in all of my art - painting, rug hooking, and now knitting - colour is the element i find most exciting. so it makes sense that next i'll be wanting to make my own colours. yesterday i picked the remaining peony petals (we'd had strong wind and rain so they were finished). i boiled them up. 
added alum to my spun yarn as a mordant to help the colour stick. the finished colour is a very "subtle" soft mauve. i ordered a book last night on dyeing with plants and i'll just keep gathering in the garden...
2 comments:
Alas, colourul petals and berries are not always the best dye stuff. Leaves, roots and bark are usually better. Some other good ones that are really easy to collect are yellow onion skins (give a lovely bright gold), red onion skins (more green - a lime green almost) and poplar leaves (a gentler yellow).
We must get Rilla to teach about lichens!!
How interesting... I know that dyeing with plants is quite an art... that's how the pioneers used to do it, but so far I have only experimented with KoolAid!
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