Hello and welcome to Episode Forty Nine of Page Turn: the Largo Public Library Podcast. I'm your host, Hannah!
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The English Language Transcript can be found below
But as always we start with Reader's Advisory!
The Reader's Advisory for Episode Forty Nine is The Night by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón. If you like the sound of The Night you should also check out: Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki by Haruki Murakami, and Flowers of Mold by Ha Seong-nan.
Bonus segment my personal favorite Goodreads list The Night is on is Ficción Weird en Español
Happy Reading Everyone
Today’s Library Tidbit comes to us from Adult Services Librarian Sarah and is all about natural dyeing.
Natural dyes are dyes created from plants, invertebrates, or minerals. There is archaeological evidence of humans dyeing material with natural dyes back to the Neolithic era. Synthetic, or man-made dyes, were discovered in the mid-19th century and took over most commercial dyeing processes due to it being cheaper and easier to produce expected colors.
Natural dyes can only dye natural fibers. These can be divided into two types, cellulose and protein, Cellulose fibers are fibers that come from plant material, seed, leaf, bast, fruit, and stalk. Protein fibers are fibers that come from animals, wool, hair, sinew, leather, and silk. Different fibers will react differently to dyes.
Most natural dyers start to learn about natural dyeing through a love of nature and wanting to take care of the Earth. Natural dyes are significantly better for the environment than synthetic dyeing, especially if the dyer does not over-harvest a specific crop or insect.
People also love natural dyes for their complexities. Synthetic dyes are single note dyes and lack the depth and complexities that natural dyes have. When looking at a synthetic grey it is exactly that shade of grey. When looking at a natural grey you will see grey but maybe some browns and or blues as well.
This is sometimes cheated in fabric dyed with synthetic dyes by weaving strands of different colors together or by mixing synthetic dyes, but the end result is not the same as a naturally dyed piece of fabric.
However, it can be difficult to impossible to get the intensity and range of colors of synthetic dyes using natural dyes. You also cannot dye synthetic fibers using natural dyes, only synthetic dyes. So if you have a blended fabric you will need to dye it using synthetic dyes or only the natural fibers in the fabric will be dyed.
In order to get natural dyes to stick to the fabric a mordant or tannin needs to be used. A mordant is a metal salt that sticks to both the fabric and to the dye and allows the dye to stick to the fabric. The most common mordant used today is alum, a metal salt of aluminum, however, iron mordant is also used. Alum will not modify the color of the natural dye. Iron mordant will change the color of the dye, sometimes quite drastically!
Tannin, which is an astringent, binds with organic compounds, which means that natural dyes made with tannin heavy items do not need a mordant to be washfast.
Washfast means that dye will stay in the fabric. Without a mordant or tannins natural dye will wash out of fabric within a few rinses.
Most natural dyes are not lightfast. This means that light, particularly, sunlight will bleach or lighten the dye over time. However, there are natural dyes that are naturally more lightfast and will not change much over time.
The first step to natural dyeing is to collect dyeing tools. These are tools that will be only used to dyeing. They are tools that could also be used in the kitchen, so it is extremely important that you make sure to separate them away from any kitchen tools. Just because something is natural does not make it safe.
Tools that you will need include: stainless steel pots and...
