Yet more on black

Yesterday morning I added 1 teaspoon of ferrous sulphate ( iron) 1/4tsp at a time to the purple loostrife bath. Where the iron hit the liquid , it immediately went a dark navy blue and I went on adding, till with stirring, the whole bath went black as you can see and then left it very gently heating. This bath I took off the heat this morning before I had a day out with DH and I will have a look at it tomorrow.However this is not black or at least I don't think so Presumably a higher concentration would have been black but I had 600g to 100g of fibres, cutting earlier in the year could have made a difference. It looks as if the merino tops will be a light grey a very pleasant and useful colour to have as greys tend to have a lilac tinge being the exhaust of logwood baths and therefore not very lightfast. However I will go on heating the bath as more colour may come out, this is what I did with the eucalyptus leaves but then the eucalypts are well known for needing a long soak/heat to produce their colour. The silk hanky may be black but I will rinse it and see. So purple loostrife does contain a lot of tannin-that immediate change to a dark blue seems characterstic of high tannin bearing plants. I have tried a few this summer-my eucalyptus leaves, staghorn sumach and acorns to name a few