Japanese Indigo

Hal asked me to harvest my Japanese indigo so that he could plant some lettuce. The plant was HUGE. I got it at MD sheep & Wool and it was about 4 inches tall. It had thrived in the spot we planted it and had spread to about 5' x 5' and was covered with pretty hot pink flowers.

So I yanked the whole thing out. It had sent out roots to different areas so it seemed like several plants even though it was only one. I was able to fill a bushel bucket.

Then I had to pick off as many leaves as I could stand to. I filled my crockpot with the leaves and cold water and slowly started to heat it.
Until it looked like this with a kind of oily surface:
Then I drained it and added washing soda and whisked it to add oxygen to the dyebath. It was supposed to get all frothy and blue, but it only got a bit blue and a bit frothy. So I was kind of worried that I had done something wrong...
But then I put it back in the Crockpot and added the color-run remover which is supposed to remove the oxygen from the bath. And right after that, I tried to dye some silk "hankies" (processed cocoons) and some handspun yarn and some cotton/silk yarn. Before:
And this is how it looks on the bath:
And here is a video of the dyeing magic:



It worked!!!