the stalks and flowers too. This experiment used just leaves.

Two dye pots ready to go. I had two batches of yarn, each 12 ounces So I weighed 12 ounces of fresh leaves and guessed at using 4 ounces of dry leaves. The yarn I usually dye is my Timm Ranch yarn since I have more of it than the Jacob yarn.

Here is the result. I can’t tell the difference between using dry and fresh leaves. That’s good to know. I need to get out there tomorrow and cut a lot of the stalks so I can put them in a safe place to finish drying before all the leaves fall off.

Putting these photos together reminded me that I had done some dyeing earlier in the year. I gathered what was left of the oxalis flowers just before I left for my Texas trip in early April and did a quick dyepot.

Here is the brilliant result, on white and gray yarn.

Next up may be madder. because I finally hacked away most of the tops of plants that have been growing for two or three years. That’s when the roots are ready for dying. I just have to dig them up and then chop them.

Dye Experiments – Hollyhocks

Posted on September 12, 2023 by Robin

Yesterday’s post was all about vibrant orange of Cosmos! Today it’s Hollyhocks. Guess what color the deep purple, almost black hollyhocks give to yarn!

This is the traditional hollyhock I have grown for a long time.

This year two friends gave me a few hollyhocks that look like this. Even the leaves are different. I’ve been calling these “frilly” to differentiate the two batches. These were started later so didn’t flower until later in the season. I’ll get back to this.

Before the frilly flowers were blooming I was paying attention to the hollyhocks growing in the front dye garden. These hollyhocks had come back from last year’s plants or had grown from seed dropped from the previous year. I didn’t pay much attention at first, but it became obvious that the flowers were not all the same color. It’s known that its the dark purple, almost black flowers that dye yarn. But I thought I’d experiment with the others.

I worked methodically to keep the dried flowers separate as they were ready to pick or had already fallen.

I dyed in four separate pots and got these colors.

Then I dyed another four pots. This photo shows yarn from the first batch and the second. The shades are close, but not exactly the same.

Now to the frilly flowers. Would there be a difference? As I did with the Cosmos I figured out weight in grams to use to dye 4 ounces of yarn. I based this calculation on the recipe in Harvesting Color by Rebecca Burgess. She suggests 20 flowers for 2-1/2 ounces of yarn and that recipe has worked well for me. I get a strong dye and there is enough color left to dye another yarn in the same pot. I calculated how many flowers I would need for four ounces and the weight of the flowers when dry. Yes, I counted flowers as I harvested and then weighed them after they were dry.

These are handy pots for small batches of dye. Notice the one on the left says R. Pratt 308. That was my dad and his lab was room 308 at UCSF Medical Center back in the 50’s and 60s. These are stainless steel and I use them all the time for my fiber activities.

Here are the results. I used these dye pots four times. The color lessened each time, but there was plenty of dye left until I got to the fourth time. The first three times I put four ounces in each pot. It was only at the last one that I put in just one ounce. There is a bit of difference in the regular and frilly flowers, but I don’t know that it would be repeatable. I think there is enough variation among different batches that I wouldn’t say it’s due to the frilly versus regular flowers.

Before I dyed the frilly/regular samples I had run a similar test with successive batches of yarn. The first pair here was putting a gray skein and a white skein in the same pot.

Here is some of the yarn listed on my website.

Now I also have the dried flowers ready to sell.

Dye Experiments – Cosmos

Posted on September 11, 2023 by Robin

No matter how many times I have dyed with plant material I feel as though it is always an experiment. There are a lot of variables. After I decided to sell dye material I wanted to be able to almost guarantee an outcome. So I experimented.

Isn’t Cosmos a cheery plant?

Earlier in the year I saw a lot of swallowtail butterflies on the flowers. Now they are full of bees.

These plants have grown as tall as me. I pick the flowers every three days and there are always more. It’s amazing.

Here is one day’s crop drying in the sun.

Every time I picked flowers I weighed the fresh flowers and the dried flowers. I calculated that the dried flowers weighed 19% the weight of the fresh flowers. I found my gram scale so I could be more accurate than trying to work in fractions of ounces.

I did some calculations based on a 1:1 weight ratio of fresh flowers to fiber. I could use 4 ounces (112 gms) of fresh flowers or 21 gms of dried flowers to dye 4 ounces of yarn. I wanted to find out if there was a difference in the yarn color if I used fresh or dried flowers. The first step is to heat the flowers. I heat to 160 degrees, trying to not go over 175 degrees.

After 30 to 60 minutes I add yarn that has been mordanted with alum. I keep the dye pot at about the same temperature for another hour. I find the easiest way to do that is to put a lid on the pot and turn it off. I check the temperature in about 20 minutes and if it is going under 160 degrees I turn the stove on for 5 minutes, bring the temperature up, and then turn it off again. Using this method I don’t have to worry about it getting too hot and boiling. I let the yarn cool in the pot overnight before removing it. Then I can the next batch in the pot. I used these two dye pots three times before discarding the liquid in the garden.

