Picking Daffodils to Dye With and the Effect of Alkaline pH

This is the month when daffodils are everywhere in Wales, among the woods, along the roadside and boxed in bunches on the supermarket shelves. 
While my companion, Elinor Gotland, and I, were strolling into town, I pointed out some particularly bright yellow ones growing on the verge.
"When those daffodil petals have drooped, I shall come back and do some dead heading. Should be plenty of colour left in them to dye a ball of wool."
"You daring devil. A midnight raid in your black balaclava, is it?"
"Oh, why you have to dramatise everything so, Elinor? I'll bring the secateurs one morning. Everyone knows picking the faded heads improves a clump of daffodils. It channels their energy back to building up the bulb, instead of into setting seeds."
"Everyone but you knows picking the town council's flowers can get you arrested. It's callled criminal damage, Beaut."
"You're having me on."
"I'm not. There was something in the newspaper about it."
"What, you mean I could get locked up for dead heading those daffodils?"
"Well, you might get off on a technicality. If not, I'll come up the prison on visiting day and you can show me your new tattoos."

I wish I could get the slugs locked up for eating my daffodils. The pickings in the garden were barely going to dye enough wool to make Elinor an Easter Bonnet, til Puffin Produce came to my rescue. Their farmers grow vegetables and daffs in Pembrokeshire, to supply supermarkets in Wales. The daffs are sold in bud and there are always some that flower too soon for the day the bud picking teams come round. Instead of allowing them to flower unseen in the fields, I was very kindly invited to drive out west and pick as many daffs as I liked, returning to Bridgend in triumph with three bags full. 

In gratitude, I shall always buy Blas Y Tir potatoes and leeks, which is no hardship at all, they are excellent. Well, ten days ago, I was thanking the team at Puffin Produce and rejoicing in this marvellous start to the March project from the Dye Calendar. Sadly, things have gone tits up since. Thinking some daffodil dyed wool yarn might tempt the shoppers to my stall at the Merlin Festival in Carmarthen next week, I bought a 1kg cone of merino double knitting yarn, skeined it up into 50g hanks and took over the bath to cold mordant the lot for 24 hours with 8% alum. For the first dye bath, I simmered a whole kilo of daffodils for an hour, left the flowers in the pot overnight and sieved them out next morning.

Now I am quite sure that alkalinising the dye bath does really strengthen the colour you get from daffodil dye. I'm just not absolutely certain that the alkaline brightness wouldn't diminish if a daffodil dyed knitted item was washed repeatedly with a wool wash, which is pH neutral. This concern grew sharper when I imagined how awful if somebody bought my daffodil dyed wool and then that happened to their knitting? Testing a sample of my first dye bath, the existing pH was actually acid. Adding dissolved soda ash to alkalinise another sample made its pale colour jump to neon yellow. Well, on balance, I thought I could legitimately bring the pH of the whole bath up to just slightly alkaline and use a high ratio of daffodils to weight of wool to get a good colour. Previously, using alkali, I have had a deep golden yellow from a ratio of twice the weight of petals to wool.

With a whole kilo of daffs in the pot, I added only 250g of yarn, simmered it for an hour, left it overnight, put it in the spindryer and hung it up for the dye to set strongly before rinsing. Even with a four to one ratio, the colour was not looking powerful. A couple more skeins dyed in the afterbath were paler still. No matter, I had masses more daffs. A second dyebath with 2kg petals was used to dye only 200g wool. The colour was stronger, but without significant alkalinisation, even this ten to one ratio didn't give half as strong a daffodil gold as I remembered. The photo shows, from the left, the four to one ratio, the afterbath of that pot, then the ten to one ratio. Wondering if I had got the mordanting wrong, I added alum to pot two and tried an all in one dye of some silk and merino roving which I planned to needlefelt into Easter chicks. Didn't make a difference, those chicks are going to look anaemic, still, at least it was reassuring to know all that mordanting had not been a waste of effort. I've put the other skeins of merino away for some dyeing later in the season, when hopefully, my weld seedlings will have flourished. 

When I was rinsing all the skeins after a week of curing, I put one to soak for an hour in a strongly alkaline solution of soda ash. Here it is while damp, next to a rinsed skein that did not have an alkali soak. To see if the brightening effect would persist, I gave the alkali skein three prolonged rinses in fresh water before drying it.

The colour has stayed perceptibly stronger, but to be confident of its permanence, I would have to knit up both skeins into two striped samples and put one through a wool wash cycle in the machine a few times. Knitting has not been on the cards this week. The sun has shone, the world has warmed up and in the mild air, some of the local daffodils are starting to fade and one of the local viruses has been proliferating wildly. Elinor Gotland came home to find me and himself in bed this afternoon. She was quite electrified and started in with some salty innuendos, til we sent her off to town to buy aspirin, lemons, honey and more tissues.

