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ambience: Bonnie’s bleating sheep; Circular Sock machine
If you’re a dyed-in-the-wool fan of colorful socks, stay tuned. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Twenty-five years ago, Bonnie Smola and her twin sister Donna started a wool sock manufacturing business, determined to do the entire process by hand. The two sisters began by learning how to raise sheep, and how to shear and spin the wool and even how to make the soap needed to wash it. Then they started researching and manufacturing their own dyes.
“We started collecting the plant materials that we needed. Walnuts are probably the easiest, but we’ve been out for poke berries and we use marigolds, and marigolds incidentally smell beautiful when they’re cooking – they don’t smell so good otherwise, but if you cook up a pot of marigolds it smells pretty good – onions, onions skins. There’s a big difference between what is a dye and what is a stain. And a lot of times the stains are very pretty, but they don’t last. But the natural dyes do last a nice, long time.”
The sisters’ experiments taught them that even the slightest variation in the process can change a color’s intensity and staying power.
“The lasting of a dye actually is related to the pot that you use. If you boil your wool in – if you use an aluminum pan it makes a difference, or if you use an iron pan it makes a difference, because the aluminum or the iron from the pan also mixes with the dye material and the wool and you get a little different tone.”
Once the wool is dyed, the sisters manufacture their socks with the aid of a hand-operated knitting machine.
Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.
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