This shows the results of those dye pots. In each pair, the yarn dyed with fresh flowers is on the left and yarn dyed with dried flowers is on the right. There is not a significant difference.

Here is an earlier experiment using the same dye three times. In the first pot one skein was gray yarn and the other white.

Lots of Cosmos dyed yarn.

The result of all this is not only yarn that I can use in weaving but dye products for sale. These are on my website.

Hollyhock Dyes

Posted on July 19, 2023 by Robin

A few years ago I planted the very dark purple, almost black, Hollyhock, Alcea rosea ‘nigra’. By now I’ve lost track of which were the original plants. I don’t know if some flower stalks are from the same plant as previous years or if they are entirely new plants grown from the dropped seeds. I also don’t know if they hybridize. I decided to keep the flowers separate and see how they dyed my yarn.

I have plants with very dark flowers.

One is a bright pink.

Another is a red purple.

Here is the white one.

This is a comparison of them all side-by-side.

When dyeing I followed the instructions in Harvesting Color by Rebecca Burgess, using the proportion of 20 dried flowers to dye 2-1/2 ounces of yarn. I soaked the flowers overnight and then kept at the dye bath at 160-180 degrees for an hour before adding yarn.

I think I kept the second and third in order here. The very dark flower yields green. I was surprised to see the lemon yellow color from the white flowers. These are one-ounce skeins of Timm Ranch yarn.

These are two-ounce skeins in new dye baths. Look at the photo below to see the slightly different shades resulting form the different batches of dye.

This photo has the two different batches side-by-side and you can see some subtle differences. I will have some of these yarns for sale on Saturday at the Fibershed Market at Fibershed’s Pt. Reyes Station Learning Center.

Every Weaving Project is an Experiment

Posted on September 10, 2018 by Robin

I always tell students that unless you are using the exact same yarn in the exact same way that you have used it before, then your project is an experiment. Call it a full-size sample if you want to.

I’m OK with that. Who wants to do the same thing over and over?This is my latest warp. I wound 13 yards of mixed Solano County wool yarns. These are yarns that I have had spun in the last few years from the Timm Ranch, Anderson Ranch, and my own flock. Most were dyed with black walnuts–it’s amazing the range of colors you can get when you use a black walnut dye pot over and over…and over. It keeps on giving color. Look at the range of browns in the photo below.The other thing to notice about this photo is that the last piece woven on it is so much narrower than the others. This was the fourth shawl on the warp. The one before this one is a different weave structure (advancing twill treadling), but the first two are the same structure as the fourth one. The only difference is the weft yarn. The first three shawls were woven with 2015 Timm Ranch yarn on cones. The weft for the fourth shawl is 2016 Timm Ranch yarn that has been dyed. This is a perfect example of the difference that “finishing” yarn can make. Shawl 1049-3 This is one of the previous batch of shawls. It is mostly Jacob yarn but the weft is last year’s Timm Ranch/Jacob blend used from a cone without washing. In this case the width of the warp in the reed was 30″ with a sett of 6 epi. That is very open but when wet finished the shawl is lightweight and has great drape. However, the finished width is only about 20″ (33% draw-in and shrinkage). So I sett the brown warp the same at 6 epi but started with a 39″ wide warp.

Here are the shawls from the brown warp after wet finishing. That one that was so much narrower on the cloth beam? That is the one that is a little wider here. It is now 27″ wide (30% draw-in and shrinkage). The shawl in the same pattern but woven with the white weft is 26″ wide (33% draw-in and shrinkage). The difference between width in the reed and the finished piece isn’t much, but the photos show the dramatic difference in how the yarn behaves while it is woven. Here is a before and after photo. The bottom shawl has been wet finished. The top one is the same weft yarn and same pattern, but has not been washed. Look at the very first photo in this post. You can see how wide open the yarns are. Off the loom they are a little closer, but that looks nothing like it will when finished. An example of trying to take product photos with the help of a Border Collie. Shawl 1059-1-1 Here is one of the final product photos. I noticed a surprise. I started to see a purple cast to one of the warp yarns. At first I thought that I just hadn’t noticed that shade inside while I was weaving. I tried to convince myself that it was still brown.Do you see it here? Another photo of one not washed (no purple) and one washed. I lined up the same warp threads in these two pieces. Depending on the light setting in the photo (and maybe your monitor) you may see it more clearly in one of these other photos. In person it is clearly visible, although it doesn’t stand out.

The answer…that was a yarn dyed with mushrooms from a friend. It must have been rhe soap that caused the shift in color. I love it. Lisa, what is the name of that?

Yellow and Red

Posted on September 20, 2017 by Robin

Here are some recent Across the Road photos. If I can’t have my own 100’s of acres then at least I get to pretend by living right across the road from bigger farmland.

Sunflower in the making.

I have some weaving plans to incorporate these colors but haven’t had time to get to it.

The tomatoes were harvested last week.

