#archil

[unidentifiedmammal]

Alrighty so this is the post on lichen dyes!

this particular bath of lichen dyes was originally started over a year ago scraping a tentatively-ID'd lecanora and/or ochrolechia genus lichen off of a fallen branch (remember, don't gather lichen when it's still growing! it's very slow growing and easy to overharvest)

to start off, this particular type of dye is made through the ammonia-fermentation method, also known as ammonia maceration. No actual bacterial fermentation occurs though. Rather, the compound orcinol (and precursor compound to orcinols) react with ammonia (N2) and oxygen to form the compound orcein (also called orchil/archil) which is what makes the final dye!

this process takes anywhere from 3 weeks to 16+ weeks depending on the lichen species, its constituent acids, the temperature, and the frequency of aeration.

This batch was set aside for several months and neglected a good bit, but it still works. I strained out the crumbled lichens (which i set aside for later) and diluted it 1:4 as instructed by a very good book called Lichen Dyes: The New Source Book by Karen Diadick Casselman. This book is basically omnipresent everywhere you see lichen dyes mentioned, especially the orcein-based dyes. I also used several websites/videos/papers and such that i've hunted down over various internet crawls.

I use an old coffee pot for this as it's both a non-reactive material (glass) and is built to withstand heat. Ironically i also scraped the lichens off the branch using a tool i made out of a metal band from the broken handle of this same coffee pot!

I decided to dye some eri silk cakes that i fluffed up and scoured. these have been very good at absorbing dye in the past so i would hopefully get a good result from them. As lichens are a substantive dye i don't have to put a mordant on them, but i did soak them in an alum solution just before adding them to the dye bath to hopefully maximize dye uptake as well as improve fastness as lichen dyes are also fugitive and can fade in sunlight.

Substantive dyes contain mordants already embedded in them; fugitive dyes are a bit fuzzy to me but my understanding is they end up trapped in the fiber instead of actually bonding to the fiber in a stronger way. Mordants are used to help the dye "bite" onto the fiber better, improving both fastness (the ability of a due to resist fading from sunlight/washing/time) and the brightness of a color. Alum is useful in that it typically doesn't affect the end color of a dye more than simply making it slightly more strong!

it was pretty successful i'd say! i warmed up the dyebath, added the silk, let it simmer for a few hours, let it cool down overnight, and then warmed it back up the next day for a few hours; then, when it cooled, i took it out, let it dry, then rinsed it, and let it dry a second time. At that point, it was ready for spinning!

It was a lovely pink color that's not fully captured by the camera like most dyes, and eri silk is lovely because you can spin the clouds directly and easily without carding and make lovely relatively threadlike yarn

this was the first skein i got! i love how shiny the silk is. Some dyes can get really purple or even magenta-like!

next, i had the leftover lichens that i had set aside. They were a crumbly texture and dark black and i dried them out, crushed them up more, set them back in a jar, added more ammonia and water, and did the ammonia fermentation method a second time! this was after reading about the method for making french purple, and while this is definitely a very pale imitation of the method, the double-soak is the key feature here

here it is (on the left); it was already way darker purple than an in-progress lichen dye i had yet to crack open and use

speaking of which, heres a shot of various test lichens i had while working on this, you can see the blue-capped jar that has the second-soaked lichens. the foam will often give a preview of whether or not the dye will be red/purple or not!

Here it is, i forget how long i let it soak but i think it was a bit over a week. i strained the material out, diluted it, and then repeated the same warm/cool/warm/cool/dry/rinse/dry method with more eri silk

And below you can see the difference, it's definitely slight but still cool!

the left is from the original dyebath, the right is the second-soaked one. the first one is more salmon-colored while the second is a tad more blue-purpled!

