Dyeing with Weld

My friend Gaerwen had weld leaves to give away a few weeks ago but I only wanted some seeds. I ended up with a huge bag of stalks, which she says may have some colour. We shall see.

Dyeing falls firmly into the category of UFOs (unfinished objects), for which I have started a little support group on Facebook. In this case, it also falls into the category of “things I really must learn to do while following instructions”.

I used the instructions from here with 50 gr of weld, soaked for two days and simmered for two hours. I was fairly certain I wasn’t going to get much colour, and didn’t have ready access to proper chalk, so it seemed wise to do the maximum things from the beginning. After it had cooled, I decided it still wasn’t great, so I dumped in a whole bunch more weld stalks (plus bits of dried leaf), and boiled it for another hourth

I used a mystery roving from my stash (possibly a blue-faced Leicester?). When it came to mordant, I was fairly certain I had alum in the house, but it wasn’t with my spices so bought more. As I was scooping it into a bag, I had a flash-back to buying a large bag of it years ago, from the same grocery chain, but at the far end of the city. At least I only bought a little this time. Add “get all the dye-stuffs together in one place” to my list of unfinished projects! The mordanting instructions I used were for a pound of wool, and I have only 50 gr. That meant lots of complicated math for the amount of alum and cream of tartar. I think it works out to about 3 tsp of alum and 1 tsp of cream of tartar. I simmered the wool in my mordant water for an hour, then let it cool overnight. I then added it to my weld water, simmered it for another hour, and let it it overnight again. After simmering, I was fairly certain this was not going to be a brilliant success. Sure enough: this is the final result now that it is almost dry. It is definitely more yellow than what I started with, but not sufficiently yellow that I will bother with the remaining stalks. Maybe. I suppose I could try another bath and do an overdye.

 

 

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Mustard – a group experiment

I grew mustard in my community garden last year. It was probably about a 2 by 2 foot plot. I finally got around to getting the seeds out of the pods a few days ago. The easy way would have been to cut down or dig out the whole plants, shake or hit them against a cloth on the floor, then winnow out the chaff by tossing the seeds up in a bit of a breeze so the light chaff would blow away. Instead, because I don’t have a large kitchen, I used a mortar and pestle to break the pods apart, then removed as much of the chaff as I could by hand  (and by swirling the seeds in a fine sieve). The result was a stash of about 1/4 cup of mustard seed, after many hours of labour.

I took some of the seed to Upper Canada Village where my friends from DARC (Dark Age Recreation Company) were spending the weekend. Aesa’s husband Rig has made a miniature quern of soapstone, patterned on one from the Viking Age found in Shetland. The museum where it is displayed says it is a child’s toy, but Rig and Aesa thought it might be plausible for grinding spices. Aesa used the quern to grind some of the mustard.

Then she got some vinegar from Aelfwyn, who was making doing cool enamel experiments at the blacksmith’s, and made mustard.

Based on the amount of mustard produced from my little crop, I am now trying to figure out exactly how much mustard I would need to plant to keep my family supplied with the condiment. There are some big variables (how big is my family? Let’s assume it is me plus my two adult stepchildren in DARC, one spouse and two grandchildren). Let us also assume that we get meat at least once a week, and that it is something appropriate to eat with mustard, and we all like mustard. On that basis, I would need a large garden a minimum of 25 square feet, but possibly up to double that size – more if we get more meat, use mustard seeds in things like soups, or really like mustard. If I were to grow that much mustard, I would definitely want to invest in a large enclosed threshing area with a very clean floor, plus sheets and/or baskets for winnowing.

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Upper Canada Village Medieval Festival

Today was day 2 of 3. As always, it has been lovely to spend time with some of my favourite people, doing things we love. In my case, it was trying to tackle some of the many unfinished projects I have been carrying around for years.

I have pretty much finished two large needles and a hair/cloak pin, made a small needle from a Hawthorne, made a finger loop braid headband so I could pin my veil on (thanks to more hawthorns), fixed a spindle that has always been off balance and fixed another that was a little too long above the notch for my yarn, did some spinning, made good progress on my fishing net, fixed a broken horn spoon, and worked on carving a new wooden spoon. You can see some of the finished and partly finished projects here. I’ll take proper photos of everything tomorrow.

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