New Year's Day

The start of the New Year saw us out in the garden to prune our Cox's apple tree. The bucket of prunings will (hopefully) yield my first colours of Loughton. I'm using 'Wild Colour' by Jenny Dean as my main reference point, alongside other books about natural dyeing that I'll introduce as I go along and, of course, the Internet. There's not a lot of choice as to suitable plant material at this time of year, but apple bark and twigs can be harvested, as it is a good time to carry out winter pruning. I'm following in the footsteps of the Winterbourne ladies here, as chopped apple twigs provided their first experiments into dyeing. To prepare the prunings for dyeing, it is necessary to chop them into small pieces and soak them - Jenny says for a week, the Winterbourne ladies for a fortnight - to release the dye. The water in my bucket is already beginning to turn brown as I write.

 I'll gather some young leaves when they emerge in the spring, but meanwhile a little patience is required.