More Dyeing with Woad

While looking for something else, I came across two skeins of wool that were treated and packed away in the aftermath of The Moths and The Move. As I had also spotted some more woad in the garden, and Easter Sunday was such a lovely sunny day, I decided to do some more dyeing.



I did the same basic recipe as I had done two days before But as you can see it has come out slightly different again.




I also tried to get pink again but ended up with a very pale blue. I have no idea why that isn't working, perhaps not enough alum, but too much alum gives the wool a slightly harsh feeling.


It doesn't really matter what colour it comes out as, because we can always use small amounts of different coloured wools to make interesting things. Now all I have to do is find my carders and oil up the spinning wheel!

Dyeing with Woad and Stale Urine

Our terrible experience with moths last year resulted in having to track down every single bit of wool fibre in the house, and either boiling it, freezing it, treating it with chemicals, throwing it out, or in some cases doing all four. After treatment I had to put all wool in sealed bags with moth killing papers inside. This as you can imagine has put my spinning and weaving on the back burner for now, not just because I am trying to protect what is left, or that I had no time to spin while dealing with the moths, but also because after we had dealt with the moths we had to move out of the house to have the underfloor heating replaced! We had quite a traumatic year last year!



Rather than put everything in storage and live in rented accommodation which would have been very expensive, and we only just had enough money to replace the heating pipes, we decide to hire a portacabin to live in, and a shipping container to put all our belongings in. Ram and I had no problem fitting all that we needed to live for three months in the portacabin. All Ram needs is his computer, the TV and hard disk recorder, and someone to put a bit of food on his plate. A bed is helpful, and that fitted in perfectly to the cabin, but the one thing that it didn't have was a toilet.




Luckily I had an old commode chair that I rescued from someone who was about to take it to the tip, and we had a potty that fitted the hole perfectly. Although we could use the toilets in the house as we had given instructions to the builder and plumber that one toilet had to be working at all times, when it was raining, or at night, or even indeed when the men were working in the bathroom area, it was easier to pee in the potty, and dump it in a bucket outside.

Then came the question, what do we do with a bucket of wee! The first thing that came to mind was the compost bin. Lots of people urinate in their compost heaps, not because they have come back from the pub drunk and their wives won't let them in the house, but because it helps make better compost.


However, we also knew from watching Tony Robinson in The Worst Jobs in History that urine was used in the dye industry. Unfortunately I had foolishly packed away my favourite dyeing book, A Dyer's Manual by Jill Goodwin. Luckily I was able to get hold of her daughter and she told me what we needed to do. It is very similar to the way we did things with the chemical method, but instead of using sodium hydrosulphite we added bran and stale fermented urine to a bucket along with the water containing the woad and washing soda.

We then put the lid on and left it in the sun to ferment. After a few weeks, we decided to check on it and see if it worked:





We aired it that day, and found out just how pungent the smell really was! We had to stuff paper up our noses, and stand up wind. Strangely, the chickens seemed attracted to it though, and every time we opened the bucket they were there trying to stick their heads in! I had to wear my old lab coat and nose plugs as the smell even penetrated clothing.

After the initial few times, we had a spell of very wet and windy weather, and then we had the move back into the house. It bucket got left at the bottom of the garden, as no one really wanted to air the wool again. Eventually I took it out and left it in the rain and sun for a couple of weeks until the smell subsided enough that I could bring it inside to wash it properly. Although it started out being quite blue, because it got soaked for a long time in the bucket without airing it, it lost its colour.


The results were spectacular, not in colour, but as a learning experience, it is one that no one will forget in a hurry!

Dyeing with Woad

Natural dyeing was something that came out of combining my interest in spinning and weaving and home education. There is nothing like a little magical dyeing to teach chemistry!

I have been growing woad for several years now. It is classed as an invasive weed in some countries, and I was hoping that it would give that other invasive weed in my garden, stinging nettles, a run for its money, but so far it hasn't worked; we still have far more stinging nettles than woad, and the dye from stinging nettles is not nearly so spectacular! Woad also has medicinal properties, and our chickens have been self medicating by stripped off the leaves on the woad plants on the patio. Luckily they can't get into the veggie patch where I most of my woad growing.

Woad is a member of the brassica family which includes cabbages and mustard. I haven't dyeing with cabbage, but mustard does give a wonderful yellow. Woad though, when it comes to dyeing, is in a whole different class.

