Green is a difficult color to achieve with natural dyes. One might initially think that it was easy, given that green is the predominant color in nature. That’s not the case, since the green color of plants comes from chlorophyll, which doesn’t work as a natural dye (since it’s soluble in fat, not in water). […]
This summer, I grew Japanese indigo and woad in the garden for the first time. I harvested all of my plants on September 28th (already a long time ago, lots of stuff has been going on here) except the woad plants I left to let them grow a second year in an attempt to get […]
Reed flowers are in season! I took the photo above on a beautiful August day at the lake. The sound of the wind through the reeds is positively mind-cleansing, which apparently I’m not the only one to think, judging by the number of YouTube videos of just that phenomenon. So now you too can enjoy […]
Sometimes when I read something and there is one key word that doesn’t compute, it’s like my brain just jumps over the entire topic. Some time ago, searching for information on Xanthoria parietina and its pigment parietin, I came across information on the Rumex family. This is what I wrote back then Parietin, Wikipedia informs […]
Summer finally came roaring with several days of temperatures around 30C (yea, hot for Denmark!). We’ve been outside almost all the time, except the times I’ve had to go into the house and check my dye pot on the stove. Our garden is wonderful right now, the highlights are Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) flowering thyme […]
Over the Easter, we had lots of sunny days, and temperatures around 15C. Over the past few weeks, more and more flowers peek out. It seems that spring is here, and that meant that the entire family could enjoy our Easter flu/stomach flu outside in the sun! This year, I’m making a real attempt to […]