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A few of us got together Saturday here at the farm and dyed with indigo. I prepared the stock in the morning and we made a vat at noon. I had a few skeins of dark gray yarn, Diane had two skeins of oatmeal Icelandic from her flock and Maryanne brought some raw fibers of mohair and wool in mesh bags. We had great success, the vat had good PH and reduction; we had to correct it after an hour of dipping, but that gave us extra time to visit. Dyeing with indigo really is a patient process. The dips can be as little as 20-30 minutes apart or as long as a day, it’s such an individual experience, as the number of dips determines the shade of indigo desired. In the villages of far away lands there is usually one indigo dyer. He can manage up to 100 or more vats all the time and if the village or group moves, so does the indigo dyer. We did two to three dips yesterday and I did one more on Sunday. Each of us are allowing the fibers to rest for 24 hours and then begin the after dye process of a vinegar soak and lots of rinses.
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This is a picture of a Bogolanfini mud cloth that I saw at the Earthues studio. It was purchased in Mali, West Africa. The women create these pieces across months of time; they sit on the ground, perhaps a small child in their laps, while they paint strips of cloth with mud which comes from the Niger River, rich with iron. The cloth most often is initially soaked in the leaves from certain trees and the tannins react with the mud to create the black coloring. Negative space design is the unique feature created from this process. The designs are personal to each woman who creates them, a journal and a private one at that. Isn’t this piece of cloth a work of art, rich in tribal heritage and design?
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For whatever reason I could not get the pictures to download from the gradation day so here they are…. a view of the Lake Washington ship canal on my way to Ballard one morning, a table discussion of dye pot results and fibers in a pot of weld.
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Today was our last day. We all arrived weary and bleary eyed, no way near as tired as Michele , Kathy and their crew…..they really have put an intense amount of energy into our week here and no words could possible express my awe and gratitude. Depth is my only thought, feeling and emotion. It was an intense week of working, sharing space and learning. Today was indigo….I was so delighted to have actually practiced the art for the first time and with success! We paired up so we could dip our gradation skeins from yesterday along with some overdying of our first day with hankies, scarves and ayate. I paired up with Katey, the resident dyer at a farm in Montana and Karen, a wonderful woman who is fortunate to live in Ballard with her husband,and be a dear friend of Earthues. We three had some great fun, as did the other pairs, dipping our fibers and oxidizing and rinsing to see such lovely changes with the indigo. Then the group, with a great amount of help from Michele, Kathy and Coby, labeled and tagged each of the skeins from each color gradation and each of us received a set of 17 wool sample skiens and 12 silk sample skeins for future reference. One moment of awe came as I was leaving and Coby was documenting some samples that she had dyed with the exhaust baths from yesterdays gradation dye pots. One was the most beautiful pale lilac yarn….it was just the color I had been looking for all week and there it was, at the very end, quietly resting! An ahhh moment! I will spend at least my flight back East tomorrow, pouring over the yarns, silk scarves and hankies and ayate, recollecting and storing the information while it is still fresh. This has been a wonderful, enriching and bonding experience for each of us, both individully and as a family of dyers. This is what you come away with after a workshop with Earthues; the dyes are spectacular, they speak through the colors created and the commitment Earthues makes sets the sail to drive us all forward in color, creativity and success!
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By the time I got back to my room last night it was too late to make an entry. It has been a real whirlwind day and evening schedule. Thursday we all converged at Earthues by 9:45AM to finish Wednesday’s project with our raw dyestuffs. We had dyed silk hankies, scarves and ayate and they needed to be rinsed, dried and pots cleaned, notes made for each dyepot; the ups and perhaps downs of what had taken place. We then presented the colored items to the table for review and discussion and then each of us took away our pieces, some of which will be over-dyed in indigo today. After lunch each of us paired up to work on gradation dyeing with both wool and silk yarn. This time we dyed with the natural extracts, rather than the raw matter, so the process took much less time. The extracts are just as pure and natural as the raw matter, the difference being all the preparation has been done by the grower, rather than the dyer. Therefore the dyer has the luxury of working with the same dyestuffs while at the same time eliminating a sometimes 24 hour process of first grinding, soaking blending, straining and extracting the matter prior to adding it to the dyepot. With the exception of the wood dye extracts, Earthues extracts are prepared into extracts by the growers in the villages and regions where the raw matter is grown. Michele has direct relationships with these farmers and pays close attention to insure nothing is added to the extracts.
After our dyepots were finished we all walked down Ballard to a wonderful Thai resturant, 12 of us took to the bar for happy hour where we drank exotic gin drinks and a feast of appetizers from Satay to something I can’t pronounce but loved! This resturant also has a historical site within it. In the basement is an opium den, which of course is no longer used. All we could see was the stairway descending to the den which has a great big iron gate on it, stairs that were very worn, a wall of candle wax that had dripped from candles for years and then a dark turn out of sight. Some who have had the opportunity to tour the den say it was very dark with little cubbies and long benches. The Ballard district is steeped in history, it’s in the streets of brick and the buildings, a most fitting place to teach and foster the ancient ways and workings of natural dyes; Earthues.
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Today things have started to come together. It takes a few days to start to feel at home..I know the bus line to the studio, where to get a good meal, a morning cup of coffee…all that stuff. I got to the Ballard district early enough to take a walk up and down the street…it’s a great shopping district, with small shops full of funky, artsy, hip things. There are lots of bars, eateries, a place called Tractor that serves up live music. It reminded me of The Boston Tea Party back in the 60’s in Boston. It had great tee shirts worthy of take home souveniers! Above is a photo of part of the Earthues shop. Class began at 10AM with 2 hours of teachings by Michele on raw dye stuffs such as cochineal bugs, madder root, osage bark, weld, quercitron bark and rooibos tea! Michele shared various silk, cotton and wool fabrics and yarns dyed with the different dyes while showing the effect mordants have on the fibers as well. Then we set about the project for the day which was to dye a controlled number of silk hankies, ayate (cotton mitts to use in the bath)and one long silk scarf. We had two mordant variables and 8 dye stuffs. We spent the afternoon working on that and when all the dye pots were exhausted of dye we left the fibers to set overnight and went out for a nice dinner at Lombardi’s, just up the street. We reconvened again for a few hours of slides from Michele and Kathy’s trip to Mali last August. They shared their tales travelling in that area of West Africa and the process that is used in creating Bogolanfini mud painting on cloth. This is an example of exceptional mudcloth painting.Weary but full of thoughts and visions of color on fibers I am signing off until tomorrow!
