The Answer

Papaver 'Patty's Plum' still one of my favourite flowers
15 flower heads this year

Detail of a rust piece

Whilst struggling to hand stitch wearing a wrist splint for Carpel Tunnel I have answered a question that has been troubling me for a while. Whether the work I produce should be practical and useful. I answered myself today, it just doesn't matter, if you can you should do what you love while you can.

Dyeing experiments and a bit of patchwork

1 Dandelion, silk noil, silk and wool mix yarn

2 Cushion, old linen and hand stitch

3 Silk noil, from left wool, silk, wool and silk mix yarns

4 Silk noil, from left wool, wool and silk mix, silk yarn

5 Silk noil, from left wool, silk and wool mix, silk yarn

Dandelion dyed in an aluminium saucepan, very pretty pale yellow, if these had been fresh they may have dyed darker but I had collected them over several days.

Images 3, 4, 5, are all experiments using Logwood powder, a little goes a long way so I still have loads left. I probably wouldn't buy it again as I understand that the whole tree has to be cut down to obtain the dye but it does yield some lovely colours. Apparently it is slightly fugitive as well. All cooked in a stainless steel pan.

3 All of these had been previously dyed with rust and bark, the wool yarn on the left being the resulting colour, the rest were over dyed with the logwood and came out these lovely blues.

4 Logwood cooked for an hour and then left overnight in the pan, love these colours.

5 Using the left over dye with copper added, supposed to bring out the blues which it sort of has, it turned the dye into a very nasty looking soup.

I will have another go soon to try and get some lighter fresher colours.