Still not managed to cut down my purple loostrife ! Thank you Bettina for your reassuring comment on this. I was teaching this week and taking my pictures into be framed and also some to a new gallery so I tell myself I have a good excuse. The frustrating thing is I am dying to try it, the more so because the fastness test I did on the purple loostrife and the eucalyptus leaves both with iron added have come out very well. Be prepared before you look a the pictrue and be disappointed. ! These are not the bright vibrant colours one hopes for. The pl flower heads gave a greyish green really a fantastic colour for landscapes ( one always wants a few sludgy colours) the other is my wonderful inky black from the eucalyptus leaves. You can tell how useful this is by the fact that as a out of 100g there is only about 20g left as it keeps being used The fibres on the right hand side are one dip of indigo as a control. The top thirds of the fibres weere covered and I stuck the whole lot to the pane of a south west facing window- for what was meant to be a month but was actually two. There is no loss of colour hooray hooray! means I can use the black in my landscape and the sludgy colour too. I was hoping to get more black with the purple loostrife whole plants and iron.
I've dyed with eucalyptus leaves too - I've gotten yellows, rusty brownish tones and a green(ish) with iron aftertreatment - but never a black! interesting - and certainly useful with felting. I don't mind paler colours - if it is really utterly dreadful I can always overdye it with something, but usually those beige and light browns go well with other natural dyes and might take the "edge" off some of the stronger colours. if all else fails I can always knitfelt it with some washing powder in the machine - that usually changes the colour and mostly to stronger tones anyway:))
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