I'm extremely excited about this, these dyes have such a fascinating history and have multiple historical uses everywhere from florentine orchil to norwegian korkje to scottish cudbear and more, and it was often used in tandem with the roman murex/tyrian purple dyes that come from a mussel. Some folks used the lichens to pre-dye the fabric before dyeing with tyrian purple, both to stretch the expensive tyrian purple and to make the end color more vibrant. It's all such a great topic that's mightily confusing and could take up a post of its own, same with the underlying chemistry of what makes these dyes work in the first place!

Anyways that's all for this post, i have more i'm working on involving actually turning these dyes into paint that i'll hopefully turn into a post on its own soon! I've also got other lichen dyes I'm waiting to get through the ammonia fermentation process that will hopefully give other colors, whenever that may be!

[fangsforthevenom]

they should synthesize a drug that makes you want to do tasks

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[monipandas]

hellaverse fankid week day 2: spending time with family

archilles spends time with his dads by napping on their shoulders

[welldonekhushi]

I was re-watching "The Twelve Chairs" directed by Leonid Gaidai with my classmate and for some reason I got to admit..

Ostap Bender is kinda..

*blushes and hides my face away* I CAN'T-- HE'S TOO FINE 🫣💕

[sleepy-vix]

reading the song of archilles and i'm halfway through rn. this is not going to end well, is it?

[dreamconsumer]

Sts. Archil and Luarsab.

[felixify]

Me to Archilles when he mentions Patroclus'feet for the 43rd time in a 10 minute conversation

[fragileizywriting]

this is a complete stream of consciousness i'm so sorry. i'm just having thoughts and feelings about adrien being mister bug and how i think it would've been very very good in a very specific circumstance, one that would be adrien in his late twenties, dating marinette who is lady noire (duh.)

like just think about it for a second.

i'd just like to say that adrien would be an idiot to give up lady noire. i'm just saying. you could make an interesting case for adrien being obsessed with power just like his father, sure, whatever, but also, i think adrien would like to keep it more like a pet than actually use it.

i write the black cat miraculous as the gateway to entropy (blah, blah, everything we've already heard in fire lily petals) and, as a man who wants everything under his control and wants everything to go his way, don't you think that at first he'd want to be able to control that? maybe. sure.

after all, wouldn't it be nicer to leash and collar it? instead of being it, wouldn't it be nice to own it? she's her entire own person, and he doesn't own her, no, but isn't it nice that she lets him— (him, him, him, him,)— of all people, do what he wants? when he touches her, she leans into his hands? she's beautiful. she's in love with him. she lets him wrap her up in a pretty ribbon and keep her.

isn't that nice? being able to keep death as a pet? awh. he gets a little giddy, thinking about how chaos-incarnate purrs against his mouth when they kiss.

[ringchollyandfriends]

do you accept disabled people or are you expecting them to ignore their limits in order to match you?

[ghostsandgod]

[makeup-anon]

Ok. I've been practicing. I typed the first quarter half of the Combee movie on my phone and every time I did a typo I restarted the whole thing and I think I've finally got the hang of this. Good ARC was that difficult. Either way WHY do I have to be so short? I was six feet. Four inches. Now I'm only like. Two feet tall. Poppy (my Archilles) literally had to be lifted up by Hatty's psychic so her rolling around laughing wouldn't get her to set fire to anything.

[fangsforthevenom]

i know this might come as a surprise to you, but I really really like korekiyo.

this was supposed to be a more in-depth study so I could finally have some consistency in how I draw him but I liked this so much I decided to keep it by itself.

original lineart under the cut:

[selfship-confession-box]

I miss my husbands guys, I miss them very much. I just want to take a cat nap on Achilles’ chest while we sit in the sofa and his feet are casually resting on Patroclus’ lap. Is that too much to ask?😔

-🪽🪻

.

[anotheronebitingthedust]

"Name one hero who was happy." "You can't." "I can't." "I know. They never let you be famous AND happy."

"I'll tell you a secret." "Tell me." "I'm going to be the first." "Why me?" "Because you're the reason. Swear it."

[piebank]

wip