Playing in the ashes

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My brain is currently in soap and lye mode. Between having the honour to judge a lye experiment at Gulf Wars A&S War point (If you wrote that paper, I’d love a copy please! If you know the good gentle who wrote it, please nudge them to share it!), planning to teach saponification at the University of Atlantia in June and also planning to teach soap making at Fruits of Our Labours in May.. well there’s a lot of soap and lye thoughts running around in my brain.

Historically lye is produced by running water through hardwood ashes, to get a very alkaline potassium solution. Lye is not a specific term, but a general term that can refer to sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide. What we’re aiming for is that the potassium carbonate (potash) that is in the ashes to react with the water we’re providing to give us potassium hydroxide. Modern lye is produced from pure sodium hydroxide crystals being hydrated in water, but the process to refine sodium hydroxide into pure crystal form wasn’t established until about 1790, which is solidly outside SCA period. If you are fortunate enough to live where you have marine (not lakes.. has to be salt water here) vegetation to burn for ash, you are likely to get enough sodium for your lye to be mostly sodium hydroxide, which made (and makes) nice firm bars of soap. Soap made using potassium hydroxide tends to never really get firmer than play-doh sort of solid. It washes fine, but it’s not a good solid bar of soap.

Homemade lye with an egg floating to test strength

Generally I get my ashes from a good friend with a wood fired pizza oven, we don’t have a fire place or a wood stove of our own and honestly the bucket I got from him about 3 or 4 yrs back is still mostly full, so I don’t need a refill all that often. That being said, that is not always completely burnt wood, there’s a lot of chunks of charcoal left, and half burnt wood. It’s not a fine white ash of utterly burnt. It works alright after sifting the worst of the chunks out, but it’s not ideal. Leaving chunks of charcoal in your ashes lets charcoal do what it does best, filter things. Including the lye you are trying to make, so you want to take those chunks out.

Yesterday was the first perfect day of spring around here. Warm, sunny and perfect, so we decided to grill burgers for supper. We’re those weirdo folks who have a charcoal grill and after dinner, I was eyeing all that lovely white ash. I have no idea what commercial charcoal is made from, but I decided to operate on the theory that it was probably hardwood and give it a test this morning. For the record, coals about 18 hrs later are still hot enough to melt your plastic colander. I switched to the metal sieve after that.

Whoops. Don’t be me, use a metal sieve.

While just letting ashes soak is not my preferred lye making method, its good enough for a proof of concept. Traditionally you want the water to run through the ashes and be filtered through straw at the bottom of your barrel, rather than a messy sludge of ashes and lye. (Or in my case, the plastic ice cream bucket, and my straw filter layer is a small piece of linen over the hole). I also don’t have ideal pH strips for lye experiments, as mine stop at 9 and lye is in the 13 – 14 range. I wanted these to be more specific over the neutral range, rather than have a wider range. I’ll have to pick up the wider range ones at some point. Still, proof of concept here, and success! The water sat for an hour or so at most, and its reading at least 9 on the pH scale. Found a new source of ash for experiments!

My pH strips are inadequate for this task!

Practice, practice, practice

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We were at Gulf Wars this year (for those unaware, it’s a large SCA event in Mississippi, which is a heck of a drive from Ealdormere. We don’t get down there very often.) Because it’s very far away, it has a different collection of people who attend, and so we get to hang out with and learn with and meet all sorts of people that we might not normally. Which is, quite frankly, amazing.

I have long dabbled in bobbin lace, before the SCA even. It was part of what brought me to the SCA and I was sure that was going to be my Thing. (Spoilers: I still dabble, its not the thing I’m known for. Let yourself be open to trying new things. You may not even have met the thing that will be Your Thing yet.) Still, I was excited to find an intermediate bobbin lace class offered. You see, here’s the thing. Beginner classes abound, for everything. They are easier to teach and well received and it’s good to offer classes to new folks. They might find their Thing! Once you’re past the beginner stage, however, the class offerings get slim. Not only does it now require a more skilled instructor, but your student pool is tiny. I am not a beginner at bobbin lace, so the beginner classes aren’t much good to me (heck, I can teach the basics, and I have!), but there’s skills I’d love to have help with.

