Wednesday 30 May 2012

Natural Dyes and Sunny Weather

Its been amazingly warm and sunny in this part of Wales recently, almost too much for me with my colouring. It has meant though that every event we've done recently has been really well attended and we've had a chance to chat to all sorts of interesting people.

Last weekend we were at St Fagans: National History Museum working in the Celtic Village. I was demonstrating natural dyes and teaching spinning and chatting about textiles, and Gareth was doing some metalwork in the form of repousse panels.

A couple of snaps below, the dyes are woad, weld and madder. I must confess to using a chemical method to do the woad, much as I like doing it the traditional way, it never quite seems kind to create a serious whiff around the unsuspecting public!
In other news, we've been kept very busy recently with cap and stocking orders, and I'm just about to start dyeing the yarn for a really nice commission for a madder dyed Tudor cap, I'm really looking forwards to this one. More a bit further down the line when I can talk in more detail about the project.