George Barron uses materials coloured Sooty Olive in his excellent book "At The End Of The Line". I had never heard of this colour before and it aroused my curiosity. I quickly found that it's not a colour you can buy a pre-mixed dye for and there is not much information on how to create it. I did find some a few references on old forum posts (here, here and here) that suggest a few recipes and some different approaches you can try and I though it would be helpful to pull everything I found into a single post.
So what is Sooty Olive and how do you create this colour?
What Is Sooty Olive?
Sooty Olive is a colour used in some Irish Lough patterns. There is also a fly pattern called The Sooty Olive that uses it to replicate a hatch of olives or olive sedges.
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| Sooty Olive Lough Fly |
You can buy Sooty Olive materials from a few suppliers. This hen cape from Irish Fly Supplies, for example
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| Sooty Olive Hen Cape |
Or this
dubbing from Rob Denson |
| Sooty Olive Dubbing |
How to Create Sooty Olive
Dying Capes And Saddles Sooty Olive
Dye Over A Natural
The easiest way to achieve Sooty Olive seems to be by dying naturally coloured black or grey feathers with a yellowy colour.
Dye a natural blue or iron dun cape with yellow or Golden Olive
or
Dye a natural black cape yellow
Mix a Dye
If you want to mix a dye for a white a cape, I found 2 possible mixtures
Mix Golden Olive with a dash of Jacquard black (or any red-black).
or
Mix Veniard's Dark Olive, with "a bit of Chestnut" and a "hint of Black" then add a bit of Aztec Gold at the end once everything else has been absorbed. Use Jacquard acid dyes for the Chestnut, Black and Aztec Gold.
(Interestingly, I learned that black dye is really just a very dark shade of another colour. Veniard use purple and Jacquard use red and the people on the forums seemed to prefer it).
Overdye
This is a hybrid approach which I think you'd use when starting with a white base.
Dye the feathers in Veniard's Iron Blue Dun and florescent yellow and then overdye with Veniard's Blue Dun
or
Dye the feathers with florescent yellow and the overdye a mix of Veniard's Blue Bun and Iron Blue Dun
Dying Seals Fur Sooty Olive
Seals Fur is naturally a bit off white and a mix of Veniard Iron Blue Dun and florescent yellow is recommended by on
one fourm.
Dying Deer Hair Sooty Olive
Deer hair (I assume natural roe deer which is grey with brown tips) can be dyed in a few ways.
This post is the best one for deer hair and it includes pictures of the results. The recipes are:
A mix of black and yellow (and maybe some magenta - but I couldn't quite work
this one out)
or
Veniard iron blue dun & flu yellow
or
Florescent yellow & Veniard's black
Mixing Sooty Olive Dubbing
In this
YouTube episode on how to tie the Sooty Olive, Hans Weilenmann recommends you mix black, dark olive, dark brown and fiery brown seals fur to make a Sooty Olive dubbing. He did not mention the quantities though so some experimentation would be needed.
Notes On The Dying Process
Unfortunately, the sources don't go into any detail on the dying process or the quantities of dye, water and fixant you should use so you'll need to experiment a bit if you want to try any of these. The process of dying is well beyond the scope of this post and I'm just learning it myself so I wouldn't want to inflict my mistakes on you.
In general, though, you should start with enough water to comfortably cover the materials and add small amounts of dye at a time until you get the colours right. I usually just add a slosh of clear malt vinegar near the end to fix the colour and it seems to work OK.
To overdye means to dye something that has already been dyed in one colour with another colour. I've never tried doing this so I don't know if you should let the feathers dry before the second dye bath. Personally, I wouldn't on my first go but I'd suggest doing your own research if you want to try this yourself.
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