Like tallies. They are little leaf shapes and they are the bane of most lacemakers (tallies and picots.. they are a pain in the arse, both of them). And this intermediate class was offering to talk about both! I packed a pillow, grabbed a baggie of beginner bobbins, pre-wound with giant (for bobbin lace, size 10 cotton is giant) thread and packed them off to War.

I almost didn’t go to class, there was plenty of other things going on in that slot, but I figured I’d dragged my pillow to war, I was going to use it! Unsurprisingly, I was the only student in class, and there was more than a couple questions about if I realized it was an intermediate class. Once we confirmed that I really was hoping for not the basics, it was a lovely hour of sitting under a shade on a warm sunny day talking lace. When there’s just you and the teacher, there’s instruction, but just a lot of happily geeking out. Another joy of teaching intermediate classes, you already know that you’ve got someone else there who appreciates the subject.

As an added bonus, I even got a couple good looking tallies done! The plan was to come home and practice, but that plan hasn’t survived contact with the Headcold from Hell, nor the post-War busy, but there’s an adage that the first couple hundred tallies aren’t very good, so I’ve got about 198 to go before they really settle in.

Thank you to the intermediate bobbin lace teacher at Gulf Wars, whose name I’ve managed to misplace. I, at least, appreciated a non-beginner class!

Welcome home, Nilec!

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You wouldn’t necessarily know it from reading my blog, but I’m a bit of an off again on again weaver (yes, on top of everything else. What can I say? It’s string!) I’ve long been a fan of the Canadian owned Leclerc looms, and have two already. My beloved Fanny (yes.. get the giggling out now, it’s fine.) who is a 45″ 4 shaft counter balance floor loom and little Dorothy who is a 24″ 4 shaft table loom.

Leclerc has been making looms since the early 1900s, and still does today. They are based out of Plessisville Quebec, and they are a common used loom in Ontario. They still make parts for their old looms, which is fantastic, and honestly, Camilla Valley Yarns out of Orangeville is absolutely a miracle of information about Leclerc history.

So when a friend posted a photo of a little table loom hanging out at the local thrift store, cold be damnned, I headed there at lunch hour. The photo looked like a Leclerc label, but only 2 shafts had me wondering. I didn’t know that they’d made a 2 shaft loom!

I arrived to find that Leclerc had made a 2 shaft loom and it was sitting right there waiting for me. I may have hugged it in the store, and tried not to growl at people looking at her before I could finish buying her. MINE!

A little bedragged in my messy messy van

A little bit of research later (Thank you Camilla Valley!) says that she’s the original version of the Nilec loom, produced between 1957 and 1966. Her 14″ weaving width and wooden shaft frames give her away as being the original. In 1966 the Nilec changed to be metal shaft frames and a 15″ weaving width and they were discontinued in 1984.

She’s in great shape overall, considering her age. Some bent heddles, and some light rust, but she’s fully functional. Two shaft is very limited, she was never intended to be a ‘does it all at home’ loom. Her ad copy states(taken from a 1962 catalog):

Learn to weave on a “NILEC” simply by following the instruction booklet supplied with each loom. In no time you will be weaving the finest fabrics of all kinds.

The “NILEC” can weave any fabric up to 14″ wide, in any technique possible on a two-harness loom. Your friends will be delighted with a gift you weave yourself so surprise them with a scarf, necktie, evening bag, towel or some novelty item on their next birthday.

The Nilec is especially made for you who wish a relaxing and pleaant, even profitable, hobby. It fits in well with any craft programme in schools, hospitals, summer camp, etc.

Your teen age girls will enjoy working on that loom and so will develop their artistic skills. Don’t forget it’s a wonderful hobby for everyone.

