Ironbark, mugga, écorce de fer, Mugga-Eukalyptus, corteza de hierro, Coirt iarainn

As per the previous post, ironbark leaves aren’t as plentiful this year, or at least the ones within easy reach. What about the bark, etc?

I once soaked a fair amount of kino/manna/resin collected from numerous local gums for a week (a significantly shorter period of time than what it had taken to collect), simmered some yarn… and came up with not much. Another experiment with the bark had produced a similar result. What went wrong? No leaves to act as mordant!! (note to self: Duh!).

There is plenty of bark to be collected locally, and if you can’t find it on the ground, there may be some hanging off the trunk, ready to drop without harming the tree. Apparently the name comes from the hardness of the wood; I naturally thought it was because the bark looked rusty…

A good layer on the bottom of the pot was soaked overnight, then simmered for about an hour with a handful of E. leucoxylon leaves for the tannin (as a mordant). Why leucoxylon? Because I have plenty at present (see post below).

The dye liquor colours up quickly and is a deep, reddish black. An hour’s simmering, then a straining followed by a sieving (lots of small bits…) and it was ready for the yarn: a skein of 8-ply (bottom, left), followed by one of 2-ply that had been mordanted with alum/CoT as a precaution (bottom, right). As you can see, no mordanting was necessary, but produced a slight greenish tinge on the 2-ply (inside, it looks more golden, so let’s go for old gold/nut-brown butter). The 8-ply – denser and softer –  came out a mid-chestnut brown. The colours in the pic are a little richer than in real life.

The liquor was still darker than dark, so another two skeins of the 2-ply were dyed individually. The first (top, left) came out a paler brown with a reddish tinge after an immediate wash; the second was left in the liquor overnight, producing a richer colour all round.

None of the colours match any brown sheep I’ve spun, or alpaca, so worthwhile results for all the work. Now to try with vinegar to get more red…