I was getting a few pots ready today for solar dyeing and it occurred to me it might be fun put in leaves from all the tannin bearing plants and a bit of wool , add some iron and see if I could get a good black. So I picked eucalyptus leaves, purple loostrife, lythrum salicaria, and some from the staghorn sumach ,whose latin name escapes me at the moment rhus something, and put it it in my sunny spot. A couple of hours later I realised that the leaves from the staghorn sumach and lythrum salicaria leaves were all edged in black. But not the eucalpytus leaves from what I could see.
I look forward to that result - I have all of them apart from the lythrum in the garden.... I picked fuchsia flowers yesterday and filled a jar, but so far very little colour seeped out:(( but on the other hand - not a ray of sun to be seen since yesterday afternoon, so maybe I should not be surprised? what a summer so far:(
ReplyDeleteI am also looking forward how it turns out. I think I could find purple loosestrife by the lake nearby, so it would be fun to try, but I only got one plant of sumac, Rhus typhina (is is the same you have?) this spring so it is small and I have to wait for it to grow (if it survives our winters)
ReplyDeleteGood luck for your experiments:)