This little two-harness loom operates with a crank at the top, the harnesses sliding in grooves. It can be set up by the same method as used in the larger models and is therefore excellent for a beginning loom. It is equipped with 240 of the standard 9″ wire heddles and a standard 41/2″ 15 dent steel reed. More heddles may be added and reeds of all sizes are available. Additional equipment includes on draw-in hook, two flat shuttles and canvas aprons for the beams. The loom itself is solidly constructed for red birch with bass wood harnesses, cast iron wheels and steel dogs.

Leclerc catalog 1962

It was priced very competitively in 1962, coming in at a mere $22.50 (The 4 shaft Fanny floor loom that I have in that 1962 price list is $140.00 just for comparison). By the next price list that I have from 1983, the Nilec was up to $155.00 and the Fanny is up to $759.00. In 2023, a shiny new 45″ Fanny will run you $3823.00 (ouch, please check the used market first. Looms last forever and there’s often lots available used.) I can’t compare the 2023 price of a Nilec, they no longer make a 2 shaft loom, there’s nothing even comparable in 2023.

Weaving on the wap that she came with

Two shaft is mostly limited to plain weave, and 14″ isn’t very wide, but I can confirm that she weaves up just fine. The shed isn’t big enough for a boat shuttle (there’s clearly a reason she shipped with a flat shuttle), but for the amount of cloth she can hold, a flat shuttle is just fine. I’m delighted to have added a third Leclerc loom to my collection!

Hand sewing

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I posted this to facebook and figured I’d pop it on the blog as a quick post to get back in the habit of blogging. So for everyone who is about to read this twice, I am sorry.

I commented on someone’s post in the not so distant past about hand sewing. They were struggling and felt like they were slow and awkward and basically hand sewing was miserable. And I noted that sometimes, it’s practice, but sometimes.. you need to change needles. Not all needles work for all projects. Today while I was sewing, it was exactly that. I am very comfortable with hand sewing. I enjoy it, I find it comforting, I do it often. I’m working with a light canvas right now, and it was fighting me every stitch of the way. So I changed from my usual beloved needle (shown at the bottom.. I wanna say it’s a quilter 9? But I’d have to find the package to be sure, and often I just take the last one to Len’s and hold it up to find more) to a different needle (Sharps 8.) And now my needle isn’t fighting me, it moves smoothly and easily and my stitches aren’t a battle. The needles don’t even look /that/ different, but the feel and function are miles apart. I’m all for practice, but it might not be you! (Also.. needles do dull. If you don’t misplace needles often, it might also be time for a change!)

Two needles, similar but not the same.

What’s in the water?

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I promised in the last post that we’d spend more time talking about various chunks of water chemistry, a very broad overview, as it relates to dye chemistry. In specific, madder dye baths. Well here we are, another post about water. Today we’re going to have a quick look at Total Dissolved Solids, or TDS.

Photo by Snapwire on Pexels.com

I measured the TDS values out of all of my samples with a basic meter (acquired off of Amazon), and gave it a rinse with distilled water between each sample. It was the meter that gave me the least grief throughout the entire experience, so gold star to my little TDS meter.

When we’re discussing things that are dissolved in our water, that is exactly what the TDS measure is. Total Dissolved Solids, which describes the both the inorganic salts and the small amounts of potential organic material present in the water. This could be a while assortment of things, but are usually calcium, magnesium, sodium cations and carbonate, chloride sulfate anions, amongst others. While TDS is often assumed to be a measure of quality, it is less discriminatory than that. It only measures that something is there, not what that something is, nor if that something is harmful, or unpalatable. The WHO has very general guidelines on palatability of drinking water with less than 300 mg/litre being considered excellent, good, between 300 and 600 mg/litre; fair, between 600 and 900 mg/litre; poor, between 900 and 1200 mg/litre; and levels greater than 1200 mg/litre being considered unacceptable.1 In our water survey TDS was measured in ppm (parts per million), which is approximately equivalent to mg/litre. The lowest TDS measured (outside of controls) was sample 37 at 27ppm, which falls in the excellent category and the highest was sample 26 at 559 ppm, which falls in the good category. A copy of my water survey results can be found linked in my google drive.