Several Effects of Iron Solution on Onion Dyed Wool and Cotton

If you save onion skins for dyeing, it is remarkable how quickly the stock builds up. Since experimenting with onion dyes in January, my stash had re-accumulated so much as to take over a whole corner of the kitchen. Time for some large scale projects. The biggest dye pot just about held 100g brown onion skins, which I boiled up and sieved out, then used the fluid to dye 200g bulky Cheviot wool yarn a warm orange. The afterbath gave a medium shade to another 100g and then a pale shade to a final 100g.  Adding a good slug of iron dissolved in water to the dye bath, I reheated a 50g skein of each shade of orange for half an hour, finding the iron modified the strong colour to a dark khaki green and the paler skeins to soft brown and grey.

Though iron modification or 'saddening' of plant dyes usually causes an obvious colour change, I was very taken by the contrast between this bright orange and dark green. Onion dyes are substantive, which means they will dye any natural fibre without the hassle and expense of mordanting. 

Having acquired a cotton, double thickness table runner which weighed about 400g, I planned to dye that with the 120g brown onion skins still cluttering up my kitchen and then make prints of leaf shapes on it by dipping some brambles and ferns in iron water, rolling them into the cotton, tying up the tube into a firm bundle and then simmering. The first part of the plan went fine, the cotton took on a deep orange after a long simmer and soak in my fresh dye bath. The iron printing was not such a clever idea - within half an hour of simmering the rolled bundle in hot water, I could see the iron saddening had already seeped through the double layers of thick cotton in a blotchy and unappealing fashion, so I whipped it out, getting only slightly scalded in the process. 

Leaving it to steam and drip dry, I went to cheer myself up with a walk round the garden, pleased to find so many of the spring bulbs were coming into flower.

Then who should I meet, strolling down the path towards me, but my long absent companion, that star of the stage and toast of the West End, Elinor Gotland.

"Hiya Beaut, alright are you? Cup of tea would be welcome."
I was too startled by her outfit to do more than hug her and put the kettle on. Once we were settled on the patio, Elinor explained she was just up from London for a couple of days, while her theatre company guest starred in the St David's Day celebrations in Cardiff.
"Nice hat."
"I've been hounded by the paps and so pestered by fans wanting selfies with me, I decided to travel incognito." I blinked at this, but Elinor was in full flow. "Ah, home. How my soul has yearned for these tranquil hills." She noticed my eyes were now bulging from their sockets. "Anyway, quite a few of the Blewe Belles have gone off to visit relatives in South Wales, so I thought I'd pop over and see how you were getting on. Still plant dyeing, is it, Beaut? What on earth have you put in that grubby lump of cloth?"
"Onion dye with iron prints."
"Well, what are you doing still mucking about with onion skins when it's March and there's daffs galore in the Land of My Fathers? Why aren't you rejoicing in Welsh Heritage and saluting Dewi Sant with some patriotic daffodil dyeing? Oh, if you only knew the pain of hiraeth."
I ignored the hoof she had raised to her forehead.
"Well, I like to see plants flowering in the garden and the daffs aren't likely to fade til we get some warm weather, here in wonderful, wet, wintry Wales."

The iron leaf prints weren't a wild success. Indistinct splodges, more dark grey than green. What with Elinor swanning around in her Welsh Lady costume reciting bardic poetry, I felt the pressure was really on to prove the value of that leftover brown onion skin dye bath. 

Remembering an interesting effect I had from painting iron water onto a cotton vest that had dyed a disappointing beige with red onion skins, I boiled up another tired white M&S vest and it came out of the brown onion bath a rich, though uneven, russet orange. I put it in the spin dryer and set to work while it was still damp. Dissolving 10g iron sulphate in a litre of hot water, I stirred the brew and started to paint it on to this cotton vest with a finer brush than I had used on the beige one. The initial lines spread a little, then turned a good green before my very eyes. Though I had expected the pattern to disperse in the wash, the beige vest has had several runs through the 30 degrees machine wash cycle and the iron marks have stayed where they were put. Hope the same will hold true of this orange version, I was really pleased when I'd finished it.

"Come and see, Elinor, I've painted my onion dyed vest and it looks great. Look, I can be artistic, too."
"What you going to title that, then, Beaut? 'Muddy Pond with Tadpoles' perhaps?"
"Those aren't tadpoles, they're just spots and curls."
"No deeper meaning? Not as symbolic, as, let me think ... a daffodil?"
I could see where she was going with this.
"Lots of pictures don't have meanings. Think about all those still lifes of flowers in a vase or bread and cheese on the table."
Elinor just looked at me, sighed and went off to pour herself some good Welsh gin.