Sage Leaves and Tops

Its been a while since I posted, as I've been taking an Eco-dyeing Module with Justine Aldersey-Williams of The Wild Dyery. It focussed on the three main historical, first rate (permanent) dye plants: indigo, weld and madder, and on Shibori dyeing cotton and silk cloth, so quite a change from my usual approach to dyeing my wool skeins. In parallel with the Module, I carried out a couple of 'mass mordants', on 25 and 30 skeins of wool at a time, mordanted with different chemicals, immersed in one dye bath (weld and madder, respectively) and then modified with other chemicals, as described in Jenny Dean's book, Wild Colour. Interesting, but I feel much more relaxed now that I've returned to the working method that I've already established. So here are my four skeins dyed with sage: from the left, mordanted with alum, copper, alum assisted by tin, and alum assisted by iron.