Inkbird TDS meter

Often, it is assumed that TDS is a measure of hardness, but TDS is too generalized a measure to mean only that. While it includes the minerals that are part of what is referred to as ‘hardness’, primarily calcium and magnesium, that is not all that it includes. The TDS values of the iron samples are a prime example of that (samples 63, 65-68). Those samples are distilled water with the addition of ferrous sulphate, no minerals associated with hard water present and they not only have TDS values, but it is proportionate with the amount of ferrous sulphate added. In our water samples, it is overly simplistic to assume that TDS refers to hardness, but in absence of good detection of other minerals, it is an assumption I am generally willing to make, with caveats. Certainly I do not assume TDS references hardness when the composition of the solution is known (ie the ferrous sulphate solutions). Water in Ontario is extremely variable in hardness, although we do have some of the hardest water in the country, but that is not consistent.2  Madder, as a dye, appreciates hard water, it usually promotes a deeper red colour, although interestingly, we got an exceptional colour from distilled water (sample 60), so clearly no one told my madder bath that day.

Modern dyers, when looking to augment the calcium in their water, tend to add chalk (calcium carbonate) directly, or a crushed up tums tablet or two (which is calcium carbonate, but with handy fruit flavours!), so if you aren’t super happy with the colour you get from your madder pots, give that a try. Calcium carbonate is very mildly basic, so it doesn’t affect the pH of the dye bath to any great extent.

Next up, we’ll have a look at iron, which can be contained in the TDS measure, but is interesting enough to talk about all on it’s own.

References

  1. Total dissolved solids in Drinking-water; Background document for development of
    WHO Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality
  2. Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality: Guideline Technical Document – Hardness

Water Survey results pt 1

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I’m not going to bury the lead on this one, now that I’ve taken my many many skeins of red yarn to show people at last weekend’s Kingdom A&S in Ealdormere, I’m happy sharing it with the blog world too. This is going to be a series of posts over the coming weeks. Starting with the pretty colours today, but then continuing into the water chemistry that affects the dye baths over further weeks. We started that last time with pH, but we’ll also touch on dissolved solids, iron and chlorinated water (and whatever else comes to mind as we go).

I detailed out the premise of the experiment in this blog post, but long story short; in late 2021, I had a hare brained scheme to request water samples from all over the kingdom (and beyond!) to do a selection of dye baths from to illustrate the variation that could be obtained while only changing one variable, the water. Note that photos do not do any of these colours justice, come see my samples at in person events!

Methodology

With 68 samples to work through, it was clear that a traditional ‘pot on the stove’ style of dyebath for each one was not at all going to be feasible. I have used a water bath method to do batch samples before and it is very effective.

For each water sample the pH, TDS and iron content was measured and noted down. The sample then had 600 ml measured into a clean (rinsed with distilled water) glass jar, if the sample contained less than 600 ml, it was topped up with distilled water to a total volume of 600 ml. Each of these jars had 3 g of madder powder added to them. The water bath was set up to hold 15 jars per batch, and the water temperature was held constant at 65C with a sous vide appliance. The dye liquor was brought up to temperature, and then held at 65C for two hours.

The yarn had been skeined off, weighed dry, mordanted in batches with alum at 10% wof and dried. Before dyeing, the skeins were soaked in distilled water to ensure they were fully wet.

After the dye liquor had steeped for two hours, the wet wool was added and stirred with a disposable bamboo skewer. The wool was held at temperature for an hour (stirred again at 30 minutes for Batch 2-6), and then was removed from the water bath after the hour had passed. The wool remained in the dye bath to cool naturally overnight. After 12 hours of cooling, the wool was removed to a drying rack to dry. The wool was left to dry for approximately 10 days before rinsing with distilled water and being left to dry again.

Everything was recorded in a giant spreadsheet that you are welcome to have a look at here.

Equipment

We had a quick look at the equipment that I used over in another blog post, go have a look there for all of my meters and strips and the like. The only addition to that list is my newest toy, a Color Muse colour meter. This little gadget is designed for interior designers to be able to match paint to fabric swatches, but also very helpfully provides a standardized reading of colour. The one that I’ve chosen to use is the CIE L*a*b* colourspace, which is specifically designed for comparisons. More on that in a future blog post, I have done little beyond take the readings at this point.

