Lichen Dyeing

At the guild meeting on Saturday afternoon we were lucky enough to participate in a 'group dye-in'.  One or two members of the guild had brought their 'stash' of lichen.  This had all been collected over many years and many years ago when it was permissable to collect the lichen that had fallen off trees - I believe Beech - at quite high altitudes.  I should have noted the name down, but think it might have been Pseudocyphellaria coronata (sticta coronata) as a quick google brought up a description of using it to dye with.

A simple process of adding water to a large pot - adding the bag of lichen (which is re-used for years) and bringing the water to a simmer and adding the clean wool.  10 minutes later taken out of the brown-ish water the wool is now a dark shade of purple!!  And after a quick rinse (no colour comes out though) the wool is ready to dry and use.

We were all allowed to dye up to 2 oz.  Anne and I tried a 2 oz batt of Clun Forest.  It turned out superbly. (The pictures, taken with my phone, do not do it justice)

Some lichen dyed Clun Forest batt, ready for spinning

After drying overnight, I divided the batt into three and quickly spun it into thin singles ready to ply.

Partially spun singles

The result was a just under 2 oz skein of 3 ply in a rich purple.  There are slight variations (nothing like in the pictures - that's the camera) which in the 3-ply form a nice subtle graduated mix across the whole skein.  I also had slightly different amounts on the three bobbins so kept going until all the purple was gone (I had started on top of some Clun Forest white singles) making some nice purple and white yarn.  Good for a feature somewhere.

The finished skein

After seeing how simple this is, we will be researching to find something similar in the US.  Noting an article on lichens in NZ it is good to see that very few of them grow exclusively here, so there is a good chance we will find something the same in TN somewhere!