A walk in the Forest

"It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. - P. D. James

Rainbow Dyeing

Ashford Acid Dyes

This effect was achieved with two colours -pink and purple - both dyes were diluted. The wool is hand spun Blue Faced Leicester and I used it to knit a scarf for my granddaughter.

The wool below is hand spun BFL and I used the three primary colours to achieve this effect. I knit the wool into a scarf for my grandson.

Autumn - Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Keats

A basket of Wool

All the wool in the photograph is Blue faced Leicester and is hand spun on my Ashford Traveller Spinning Wheel. All the dyes are natural and the mordant is alum. I used 10% alum and 7% cream of tartar as a percentage of the wool weight.

The Logwood is my most recent effort and I was surprised at how dark the first dye came out so I put another 100 gm into the dye bath with, I think, a very nice result. With regards to the Lac the darker shade was one teaspoon full of concentrated powder and the lighter shade half a teaspoon. My first experience of natural dyeing was privet which was from our garden. The leaves were chopped up and left to soak over night - boiled for about an hour the next day - sieved - and then the wool was simmered in the resulting liquid for about one hour.

The blackberries (10 ozs) were picked on one of our walks with the dogs (three terriers). The berries were boiled for an hour - sieved - wool was added and simmered for an hour.

New Beginning

Well this is my first post in my new blog....I decided that a fresh start was needed hence the title of this post. I hope to be a more conscientious blogger this time and keep a record of my spinning, weaving and dyeing exploits with lots of photos.