Results

The main form of showing my results is the photo at the top of this post. I embroidered a map of the relevant section of Ealdormere and then tied a loop of wool in the approximate location of its water. (Linen map, outlines in walnut dyed silk, compass point also in silk dyed with indigo, cochineal and mystery yellow.) The sample cards are a little bit easier to look things up and compare numbers and those are arranged by dye batch, shown below.

We’ve started talking about the water chemistry involved, looking at pH first in this post. We’ll move on in future posts to talk about total dissolved solids, iron levels, chlorine in city tap water and ultimately the results of the colour meter, but I’m aiming for this post not to turn into a thesis. When all is said and done, I’ll gather everything up into one document and stick it on my website such that people don’t have to scroll through blog posts to find the information. For the moment, however, stick around for the serialized version. Questions and comments are very welcome!

Let’s talk plants: Madder

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I’ve talked about dyeing with madder more than a few times. I’ve written up documentation about some of my early madder experiments. I don’t think anyone would be surprised to know that I am really rather fond of playing with madder. So let’s do a little bit of a wander down the botanical path with the plant.

NB. I am a terrible gardener. I managed to kill a mint plant, that’s the level of terrible we are talking here. I do not grow my own. I let professionals (or awesome friends) do that for me and reap the bounty of their labours with gratitude (and/or payment.)

Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Right, we’re talking about Madder. Most commonly, when the word madder is tossed around in the dye world, folks are meaning the dried and ground roots of Rubia tinctorum. Also referred to as common madder or European madder. It is, however, not the only madder plant out there that has dyestuff for us! It’s not even the only madder plant we can buy. The other one that’s easy to find at the dye supplier is Rubia cordifolia. Also referred to as Indian madder, or munjeet. But yet again that’s not the only other madder out there, there’s more! Wild madder, Rubia peregrina and Japanese madder, Rubia akane and there are others in the Rubia family.. but the first two are the most commonly used.

R. tinctorum is a perennial that was cultivated throughout Europe and the Middle East, with the highest quality coming from Turkey, Holland and France. It is native to western and central Asia and naturalized itself in central and southern Europe. Munjeet (R. cordifolia) comes from moutainous regions of Asia, from the Himalayas to Japan and also in tropical Africa. Wild madder (R. peregrina) is a native of Europe, Turkey and North Africa as well as the coastal regions of southern England and some bits of Wales and Ireland. The roots of wild madder are smaller than that of madder, requiring more dye stuff to gain a strong colour than one would require from madder, although that can be mitigated by waiting longer to harvest the wild madder roots (five years, rather than three for R. tinctorum)

Madder dyed wool

All of the various versions of madder have been used since antiquity, with evidence in extant items from Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus vally (approx 3000 BCE) and mentions in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia and recipes using madder are found in the Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis (approx 4th century) Assumptions about which madder was being used are usually based on geography. The East was more likely to be using R. cordifolia, the West more likely to be using R. tinctorum or R. peregrina. Local traditions using local plants, as the Rubia plant family is happy to grow in so very many different places.

All of them contain similar dye molecules, although different plant species have them in different combinations and concentrations. This chart from “The Colourful Past” by Judith H. Hofenk de Graaff is an excellent summary of who has what, with some extra plants that also contain anthraquinones.

Forgive me for being the kind of person who casually drops words like ‘anthraquinones’ in conversation, but in a nutshell.. those are the dye molecules that provide the red colour. For the curious, these are their structures (why this graphic is missing alizarin, I have no idea but it’s below):

Mohd Yusuf et al., “Eco-Dyeing of Wool Using Aqueous Extract of the Roots of Indian Madder (Rubia Cordifolia) as Natural Dye,” Journal of Natural Fibers 10 (March 13, 2013): 14–18.
George B. Kauffman, ed., Coordination Chemistry: A Century of Progress, vol. 565, ACS Symposium Series (Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1994), accessed February 18, 2021, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/book/10.1021/bk-1994-0565.

