Dock or sorrel are useful plants for mordanting – this was a fact that I’d gotten from reading and made a mental note of. I couldn’t remember where I read it, so I decided to just go ahead and try it. I picked curly (or curled) dock (Rumex crispus) in the roadside around July-August. Curly […]
Madder red has been used by humans for millennia. Or, as someone much more eloquent that me put it: “Madder’s diary goes back as far as history’s earliest written pages” (Brian Murphy in “The Root of Wild Madder”). Whenever I dye with madder, and stop to really think about its history, I’m quite fascinated. Yes, […]
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 […]
I’ve finally completed my prototypes for a child and adult version of the hat that I’ve decided to call Bilskirner. The design changed a bit since the first prototype… My family was not impressed with the rib edge on the first prototype, so my hands were tied. I had to make a garter edge in […]
Whenever I test a new dyestuff, or change conditions with a known one, I use 10 g test skeins of thin supersoft wool. I always knew that they needed to become some huge knitting project all together to show off the deliciousness of the colors to their best, and now the time has come! Checking […]
I dyed this gradient a while ago, using madder and tansy, and the plan was initially a Bohus-style hat. But the yarn kept talking to me, and it said that it wanted something with much cleaner lines… So I knit a hat with a very simple pattern of squares on a white background. Simple geometric, […]
I am knitting a very nice little shawl, Fylleryd by Mia Rinde, out of a skein of my new lace yarn, Norne (100% wool, 640m/100g). It’s dyed with a somewhat exhausted madder dyebath: I like this color. I think it’s vibrant and will make a flattering shawl. But I was surprised when, a couple of […]