Update

I am coming to after a hectic time. First we had ITV Wales filming the garden as part of National Garden Open in Wales. For those of you not from the UK this is a uniquely British event where people open their gardens sometimes just for one day sometimes for groups visiting . All the gardens are listed in a famous yellow book. The visitors fee goes to Charity. Most of the gardens are absolutely stunning and often very grand stately homes but also little tiny cottage gardens too. My parents were very fond of visiting gardens and when my father moved up here he and I went round gardens together although mostly I think because my father was very partial to the home made cakes that so often feature! Quite where I found the courage to propose the dye garden to the organisers I don't know. I think it came from the day when we opened the garden last year as "Shopping for Colour" and it was so obviously enjoyed. Someone said to me you should open under the National Garden Open Scheme and here we are. We are open to groups visiting when Enys and I talk about the plants and I talk about dyeing and then conduct them around the garden. The solar pots have been a very good way to introduce people to the colour of the garden especially the madder , birch and golden rod pots.
So last week -was it really only last week?- ITV filmed. I forgot to ask Enys to take pictures of me demonstrating woad dyeing and I only took a few of her but it gives you the flavour of the day. We both enjoyed it it very much and it was a fascinating experience. I picked woad leaves six or seven times while they filmed it from different angles-amazing that the woad leaves held up. I kept finding another little plant hiding under something else as it has self seeded around the dye beds.
Two days after that we loaded the car, squeezing an unhappy dog into one tiny corner and set off for Woolfest. "Don't buy anything will you" said DH "there is no room even in the top box". Not buy anything! Go to the Woolfest and not buy anything. The poor man obviously had sun stroke. Fortunately a good friend with an empty car came to the rescue and took back my two fleeces and a swift and I sold some big bulky items such as all my new solar pot kits complete with 2 litre Kilner Jars which took up a lot of space. We could have sold these twice over they were all gone by 10.am of the second day. Another great success of the Woolfest was my inks of which I sold a lot. These inks designed by me for painting and writing turnout to be excellent fabric paints too. I painted some pre-mordanted silk with them steamed and rinsed. No colour came out at all

In between ITV filming and setting off for the Woolfest my new Aura wheel, the fantastic new spinning wheel from Majacraft, which had arrived but was sitting tantalisingly in it's box was set up. My original vision was that I would sit spinning some fantastic textured yarn at Woolfest to advertise both my fibres, my packs and my new Beyond the Twist Yarns. A good friend ( I am very lucky in my friends) recovering from a hip replacement carded me some batts to spin and some batts to sell. Did I get a chance to spin? Well I expect you are smiling as you read this . Of course not- except for a few minutes here and there. Plus the fact that people bought the batts which were meant me to spin so at the end I had no batts at all! The wheel attracted a a lot of interest. I directed them all to poor Martin of PM Woolcraft who imports them and from whom I bought mine. I say poor because none of his ordered wheels had arrived. I was very fortunate to have mine as it is at the moment one of only three in the UK. What is so good about it? Well it spins like a dream. The huge flyer and fantastic threading system (no hook pulling the yarn through a tiny orifice) means it will spin from laceweight to bulky yarn. A hugely versatile tensioning system with two different tensions means it is very flexible. In the picture you can see some fine yarns ( some of my cashmere and silk plied with a laceweight merino) and an over the top yarn with teeswater curls spun in whole.
What am I doing now?Getting ready for the student coming on Monday for two days. Which means tidying up my studio. Sigh! (And I still have not fully unpacked the car)

Two New Blogs for Natural Dye enthusiasts

Posted by Helen
Hi every body I am back from Jersey which I will blog about later but this is just to tell you that there is a new natural Dye blog, Jenny Dean's wild colour, on the blogging scene. Jenny Dean is the author of a number of dye books including Wild Colour and produced one of the first books The Craft of Natural Dyes (I think - I can 't find my copy at the moment so that bit is from memory) which focused on environmentally responsible dyeing. Jenny is also very knowledgeable about dye plants. I also took a very enjoyable and interesting natural dyeing workshop with her years ago which I can still remember and for which I still have my samples.

While I was away in Jersey and with a bit free time on my hands I started a new blog. This is Natural Dye Inks and I hope that as well as my paintings in natural dyes that all those who has brought the inks from me will also post up their pictures too.

Welcome to two new followers who pooped up while I was away, Madeline and Fibre Fanatic.