Phew, okay.. still with me after the brief foray into chemistry? (If you’re interested, the handout for my class on dye molecules can be found here. If you have a virtual event you’d like me to teach it at, just ping me.)

At the end of the day, if you have madder, munjeet or wild madder, you’re getting a dose of very similar dye molecules and just enjoy the ride. All of them function pretty similarly, and the reds are just so much fun to work with. I have an experiment in progress comparing R. tinctorum with R. cordifolia, through a collection of exhaust baths, so look for that coming soon!

Bibliography:

Hofenk de Graaff, Judith H., Wilma G. Th Roelofs, and Maarten R. van Bommel. The Colourful Past: Origins, Chemistry and Identification of Natural Dyestuffs. London: Archetype Publ, 2004.

Dean, Jenny. Wild Color: The Complete Guide to Making and Using Natural Dyes. Rev. and Updated ed., 1st rev. U.S. ed. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2010.

Cannon, John, and Gretel Dalby-Quenet, eds. Dye Plants and Dyeing. Repr. London: Black, 2002.

Yusuf, Mohd, Mohammad Shahid, Shafat Khan, Mohd Khan, Shahid Salam, Faqeer Mohammad, and Mohd Khan. “Eco-Dyeing of Wool Using Aqueous Extract of the Roots of Indian Madder (Rubia Cordifolia) as Natural Dye.” Journal of Natural Fibers 10 (March 13, 2013): 14–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/15440478.2012.738026.

Kauffman, George B., ed. Coordination Chemistry: A Century of Progress. Vol. 565. ACS Symposium Series. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1994. https://doi.org/10.1021/bk-1994-0565.

Water quality and your dye pot

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I’m in the depths of getting wool skeins dyed, and don’t have any of that ready to show to the world yet. Its a lot slower and more complicated to get from water sample to dyed wool when taking measurements at every step on the way, but it’ll be good in the end. Hopefully I can remember to stir the next batch more so they are less blotchy. <sigh> But I digress! There’s three main things I’m looking at in the water: pH, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and iron content (ppm). Let’s have a chat about each of those in turn and today we’re going to chat about pH. There’s a lot of complicated chemistry involved in water, and there’s quite a bit of interplay between all three (and temperature, and and and).. I mean, you can get a whole university degree in water, so know that we’re aiming for broad strokes here and big picture.

The pH Scale of Common Chemicals

The one that most people are familiar with on any level is pH, the measure of how acidic or basic something is. It’s measured by looking at the free hydrogen ions (H+) in the solution. (Inversely proportional, as a note: More hydrogen, lower pH.) It’s a scale that runs from 0-14, with acidic things down low and basic things up high. Pure water is the control, and it sits at 7.0. A few things people don’t realize (or remember from high school chemistry) is that the scale is logarithmic, which basically means that the distance (or number of hydrogen atoms) in going from 7 to 6, is not the same as the distance from 6 to 5. There’s 10 times as many in that second chunk. That’s trivia level content more than super relevant to anyone reading, but if you ever wanted to try and count hydrogen atoms.. well we can talk about new hobbies, hmm?

When reading the WHO Guidelines on drinking water (1) , a pH anywhere from 6.5 to 8 is considered acceptable. Pure water, remember, hangs out at 7 exactly, but there’s a lot of elements that affect the pH without making the water undrinkable. All of us who lived through the pollution filled 1970s and 1980s remember the screams about acid rain and how it was melting away everything, I think. Pollution can affect the pH of water, but by the same token, most ground water has absorbed enough minerals that it slides itself a little higher on the pH scale. (And you pay extra for all those minerals at the store when you buy spring water.. s’okay, they are generally what makes water taste better. Distilled water always tastes flat and weird.)

So clearly everything below 6.5 and above 8 is dangerous, right? Well, not so fast. Where it gets more complicated is that pH alone is not an indicator of safety. Common household vinegar has a pH of approximately 2.8, which is extremely low.. in the same range as stomach acid, but we think nothing of ingesting vinegar (ideally on a nice hot plate of fries.. mmmm.) It is a weak acid, a well diluted acid, generally sitting at about 5% strength. If it was full strength, it would be very dangerous indeed!

