Giant Horsetail

Giant horsetail, aka Equisetum telmateia, is the only genus in the family Equisetaceae, which reproduce by spores other than by seeds. These ancient rebels have been a part of the forest understory for over 100 million years. Thank you giant horsetail for coming along in my dyepot. For today’s adventure, the horsetail was harvested early in the year (April 5th) and was used fresh. Thank you to Jeri Sparrow who kindly allowed me to harvest some from her side yard.

Random assortment

By using small skeins to experiment with, I can usually get away with harvesting only a very small portion. I have a goal of leaving enough growing where I harvest that it doesn’t look any different.

377 grams

In this case, I tared the weight of these three plastic cups and it came out at 377g. I went with my usual two 11g skeins (one premordanted with alum and the other with iron), for a total of 22g of fiber. My fresh plant:fiber ratio was a whopping 17.1. Probably much higher than I needed.

Snip snip

The giant horsetail was rinsed, chopped into roughly 1” pieces and added to the dye pot.

1 hour simmer

The pieces were then simmered for one hour (~80°C) and stirred occasionally.

Fiber added

I used two 11 gram skeins of wool - one pre-mordanted with alum and the other with iron. Both of these were placed into a mesh paint bag which allowed the fiber to move around freely without the plant material adhering to the fiber.

Heated for 1 hour

After simmering for one hour (with the occasional stir and turn over of the fiber), the fiber was left to cool down before being removed.

Success

The fiber pre-mordanted with alum came out a rich, warm yellow and the other skein (pre-mordanted with iron) is a medium olive green.