Natural Dyeing and Socks’ Wool, With Susannah At The Cambridge Farmers Market

I saw Adina and her spinning wheel as soon as we got to the Farmer’s Market.  The tent was like a magnet pulling at  me.

Susannah White, was sitting on a low bench with a bucket of freshly cut indigo plants next to her.  She had picked them from her garden that morning.

I’ve been thinking of Susannah since I met her again at Stephanie Morton’s house a few weeks ago where we were dying with Indigo.  Stephanie dyes with dried indigo, which is different than dying with fresh indigo which Susannah was doing today.

That weekend Susannah and I talked sheep.  Although Susannah no longer has sheep, she still works with wool, specifically  Border Leicester.     She hand cleans and cards it, dyes it naturally, and felts it to make into puppets.

When Susannah told me how she loves the sheen of Border Leicester wool, I thought of the bag of wool I have from my ewe Socks.  Socks died just before shearing and her wool was so beautiful, I cut some off of her before putting her body in the field for other animals to eat.

So I went home and came back with the bag of Socks’ wool to give to Susannah.

When I got there, the tent was full of kids and their parents rolling a small piece of cotton fabric, filled with indigo leaves, between their hands.

I got a piece of cotton fabric and joined them.

The cells of the indigo leaves are filled with two different chemicals (? I’m not sure that’s the right word) and the two different cells have to be broken and mixed together to create the indigo color dye.

First we twisted the leaves, the then broke them into small pieces.  We put the pieces into the wet cloth, added a little salt to speed the process up,  and rolled and squeezed them in our hands and watched the white cloth turn green.

There is little consistency dying this way.  Each leaf may produce  a different color.  The color also depends on how well the plants grew.   This spring and summer were difficult ones for indigo, with widely varying temperatures, then a period of intense heat.

As soon as the plants are cut they begin to oxidize and turn indigo blue.  Unless  you put them in ice water which slows the process.  If the plants turn blue before they come in contact with the fabric, the dye won’t work.

Each  piece of fabric was a different color depending on the leaves, how much pressure we applied and how long we worked it.

Susannah not only knows all about natural fibers and dyes, she knows and shares the history of it.

There are lots of varieties of indigo plants.  The ones Susannah grows originally came from Africa.  In the United States, the knowledge as well as the labor of growing and processing Indigo into dye, came from enslaved African’s.   For many years it was one of the country’s largest export.

Before I left, I pulled out a handful of Sock’s wool from the bag and showed it to Susannah.  Her eyes twinkled and her whole face smiled.  It’s beautiful, she said, and remarked  on the luster.   Then she said she’d make sure I got some of it back after she cleaned and dyed it.

“I’m so glad that you will have it,” I told her.  And I knew at that moment it was what I had been saving Socks’ wool for.