longing for leaves

In the Scandinavian part of the world, there really aren't many plants for the dyeing pot during the long winter months. Dried and frozen, of course, but I'm not much into that. Besides blackberry leaves (as I mentioned in the previous post),  there's bark and cones and different peels and skins.

Red onion skin (no mordant) on wool, silk and cotton

Shibori attempt on old silk skirt - dipped in oak bark & rust water

oak bark (grey), spruce cone (left) and avocado skin (right) - no mordants

 Different kinds of bark (cherry, oak, elm), spruce cones & onion skin

on cotton (crochet) yarn

 Cherry bark soaking - aluminium pot & solar dye (last summer)

Some of the yarn I dyed last summer. The greens are black hollyhock, the reddish are curly dock roots and chestnut peels, yellows different sorts of bark & flowers.

Actually, waiting for leaves to emerge is perfectly all right - at some point a creative human being must do something with all that wool and dyed yarn. Yarn spun with wool from Vega the Bunny mixed with some lamb wool. The yellow comes from dyer's chamomille flowers.