I like to dye with plants as they appear in the season. To dye with fresh plants you need some knowledge of plants. I got a start with this when I was helped to create a natural garden behind my house thirty years ago. There was a small spot where …
For the first weaving of the year I wanted to use some odd ends of bark. There was a beautiful pattern in one bigger piece. I have woven and connected the irregular pieces but I couldnt weave in these odd ends, It looks loose but in fact it is quite …
I want to tell about the publication ¨Werners nomenclature of colors¨ by Patrick Syme, published 1821. It is a classification with names and descriptions of colors as they occur in nature. It was the German geologist Gottlob Werner who published in 1774 a description of minerals. The minerals were described …
I have been making watercolors. That is, I picked dyeplants from the garden and in the wild and dyed wool with them, and found out I could turn the used dyebaths into a pigment. I have gathered rock, brick and sand and turned them into pigments as well. And with …
Several years ago I bought seeds of Genista tinctoria or dyer´s broom. Only a few germinated. I know now it is better to soak the seeds a little bit before sowing. Three plants survived although the circumstances were not ideal in a pot on my balcony. When I got an …
I have had a go at making ink with avocado. Inkmaking is much the same as making a dyebath for dyeing wool. I have the book Make ink by Jason Logan, and learned there are several ways to achieve a concentrated ¨dyebath” i.e. (almost) ink. I know from dyeing wol, …
top spindle: naturally dyed drent wool, dyed with common reed bottom spindle: natural grey scottish I ´ve made a small shu bao from scratch: crumpled brown paper and a decorated paper bag, an end of paper chord and a button for closure. And glue. It has 15 compartments like the …
local big heathsheep, spindle spun. This is the second half of the indigo dyed wool from this post. The first half was used for a felt wallhanging. It was quite a journey from growing the japanese indigo plants from the seed, harvesting and extracting the pigment from them. Washing the …
This piece shows the natural pigments that I extracted last year, mostly from plants that were in my surrounding and garden. Birchleafs and willow, dahlia, hawthorn and tagetes and indigo. When I saw the dyed wools together it was a reflection of the plants and the dyeing. The colors form …