Ok, here is the science bit! Woad has molecules that absorb light because it has lots of double bonds. This means that some of the the electrons can effectively spread across the whole length of the molecule in a strange quantum mechanical process. The significance of this is that if the incoming light (the photon) has a wavelength similar to the length of this double bonded chain then the photon can be absorbed and in the case of woad this is very easy - so pretty well every photon of red light hitting the molecule is absorbed giving you the intense blue colour.  

Unfortunately the woad molecule is a lousy dye in itself because it is not very soluble. However, if you raise the pH and either give it a reducing agent, or alternatively raise the pH and let some bacteria at it, then the molecule can be reduced - electrons are added to it - and it loses its colour and becomes very soluble at the same time. The reason it loses its colour is essentially that the double bond in the middle is broken and this means the molecule has two much smaller regions of double bonds - this means that only ultraviolet photons now match the length and the absorption shifts away into that part of the spectrum. This reduced form is a white form of woad. It is the perfect dye precursor because you can easily saturate your cloth with this material as it's so soluble, and when it's exposed to air and dries out, the oxygen in the air plucks off the electrons, oxidizing it back to the blue form. Since this is not soluble in water, the indigo is now entombed in the fabric, and unlike many natural dyes, it is “permanent”.

Now, to the practical bit. We used the reducing agent way this time. Last year we tried the bacteria method by using stale urine, but we didn't fancy doing that again. However, I will post up that story another day!

We picked the leaves, tore the ones the chickens didn't eat into shreds, and poured on boiling water (woad is temperature sensitive and you don't get good results if the temperature gets too high) to scald the leaves. We let that sit for a while, then strained the liquid and squeezed out all the juice. We added washing soda (alters the pH) and with an rotary hand wisk set about beating the water until it no longer had blue bubbles.







The temperature is supposed to be about 50 degrees Celsius and because it was a hot day we barely had to reheat it before adding some sodium hydrosulphite (the reducing agent) and leaving it to sit for a while. This resulted in a yellowish green clear liquid.






We then added the wetted wool (I haven't got round to spinning it yet so it was in the form of raw fleece) trying not to disturb the dye too much, let it sit for a while longer, and then the magic began!














After washing the wool, we set it out to dry, and I embarked on a second batch (I don't have pans big enough to do it all at once), and then decided to try to revitalise the vat, but in a way that is supposed to give a pink. I thought it was by raising the temperature, but while I had the pan on the heat I reread the book and it was not temperature but alum, a common mordant used in dyeing, that had to be added! So with a quick dig in the larder, alum was added and the result is the batch on the right:




It looks grey when on its own, but beside the blue of the woad it does have a pink tinge. But then this is the excitment of natural dyeing, you never know how things are going to turn out!




This page on woad has more details on how to dye with woad as well as how to grow it.


I found some spun fleece on Easter Sunday, and some more woad in the garden that the chickens didn't get, so I will post up some more photos of that later.

Woad-es Me!

I have been complaining that I haven't been able to get out in the sun very much in these last few days. I can't stray too far until Ram wakes up, which has been at 11 o'clock recently, and then by the time I have read aloud to him for an hour or more, fed both of us and do a few chores, it is about 2. We have managed a few minutes outside, but usually he wants to go back inside and for the last couple of days we have been catching up on recorded TV.

Someone asked if I couldn't just leave him to watch on his own and go out into the veggie patch on my own. There are two problems with this.

First of all, I like to watch these programmes together so that we can discuss them afterwards. Purposive conversation is a very powerful tool for home educators. I also like to watch many of these programmes too, especially the science ones. We very rarely watch drama.

Secondly, Ram like to be around someone. He doesn't have to be interacting with them, in fact often we sit at our computers not speaking a word to each other, but he does like to have someone close by. Luckily in an open plan house that isn't too hard as I can be 'in the kitchen' while he is 'in the sitting room'.

But today I wanted to pick the woad for the annual woad dye. Ram was playing Minecraft and was happy to stay inside, so I took my bucket down to the bottom of the garden followed by the chickens. Five minutes later there was Ram, wondering down the garden looking for me!

It worked out well with him chatting and keeping the chickens out of the beds with plants in them, while I stripped the leaves off the woad.

So he proved my theory. He does need to be close to me. But I also managed to get outside in the sun, so I guess that is a win win situation!

More on our woad dyeing another day. I still have one batch in the pot!