Green Options

–Don’t forget! Send in your posts for the new Carnival of Green Crafts. Taking submissions now.–

I know that we’ve covered hemp yarn before from Lanaknits and Autumn talked to us about macrame , but it was Leslie’s quest to try natural dye that got me to take a second look at Aurora Silk’s Hemp Yarn.

At first look this yarn from Aurora brings to mind all the stereotypes that Skye talked about when she profiled hemp fabrics. But no it is Not Marijuana.

Hemp yarn is derived from the growth of industrial hemp, a different species of it’s more famous cousin. Industrial hemp grows fast without the need for much pesticides or herbicides. The fiber harvested from the plant is more commonly known as bast. Bast fibers are long and very strong and can be woven or spun to make fabric, rope or yarn.

This week I have been spending a good deal of time in the kitchen, cooking up natural dyes. I am actually surprised that after 7 years of art in college I had never learned to make paints, toxic or non toxic. But after reading Autumn’s post about how to make your own milk paint, I got to thinking even deeper into how to make pigments since the colored pigment can be as toxic as the binder. What I found out was a creative revelation that I can not stop cooking up! My personal criteria for creating pigment/dye is this:

• It cannot be toxic in any way, even if the substance is natural.
• It has to be in abundance and easily gathered in nature (don’t ever take so much that the plant can’t survive or make seeds.)

I totally hit the jack pot when I walked outside to find that my landlady next door has a plum tree with a gazillion plums that had already fallen to the ground and were being eaten by bugs, rotting, fermenting, gushy etc…

The natural organic dye experiment begins…

Supplies you’ll need to cook your brew:

• Water
• Salt or vinegar
• Cooking pot ( a spare that you don’t use for cooking food)
• Measure cup
• Strainer
• White, off white or light colored natural fabric (linen, organic cotton, wool and silk are best)
• Some sort of plant, flower, berry, root, bark, etc to dye with

At the beginning of May I attended the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. It is a yarn lovers dream. A weekend to really geek out over fiber. Really, it was heaven.

One of the things this festival reminds me of is the process that fiber goes through to become yarn. With sheep, llamas, alpacas and goats parading through, it is hard not to recall that - oh, yeah, that’s where my yarn comes from! It is a chance to speak directly to the shepherds and the spinners and gain a better understanding of how the yarn is produced. And Nature’s Palette is one such company that has a handle on the entire production of their yarns.