Sunrise Haven Farm

No lambs yet, though I expect them any moment. I am waiting very impatiently, checking for signs every two hours. The moms don’t seem terribly happy either at this point, they are HUGE and this hot weather is not making them any happier.  It’s supposed to hit 90 today, the weather has gone so screwy this year! On the plus side, the sheep have very light coats now since they were sheared just a few weeks ago.

So while I’m waiting, in an attempt to get my mind off of the pacing (yes I am very truly horribly impatient),  I have been trying my hand at dyeing!  I wanted to use natural dyes - not Kool Aid (yes it does work very well as a permanent dye) or synthetic dyes - so my first tries were done with native central/south american dyestuff: cochineal (a type of beetle) and logwood (tree’s heartwood).  Dyeing is a long process, 24 hours or more, but there’s not really a lot of work involved. I started the night before I planned to dye, by preparing the yarn and the dyestuff.  For the cochineal, preparation involves grinding up the dried beetles into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle, then putting the ground dyestuff into a jar with some vinegar to soak/dissolve overnight.  Logwood needs to be fermented to oxidize it and release/activate the dye. I bought some logwood shavings that had been fermented and dried, and put them into a jar with water to soak overnight, to add more oxygen.  I also started soaking yarn, as you want to put the material you wish to dye into the dyebath thoroughly wet and saturated, so that the dye will uptake into the fiber evenly.

The next morning I got up bright and early to start dyeing!  The dye process involves a lot of waiting - and some STRONG smells - there is a good reason for doing this in a well-ventilated area, even if you are using natural and non-toxic materials!  I began by taking the dyestuff I had been pre-preparing the night before and mixing them into large pots of water, then simmering them for an hour or so.  Next the fibers come out of the soaking bath and go into the dyebaths, and simmer for another hour or so.  Then the pots are removed from the heat, and put outside in the shade to cool down naturally.  After a few hours of cooling I took the fibers out of the dyebaths, rinsed them thoroughly with cold water until the fibers drip clear water, and hung them to dry.  I did second and third dyebaths in the same day - the second ones using the same dyebaths as the first to produce a lighter shade of the same color, and the third combining the remains of the two original dyebaths and re-adding and boiling the logwood I had used originally to extract more color from it.

I spent a full twelve hour day dyeing these skeins of yarn,  plus the time the night before doing prep work.  Started heating the dye pots at 7am and took down the dry skeins (it was a wonderfully warm sunny day, they dried fast!) at 7pm. I must say, I LOVE the results of these experiments, and had a wonderful time doing it.  I am looking forward to trying other colors and materials now that I understand the basic process.