This article appeared in the brochure for fall '99 Taos Wool Festival. Download It Here
La Lana's Dye Harvest Well it's that time of year again, glorious Fall and Wool Festival. We here at La Lana have just finished gathering all our yellows for the year: yarrow, goldenrod, chamisa, marigolds and peach leaves. The dye studio has been awash in golds, bright almost neon shades and pale barely-there tinctures of yellow for weeks now. The aromas coming from the dye pots have been wondrous and heady. Especially the peach leaves which we could almost bottle and sell as a perfume Each of these plants provide their own unique signature shade of yellow. Most of them are awaiting their overdyes with indigo which will then give us every shade of green and teal imaginable. The exception is true turquoise, which we cannot get to from 'here'. 'Here' refers to the wild and wonderful world of plant dyeing.
These plants signal the end of our gathering season for this year.
Our gathering season begins in the spring with the blooming of indian paintbrush, which is a short plant with a wild orange-to-red thick flower. You would think that you could get the color of the flower on your yarn, but no. Instead it gives a golden and very firm beige. Next comes lupine, which is probably the most costly dye of all - even more than cochineal - when you consider that it takes 3 pounds of the flowering heads only for each 1 pound of fiber. Ah, but the color...
Then we have a short break 'til it's time to scour the countryside for kota (Navajo tea). This plant seems to like to travel so we have to travel too. Some years it's thick over here and some years it's thick over there, and some sparse years it's not thick anywhere. The hunt for this one has become a yearly Quest. First we must spot it out, then put a crew together, then drive in the very early morning (it's always during the hottest time of summer) to wherever it has chosen to have it's bumper crop this year. Armed with small, sharp scythes so that we can slice without pulling up roots, we pick pick pick until the sun is too hot to stand another minute. Then it's back to the studio where we wrap wrap wrap in a bagle sort of form so that it can hang, dry and fit in the dyepots. Kota gives us all our beauteous russets and seemingly endless afterbaths stepping down to orange-y sandstones, ochres and finally beiges. After kota comes mullein for the pea soup greens and then on to the above mentioned riot of yellows.
These plants constitute the Native Plant side of our palette. We also use the Exotic Dyes of Antiquity, cochineal, indigo, madder and logwood, to complete our range. We use these dyes as solids on wool, silk and cotton yarns which are either handspun or custom millspun, or as an 'alphabet' with which to create our Forever Random wool/mohair blends for your knitting and weaving pleasure.
KNITTING IN AMERICA by Melanie Falick (Artisan Press, New York, published October, 1996):
A coffee-table book full of gorgeous photographs of just what the title says, knitting in America. When Melanie came to interview us and our various local knitting luminaries she said, "Omigod, why didn't I just call it Knitting in Taos!" She could have, we have so much fiber talent here. The book profiles 30 knitters, spinners, dyers and breeders and also includes 30 new and unusual patterns designed especially for this book.
La Lana Wools and Taos Valley Wool Mill are featured in our very own chapter. In addition, many of the artists who show or have shown with us are profiled, each in their own chapter. They include Katy Blanchard, Donna Brunton, Judy Dercum, Valentina Devine, Louise Parsons, Linda Romens and Lynne Vogel. Some of these artists are responsible for the kits and patterns you all enjoy, including: Linda, Val, Judy and Louise.