Further complicating matters is how pH and other measures interact. pH is extremely dependant on temperature (not much of a consideration for me, all of my samples were at room temperature), and the pH of water can determine its tendency to have picked up other ions. As the pH gets lower, the metals are more soluble.. they dissolve more easily in the water, so there tends to be more lead, copper, iron etc in water that tends towards the acid. We’ll talk more about metals in water when we have a better look at the iron testing that I did and how that affects the dye works.

Water chemistry is complicated and while I knew it was a big field to go poking into, it’s been a fast train into the depths. It’ll take a lot more digging to get myself out of these weeds.

References

  1. World Health Organization – pH in Drinking water (2007)
  2. Safewater.org TDS and pH (2017)
  3. Health Canada – Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality: Guideline Technical Document (2015)

Natural dye gear

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Today, we’re going to talk about gear. Most posts are about how little you can get away with as not to scare off the beginners, and those posts are amazing! (A pot dedicated to dye work, a couple of spoons, a scale. That’s pretty much the minimum. Go forth and be awesome.) This is not that post. This post is about the gadget fond dyer, the one who likes too much information. The water project (I talked about it back in this post.) is pretty much using all of my fun gear beyond the basics, so let’s have a look at what I’m using there.

Alright, let’s break this down by bits. The first thing we’re going to talk about is the weird cylinder thing at the top of the photo. That is my sous vide. It is basically a very fancy aquarium heater, capable of holding a pot of water at a specified precise temperature for a very long period of time. When I am doing large sample sets, I put my samples in jars and then place the jars in a water bath. That lets me do 10 or more samples at a time.. which is a whole heck of a lot faster than one at a time! It is not fast, I will say that about water bath dye work. It takes a lot longer for things to get to temperature than it would if I plunked a pot on the stove, but I also can walk away for hours and know that it will hold at exactly the temperature I’ve set it for, because that is literally what sous vide appliances do. (Not shown: The plastic bin I plan to use to hold my water bath. It’s a short rubbermaid tote. You all know what those look like. Also not shown, the glass jars that hold each sample. They are clean spaghetti sauce jars. You also all know what those look like.)

In the second row of things, starting from the left is a tube of iron test strips. (For things I got off Amazon, I’ve linked to Amazon. No affiliation, no kick backs, no promises that I picked well.) These measure soluble iron, so the Fe molecules that are hanging around waiting to cause trouble (aka react) with things we dye with. They measure in parts per million (ppm) and while I am not fond of colour compare (more on that with the pH strips), they’ve worked fairly well for me in other experiments to this point.

Next in the lineup are my pH strips. This was not the plan. I have a perfectly nice pH meter, acquired from the brew store, and I was all excited to use it. Except that the probe got damage (poor storage at the store mixed with no better storage at my house.. it’s fubar). That’s fine, this pH meter has a replaceable probe for exactly this reason! Probes do not last forever, this is a known thing! Awesome! Oh wait.. it’s only available (right now) in Australia, from a company that does not ship outside the country. Chatting with the Canadian distributer, he asked me to call him if I found any in Canada that he could get his hands on. Right. Thank you supply chain issues. No pH meter. Alright then, pH strips it is.. I hate them. I find them hard to read, the colours are hard to distinguish, and I eternally question their accuracy. Better than the nothing I was facing, but know I am not in a happy pH place.

Next up is my newest gadget.. a TDS meter. Total Dissolved Solids, basically it gives a measure of the hardness of one’s water by looking at the conductivity. Salts and minerals increase the conductivity of water, and so can be measured. Does it tell you WHAT salts and minerals are there? Nope, it sure doesn’t, but it does give a general idea on how much. Not a perfect measure, but gives us a ball park to play in. Which is, honestly, not half bad for kitchen chemistry. I am not set up in a lovely lab with a handy procurement clerk down the hall that I can go request all the bits my heart desires from.. I have amazon and my kitchen. So we’ll manage.

