Colour Inspirations from Landscapes

A two day break in Anglesey has given me three beautiful colour palettes, one very fresh, one very warm and one a combination of warm and cool.

The first was inspired by the heathland above South Stacks Lighthouse on Holy Island. These fresh colours reflect the low growing heather and gorse.

The yellow could be dyed by using dhak or Himalayan rhubarb root.  The greens could be obtained by over dyeing the same colours with indigo and the pinks could be dyed by a weak solution of red lac and oak gall.

The next palette shows the fabulous earthy colours found on Parys Mountain, near Amlwch, on the north side of the island.

The rich, warm colours lend themselves to natural dyes beautifully.  Oak gall, golden dock, and a weak solution of purple lac lightly over dyed with indigo and oak gall also lightly over dyed with indigo would all be worth trying to obtain the colours.

Finally, these blues and soft beiges were inspired by the beach at Aberffraw on the south of Anglesey.  The blues can be found in indigo and the sand colours could be found in oak gall or sanderswood natural dye extracts.

Ayurvedic Clothing!

Here's a reason to dye your fabric, yarn or fibres to be made into clothing with natural dye's, extracts or otherwise!
Read all about a clothing label that is doing just that.  Anjelika Krishna of A.D.O. is reviving the ancient tradition of Ayurvastra, literally "life dress" or infusing clothing with medicinal herbs which also dye the fabrics.

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.