These are canning tomatoes.

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This was the aftermath. There were plants at the ends of some rows and at the edges of the field that were toppled over but not harvested.

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I gleaned 22 pounds on one walk and picked up black walnuts for dyeing as well.

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Tomatoes in one pot and weeping willow leaves in the other.

Back at the Loom

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Robin

It’s been awhile since I talked about weaving. There was Texas and the fair and sheep and dogs. But I have been at work in the shop. After the fair and before the shooting of the video documentary I worked for a couple of days cleaning. This was the kind of cleaning where you Throw Things Away…or at least put them in a different building (in the room of a kid who no longer lives here) with the designation to go to the upcoming Estate Sale. After all I couldn’t have a videographer in that shop where I couldn’t even get to a loom without stepping over mountains of boxes and moving piles of Stuff off the bench. Now that the space is organized I feel like my brain is a little more organized too.

One of the major accomplishments was to finish an order that has been hanging over my head for a really long time. These are one full size and three queen size blankets woven out of the customer’s wool. I am anxious to get them shipped off. (And there is still one more custom order–that person may have given up on me but I will contact her this week.) Looking ahead to Fibershed Grow Your Jeans Event in October (same weekend as Lambtown by the way), I wove 6 shawls using wool I had spun last year from the local Timm Ranch flock. One of these will be in the fashion show and all will be for sale. The colored shawls use weft yarn dyed with osage orange, black walnut, and pomegranates. This are how the shawls look just off the loom. I still need to fringe and full them. This is one of the shawls after fulling.

I am teaching a class this weekend called Color on the Loom. I haven’t taught this one before and I am still working on content. I wanted to weave another sample that also included combining weave structures. This is the kind of thing I rarely take time to do. Instead I have been working to meet deadlines. The creative part of weaving (as in everything else) takes time to think, absorb, mull over ideas. This week I took that time–I think it helped that the space was clean.

This is a warp in which stripes of wool alternates with stripes of cotton. My idea was to purposely create a seersucker like effect. The wool is stretchy and the cotton is not. In addition wool and cotton react differently to wet finishing. I wove several samples of all different combinations of weave structure (plain weave, twill, basket weave) and cotton or wool weft. These are before and after photos of just a couple of the samples:Each of these samples are woven the same (plain weave cotton stripes alternating with basket weave wool stripes and vice versa and the same in squares–to the left of the samples). I wove one sample with wool weft and one with cotton weft. This is how the wool one looks after wet finishing (five minutes in the washing machine). It definitely has a different feel but isn’t all that appealing to me. The most dramatic change and the one that I think I’d most like to repeat in a larger project is this one, the simplest. The photo above is plain weave throughout. One end is woven in wool, the other in cotton, and it’s hard to see, but in the middle wool and cotton alternate in bands–like weaving a plaid but without changing color. Take a look at this one after finishing:

This is felted (the next step past fulling). This sample had a five minute wash and then went into the dryer. I love the puckery look of where the cotton and wool alternate in the middle in both warp and weft. I think I want to weave a blanket like that. So I wove these as a color idea but love the texture most.

As an immediate follow-up to that experiment I used the same cotton yarns as in the samples and wove three scarves using the combination of plain weave and huck. I didn’t like that so much in the wool/cotton samples but I love the look in these scarves. These are also “samples” as they each use a different color weft (subtle difference) and are woven at two different setts (the number of warp threads in an inch). So I’ll use them as samples in the class and then they’ll be at the Artery for sale.

I hosted a field trip of Japanese agriculture students on Monday. They have been in this country for several months staying on different farms but have now come together for some class time at UC Davis. We spent most of the time in the barn but I also wanted to show them how I combine my weaving business with farming. I quickly put a scarf warp on this loom and wove and finished a sample to show what the scarves would look like after fulling. Isn’t that difference amazing? I have now finished the scarves. Wait until you see them!Also this week I asked my husband to help me figure out a “warping trapeze”. No I won’t be swinging from the ceiling but my yarn will. I have been wanting to do this for a long time. The idea is that you hang weights off the warp and wind it on smoothly under even tension. The tricky thing is that I need to get the warp yarns to go through a raddle to help keep them spaced properly. In most of the warping trapeze photos I see on-line the warp goes through the loom from the front. That won’t work here so I’m working on other configurations. I think this will work out OK. This warp is for more shawls using more local wool yarn (Anderson Ranch). I may use the same pattern as those scarves I just wove. Well, this post just keeps going on and on. I also uploaded this photo. Thinking of what weft I’ll use for the shawl warp in the photo above I got out the dye pot and the wolf lichen that I collected while at Lake Tahoe a couple of months ago. I kept thinking that something smelled funny but I was at the computer and forgot that I had something on the stove. Oops. Fortunately the yarn wasn’t in the pot yet.

One last thing. This magazine came a couple of weeks ago. I knew that my contest entry was in the magazine but I didn’t know that I had made the cover!

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.

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