I’m going to hope that everyone reading recognizes a basic thermometer. It clips on to the side of a pot, and lets me keep an eye on the temp of the dye bath. You can tell that it’s seen hard use based on the colour, but it still works fine.

Last but by no means least, are my scales. They are the overlap between basic kit and this one and yes, there are two pictured there. The bottom one measures in grams, and is crap less than about 10 g, but can manage a chonk 7 kg. The top one is my delicate little scale, it measures 0.00 grams, and gets the vapours if you go over 200g. When you work in sample sizes, the tiny little scale is a necessity. (A 6 gram skein would want about 0.6g of alum. None of this is possible on my chonk scale, but the teeny one thinks this is /fine/.) Everything else is fun information gathering, the scales are required equipment.

So there you have it, the extras that I’m growing fond of (other than the pH strips, those are a necessary evil). Questions? Comments? Let me know some of your favourite gadgets!

Water, water, everywhere!

/ Jazmin / 2 Comments

My first major project for 2022 is one that I’ve wanted to do for a long while, and I’m getting a whole lot of help with. How big of a difference does water source really make in one’s dye projects? Well! I decided to experiment with that premise, and asked people to share a water sample from their house. (And barns, streams, lakes..) My reenactment group is very generous and now I have water samples from all over the province, and beyond! 60 samples! I was hoping there’d be 20 or so, I certainly have my work cut out for me.

A messy studio made messier by a lot of bottles of water.

The basic experimental premise is very simple. Keep all the other variables steady (or known at least) and have the water as the main variable. Measure as much as I can about each water sample, to have some idea on what it contains, but then keep the dyestuff, the method, the fibre, the mordanting.. all of that to be the same so that differences can be safely assumed to be because of the water.

Which dyestuff to choose was an easy one. Madder is delightfully reactive to changes in water hardness, and pH and generally is a bit of a fussy goose, so it’s perfect for this. I got a nice big container of R. tinctorium, so that all 60 samples can be taken from the same batch of powder. Natural dyes are variable in and of themselves, from one batch to the next. The growing conditions, the soil, how the plant was handled and the dyestuff extracted all can affect the dye that I’ll be using, so at the very least, this one container should be relatively homogenous, even if multiple batches of madder went into it.

Fibre was also a no brainer choice. I’ve worked up small skeins of 100% wool yarn, all of which has been mordanted at 10% wof with alum. Basic, easy, nothing fancy going on here. Wool and alum. Done and done. The skeins aren’t quite perfectly consistent, they range from about 5 and a half grams to about 7 and a half grams, but I’m willing to be ‘close enough’ on that one.

Grocery bins are eternally handy.

I’ve had very good luck with using a water bath to keep my temperatures very consistent, as of course madder is also sensitive to what temperature it’s dyed at. Basically a large tub of water is heated with an immersion heater (sous vide gadget, I do love you and not just for steaks), and each dye bath lives in its own glass jar within that tub of water. I used this method for one of my earlier madder experiments and it worked a treat. I will have to work in batches, as I can’t fit all 60 at once, but good technique should keep that variable to a minimum.

Then it comes to the water itself, and there’s lots of it. The plan is to grab the pH, the iron content and a general measure of hardness (Total Dissolved Solids) from each sample. This should give me a moderately good idea on what’s going on in the water itself. I will admit freely that it is not ideal that the water has now sat for a good six weeks before I’ve gotten to working with it. (Thank you holidays and general life challenges.) Stale water means that I’ve lost most of the volatile compounds that would have been in it, and any that were treated with chlorine (rather than chloramine), that’s absolutely gone. Some of the unfiltered water has sediment that has settled out while it’s sat, and while I do plan to give each a shake before I measure it, it’s not quite the same as fresh. Still, this is what I have, and the reality of collection means that there was always going to be some sitting time before I used it. So be it, we’ll manage.

So expect more on this project in the hopefully near future! I think I have all of the pieces in place now, so it’s just a question of getting to the doing part.