Colours to Dye For

The dye pots have been busy recently, and I still have more to do.  This one was using a leftover madder dye that I made last year.  I'm pretty sure I've used it at least twice already so was surprised at how much colour was left in there.

This next one I deemed a total failure and set it aside for overdyeing with something else, but actually I'm coming to like it more and more.  This was another leftover dye from last year using walnut - the outer skin that falls off and leaves the nut in its shell.  Not sure if these are called husks or hulls, apparently the two are different.

It's what I would call a proper mink colour.  It actually looks rather nice alongside the madder.  Maybe I'll use them together.

I also dug out a jar full of dyers chamomile flowers from my garden that I've dried in previous years . . . then found another . . . and another!  I had almost 600g dried weight of flowers in that cupboard.

The dye didn't come out as bright as normal, a very pale yellow.  I wonder if I'd kept the flowers for too long and they'd lost some of their potency.  The pic below shows two locks, the bottom one is the original colour.  The top one I dunked in a solution of water and ammonia and it changed immediately.

Quite a difference huh?  So I threw in the rest of the fleece and hoped for the best :-

The star of the show had to be the dried onion skins though.

Ta Da!!!!

I'll probably lose some of the really dark orange on the tips of the locks when I card them, but I'm hoping to still get a nice orangey yellow.  I've now started collecting red onion skins to see what colour they'll give - any donations gratefully accepted (onion skins I mean)!!

So, more dyeing experiments coming soon.  I'll keep you updated.