Litha Weft

Please click on the image, and it comes into focus.

Litha Warp

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More Marigolds

I processed my yellow marigolds and my variegated orange / rusty red coloured ones separately, to see if they yielded different colours. They did, but not as I'd expected! The yellow ones gave me some really intense colours, but the variegated ones produced a much paler dye than I could have predicted. Natural dyeing never stops producing surprises.

Golden Rod

This is the result from dyeing with Solidago tops, aka Golden Rod. From the left, mordanted with alum, with copper, with alum + tin, and finally alum + iron.

Orange French Marigolds

I've separated my marigold heads into three separate colours for the dye pot. This is what I obtained from the orange ones. From the left, mordanted with alum, copper, alum + tin and alum + iron. It never fails to enchant me to see the wide range of colours that can be obtained from one dye pot. Who says natural dyes are insipid and boring?

News From the Dyer's Garden

Everything is blooming in my dyer's garden. I have arrived home from two weeks' cruising from St Petersburg to Moscow, to find the garden a riot of colour.

Yesterday afternoon, I picked 184 French Marigolds, in three colours: yellow, orange and burnt orange, which yielded three separate dye baths. I'm dying (no pun intended) to see what results I obtain when I try my four skein method with each dye pot.

I also picked some  Dyer's Chamomile and some Golden Rod (Solidago) , and made two more dye baths from these gleanings.

Elsewhere in the garden, my Ladies' Bedstraw is in flower and so is the Yellow Cosmos, though these flowers are so pale that I wonder if I'll get a decent colour out of them when I have sufficient to make a dye bath.

The Wild Carrot, Mallow and Yarrow are about to flower, too!

The only problem I have right now is how to get rid of the bindweed that is invading the plot. Grrrr!