Natural Dyes: A Whole Array of Colors

I was in a natural dye workshop all weekend and it was fabulous. I have to admit I was dreading it a little bit at first. Every weekend in May and June has been booked with activites and I was really wanting a weekend that was all mine. BUT this was much better than anything I could have done left to my own devices.

We dyed madder, logwood grey, fustic, indigo (both Japanese and Guatemalan), and cochineal. From these dyes, we were able to get the entire spectrum of the color wheel.

In the past, I have always been obsessed with indigo. This was before I had ever dyed with cochineal bugs. I am now in love with cochineal. Most of my dyed fiber is sitting in a garbage bag, wet, and ageing for the week. However, I do have three pieces of fiber to show you:

The red: cochineal
The orange: a mixture of madder, cochineal, and fustic
The yellow: madder

In a week of so, after I wash out the rest of my fiber, I will post photos of the rest of my work.

busy, busy, busy! dye garden, alvaros sweater

busy!

I am so excited it is May and that summer is right around the corner.

This week, I worked hard on my soon to be dye garden. We tilled the soil and sowed the seeds -- cosmos, dahlias, correopsis, maroon correopsis, and chrysanthemum. My urban garden is sweet -- but small. . . I am running low on room.

There are three of us who share this space. Because our house is small, we want this little garden space to function as so many things. . . parking for our bikes, meditation, bar-b-ques, organic dyeing resource, organic food source, and there are probably more things that I am missing -- oh, yeah, the miniature dye studio is back there too! It is very clear that the space is pretty much full but I can not stop myself from thinking "hmmm, where could I fit indigo or madder?"

Garden photos coming soon.

Other than that, I have been working on the Alvaros sweater slowly but surely. I am on round 3 in the sweater pattern. Every time I think that I am going and things are going well and that oh, this is not hard, no problem. Something crops up. A lost stitch. I read the pattern wrong. I was cross eyed for a moment. Sometimes I just trick myself into thinking something is wrong when it really isn't. I would take a photo of it except you might ask yourself if I really have done anything at all -- like I said the progress is slow but constant. I hope that in two weeks I will have made enough to take a photo and post it. That's a good goal.