Thursday, July 12, 2007

Dyeing With Lichen

I saw in a book that you can dye yarn with lichen. It comes out a lovely lavender color. I was entranced by the photo, so when my husband was in northern Michigan recently I asked him to bring me a little lichen.



Before the yarn can be dyed, the lichen needs to ferment in a solution of ammonia and water, and you need to stir it several times a day. In the olden days they used stale urine instead of ammonia, so that's an improvement! It starts out a murky brown and eventually is supposed to turn red. Well, it's been nearly 3 weeks now and it is still brown!



I am hoping that it will turn red soon so I can dye my yarn!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Susie -
The color that you end up with depends on the lichen species you start with - and some of them don't dye at all.... Fortunately, the most common ones do seem to have dye-stuff in them, yet the reds and lavenders are the hardest to produce. The most common color is a warm golden brown; it's the dye-stuff used to make the browns of traditional Harris Tweends, and imparts a wonderful woodsy fragrance that lasts the life of the wool - it's particularly noticeable when it's damp. And for the browns you don't need to ferment the lichen, nor even prepare the wool in any special way.
David in Bloomington, IN