Thursday 23 October 2014

Letošnja šentjanževka - Hypericum perforatum - St. John's wort of the year

Letos sem barvala s svežo šentjanževko samo enkrat. Na vrtu sem je porezala en res velik šop, skuhala in barvala kot ponavadi s to barvilno izredno obdarjeno rožico.
Rezultat je bil - kot že ničkolikokrat - lepo presenečenje. Barve so bile izredno intenzivne. Drugo barvanje (brez čimže) je dalo privlačno vijolično, pa sem dala v lonec še eno štrenico brez čimže, in nato še eno. To so srednje tri klobke na sliki. Šele potem sem barvala spet čimžano volno. In ven ni prišla zlatorumena, ampak še vedno z zelenim nadihom (skrajno leva klobka).
Kakšne tople barve poletnega sonca na volni za mrzle zimske dni!

This year I dyed with fresh St. John's wort only once. I cut a real large bush in the garden, cooked it and proceeded to dyeing with this colour-wise extremely rich flower as usual. 
The results were - as so many times so far - a nice surprise. The colours were real intensive. The second dip (unmordanted yarn) gave an attractive violet (or is it purple in English? I never know)so I dipped another skein in the dyepot and yet another one. This are the middle three balls in the picture. Only then did I use mordanted yarn again. And what I got from the pot was not golden yellow but still had a greenish touch to it (the ball on the left).

Such warm colors of summer sun on the wool yarn for cold winter days!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You dye with the whole plant? So much easier than picking flowers...

Ladka said...

In fact I cut only flowertops and left the plant to bloom again. But this was far from picking flowers only. Sorry for the imprecision.

Leena said...

This was nice to know that you can also use whole flowertops and still get something other than yellow. I have St John's Wort growing here but have never tried to dye with it because I've never had time to pick the flowers (it seemed so much work and so little flowers), but I'll try next summer with the whole flowering tops:)