Turquoise & teal/fresh indigo

Time to post the wool pictures! I would call the 2 and 3-day soaks teal, not moss, but everybody has a different way of naming colors. In this neck of the woods, most moss is brilliant tree-frog green.

First photo--the original light gray Romney, and the 20 minute soak.

Second photo--1, 2, and 3 day soak, from left to right. I can't really see much difference in the 2 & 3 day soaks, and the 20 minute and 1 day are not much different either.

Everything I've read so far on the subject of fresh indigo on wool & silk is that both the turquoise and green colors are fast to both light and washing. How cool is that?!

So today we went to the Fiber Action Day at Robyn's for a little while to play. I'd read about pounding the indigo leaves, so I picked a few, big & little, and took two of the silk hankies. Robyn makes paper and has a lithopress--so we used it instead of a hammer.

We sandwiched the leaves inside the folded hankie, then folded a paper towel and sandwiched the hankie in it. You can see both the hankie and the paper towel in this photo, plus a card Robyn did with some red sage flowers thrown in. We could have gone on forever running out in the yard & grabbing more flowers, but I had to leave.

Later, at home, I tried pounding the leaves with a hammer. I need a lot of practice with that method to have it come out as nice as the lithopress.

We did learn 2 important things--the older the leaf, the better. The smaller, younger leaves gave green with the barest hint of blue. And it takes a while for the blue to develop.

Submitted by Eileen Hallman