Peacock blue

Posted by Helen
Welcome to Sarah and Twisted Sister as new followers of the blog. It is nice to know you are enjoying the blog but please do leave comments-they make my day. :)

I am very excited as I am dyeing a lovely range of colours using indigo sulphonate. Enys when she arrived for her gardening stint - in this case cutting down the Cosmos and lots of cups of coffee, said to me that the colour was peacock blue. I had said it was a dark turquoise but in fact I think she is right. Where is it you might ask? Well the problem is the difficulty of photographing natural dyes. It is often a problem but is particularly so when I have used more than one dye as I have in this case- indigo sulphonate and persian berries. My first attempt at photographing looked a dingy blue. I put it alongside some indigo dyed fibres and it looked even worse. I tried it bracketed with green and with blue -still no good. another friend suggested putting it alongside a cochineal red. This is better and is the one you can see above but the real beauty of the colour does not come across. This is so frustrating. I tried on my website putting up a photo of some merino dyed in madder and logwood and it simply looks dark blue whereas it is the most beautiful dark purply bronze. I have been told by some people who come to my workshops that the colours on the website simply don't do justice to the colours in the flesh as it were and I agree. It seems to be something to do with the complexity of the colours. So for the moment you will have to take my word for it the colour I have got from my indigo sulphonate is fantastic.

I am happier with my new book covers , made with the paper I painted with my new bronze and blue inks. I think they look striking and Iam happy with them.

New Natural Dye Inks: blue and bronze

Posted by Helen
Welcome to some new followers of my blog Yvette, Willington Weaver( Hi Alison) Mollys and Martine.

I have been busy making new ink colours. The inks have been a bit quiet or rather the sales of them have been quiet but have suddenly started to pick up. Every time I ran a workshop someone would buy a set of 5 or 8 and people have been coming back for more and like ripples in the pool they have been getting to a wider audience. Two local artists , amongst others, have been using them; David Brightmore and Jan Gardner. It was David who started me off on the journey of actually making inks rather than concentrated dye baths, which I had been using and tells me that he has sold some of his pictures painted with my inks and he has also been back for more.
Last week Debbie Bamford went off to the original reenactors market at Coventry taking with her my medieval inks; a medieval black, yellow and red, the black and the red being new. She sold a few and says that there was a lot of interest, but it takes time for people to buy something new: it is seems so odd to hear my medieval inks described as something new as the very name makes them sound antique and you would expect re-enactors to leap on them with cries of joy, especially as Debbie sells quill pens, but apparently not, apart from a discerning few. In the meantime having a few days free between the end of one set of workshops and the next series in Jersey I decided to bite the bullet, gird my loins and face the challenge of blue. The reason for the girding of the loins part is that I thought the only way to make a good blue was by going via saxon blue. Saxon blue is in fact indigo sulphonate which is indigo dissolved in concentrated sulphuric acid. I was a bit concerned about using this as my memories of A level Chemistry were rather in a dim and distant past , but one of the people who came to my last workshop on mitten making is Pam who teaches Chemistry . She went through safety procedures with me so on Sunday I made some indigo sulphonate wearing goggles, face mask, vinyl gloves and old clothes., stirring finely ground natural indigo slowly and carefully into a measured lot of concentrated sulphuric acid. It had to be left for two days but today it was ready for use so I experimented with making it up into an ink and here is the result.

The first is a weak concentration and the second a higher concentration . The texture on the surface is the paper's (I think) which is a heavy weight rough textured paper 425not- i.e paper that has not been either hot or cold pressed to give a smooth surface. However I was a little concerned about the look of that ink so when I made up the full amount I made sure that the thickener was very well dissolved and smooth.

My next ink is a bronze. I have long been wanting a bronze. The recipe I have for bronze ,which I found in Dominique Cardon's book Natural Dyes, and which apparently was designed for the Marquis de Pompadour, the husband of the courtesan Madame de Pompadour mistress to Louis XVth. The recipe was for brazilwood and weld and I used a variation of it for the fibres for the felt bronze bell which I made with the children of Bodfari school. I was really pleased with the colour . I have been trying to replicate this in ink but it had not worked but after a lot of experimenting using a combination of three dyes I made a bronze I liked. I am not going to say exactly what the dyes are -a girl's got to have some secrets- and after all I do sell them, but above you can see the result . The painting in the blue and bronze is a sheet of watercolour paper destined to make five covers for my dye books which continue to sell steadily. One of the things I really liked is the interaction the blue and the bronze, sometimes it went a very gorgeous green , but a tiny bit of blue on the brush made the bronze go into different bronze colours. Quite yummy in fact!

I noticed that India Flint describes herself as a mark maker which description I like very much and wished I had thought of-sigh- It occurred to me that what I do when I make my dye book covers is not painting but making marks and above is another also in bronze and blue but using different brushes and marks. Finally I have put in one of my pictures- a design for felt which never happened as when I tried to translate it into felt it did not work, but I like the painting.