Woolfest 2010

Back from Woolfest where we met a lot of lovely new people and a lot of old friends.

Lorraine and I launched a new range of dyed wool yarns; Bluefaced Leicester Aran and Bluefaced Leicester and nylon sock yarn, both in a lovely range of colours.

The hand painted cutch waste and red lac and the hand painted rhubarb root and purple lac where hot favourites.  So watch out for these on the Pure Tinctoria website in the next week.

Lodhra Bark/Oak Gall

Despite stringent controls I've found that I've been sent oak gall instead of lodhra bark by the manufacturer. This mistake will have occured because they insist that I use Trade Names rather than the plant name!

If you've found that your lodhra bark gives a pale cream colour instead of the lovely orange, please let me know and I'll replace it free of charge and post free.

If you're not sure which is which a rather crude description of lodhra bark is that the extract looks like brown sweepings from the floor while oak gall looks like a yellow brown powder.

I'm so sorry this has happened and will ensure that it doesn't happen again.

Best wishes

Alison

Knockando Woolmill - Speyside, Scotland

This fabulous mill was on a BBC programme a couple of years ago, I think. Does anyone remember the programme and what happened to this gem?

mudbatik-natural dye process 10 min.wmv

Here is an interesting video showing how to use mud as a resist when natural dyeing.

In Search of Lost Colour: UNESCO short

This is just a short video produced by UNESCO, but interesting never the less.  It shows a range of dyes from across the globe.

Workshop at the Bowland Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers

On May Day I was at the Bowland Guild in Lancashire to tutor a workshop using Pure Tinctoria natural dye extracts.  It was a lovely day weather wise and proved to be a lovely day teaching wise, too!


I was amazed at the number of people attending, I usually limit the numbers to 10, but they were prepared to bring more electric hot plates and additional pots, so we had at least 16!  And with the remainder of the guild spinning at the far end of the room, away from our hot plates, the room was packed.  Obviously Health and Safety came into very strict play, to prevent any accidents and everyone was really patient waiting their turn to weight dyes and yarns/fibres.


Here are a selection of pictures that the guild took at one of their meeting the following month which shows what a fabulous range of yarns were produced that day.

Yarns ranged from handspun to commercial, fine to chunky, plain to boucle!


We did centre pull ball dyeing using two colours, painted yarns and fibres and indigo!

There were fibres including tops and home produced alpaca and mohair.

And every colour of the rainbow was produce.

All in a day!

Amazing!