Dyeing With Acorns!

 Last week I happened onto a video about dyeing  with acorns.  I remembered seeing lots of tiny acorns under the live oak trees in the church parking lot SO the third time I went to the FamilySearch Center after that I remembered to bring a bag, a broom, and a dust pan.  I picked up half a bag of acorns, left them in the back of the truck and went in for my shift at the FSC.

When I got home later that day I brought our large dye pot into the kitchen from the garage then brought in the acorns in the bag.  I picked out a few of the sticks but poured everything else...acorns, leaves, and even a few bugs which grossed me out...into the pot and filled it with water. After turning the stove burner to its lowest heat I set the pan on the stove.  One bug had survived the bath and jumped out, ran across the stove top, and disappeared.  Ick! (and I really do mean ICK!!!!  I could not find i)t.  After the pot came to a simmer, I let it alone for an hour or so then shut it off leaving it to cool overnight.

The next morning, (with bug still missing) I put in a longish rope of Lonk sheep breed roving and brought the heat up to simmering again.  I had put the roving in a mesh bag to keep any acorn tilth from getting into the fiber.  It did work, in case you want to know, no smutty stuff in the fiber.  The fiber simmered for an hour then I shut off the burner and let cool overnight.

In the morning I could barely wait to see if we got a nice color.  WE DID!!

Here is the beautiful brown!  I just love it.  So much love that I decided to put in all the rest of the Lonk roving  and see what we could get at a second dyeing from the same pot.  Here it is:

You can see that this looks lighter brown, and it is still wet, so we shall see tomorrow. I will let it cool down overnight then rinse and set to dry.  Even if it is much lighter brown, I do love it.  I might try again next year...or if I pick up more acorns, I might try again this year with some of our Thetford Roving.  So pleased!  Pretty soon the natural dyeing experiments will come to the top of the list for carding on the drum carder and spinning...though I do have to say I need to get better at spinning first...you will be the first to know how that turns out.

Those Orange Mushrooms As Dye...

Today was a very busy day.  Those orange mushrooms in their own fairy garden that I showed you yesterday were calling to me.  I was so afraid the weather would change again and I would be unable to harvest them and turn them into dye....so after supper I went out with my stroller (to keep me upright!), a cardboard box, a 5 gallon paint strainer bag, and a pair of garden gloves that I put on before I picked even one mushroom.  

Since I do not know specifically if these mushrooms are safe to handle, I felt very strongly about not touching them.  When I got to the lawn I found that multiple mushrooms had already started molding and going by.  I did not collect them.  I will let them go back into the ground from which they sprang.

Even though these mushrooms are on our own lawn, I still did not harvest them all.  When I had about as many as I though I should collect, I went back into the house, emptied one of our dye pots--a nice stainless steel pot with a glass cover that is ONLY USED for dyeing, even though it is only natural dyestuffs I am currently using--and after cleaning the pot I filled it about 2/3 full of water then set the bag of mushrooms into the water and set the burner heat to medium low, covered the pot, then went to my wonderful VERY elderly blue platform rocker to do some knitting for a while.  (After about four rows I realized that I had forgotten that I was supposed to be decreasing every other round.  Rats!  So I took out those rows and decided to check the dye pot until I recovered my equanimity after that faux-pas...)

The wool fiber I used to put in the pot as a sample was 5.6 grams of Lonk Wool.  Yes, Lonk!  Look it up.  ("The Lonk is a British breed of domestic sheep. It belongs to the group of black-faced hill breeds of northern England.)". 

So I lifted the bag out of the water to see if there was any color.  About 30 minutes had passed so I was pleased to see a sort of dark brown-y orange liquid...SO I put the bit of Lonk fiber in the pot.  In another ten minutes or so I will turn off the heat and let the mushrooms and wool sit together overnight.  I look forward to morning!!

This is the pot with the paint strainer bag and in the top of the pot, that little non-bag hump-y looking thing  is the fiber.  I repeat: I look forward to the morning.

++++++++++++

On a totally other subject:  today I was serving with a friend in the FamilySearch Center.  I spent most of my time learning rather than forwarding our family history.  I started with the front page of The Family History Guide. There are a number of short videos that I watched then moved on to click on a link, then another, then another.  THERE IS SO MUCH THERE! (Actually thousands of articles and links, etc)  If you think you don't know enough about doing family history research, this is the website for you.  If you think you know all there is to know about doing family history work, this website is for you!  You are wrong!  There is so much more.  SO MUCH.

I won't tell you about what I learned because it is all still swirling around in my brain.  Suffice it to say that this website is a wonderful blessing to everyone who goes to it...from the rankest beginner, even if you have not even begun family history work...on up to the most certified credentialed researcher.  Later on this year I believe we will begin holding The Family History Guide workshops...not classes because no one can know all that is there.  We will work on family history together starting with projects and goals, and moving on one step at a time.

By the way:  The Family History Guide is not an app to download; it is a free website accessible via your own device.  The Family History Guide also allows you to work through the projects, goals etc with the focus you want.  Let's say you have an account at FamilySearch, a totally free global family tree website....you can focus your work and projects on FamilySearch.  Perhaps you have purchased an Ancestry.com account, or acquired a free account...you can focus your learning on Ancestry.  You can also focus on FindMyPast or MyHeritage.  So great!  I am so enthusiastic.  I was part of The Family History Guide many years ago when they first started (2015!) and even then I knew it was a good thing.

That is it for today!  Mushroom dyeing and The Family History Guide!  Two very different things but both a big part of this day.

Best wishes to all.