The Dye Pot

In the dye pot this week . . .

We have been harvesting hibiscus blossoms daily and it took only about a week to get a quart baggy full in the refrigerator. After simmering the blossoms, I added 1 oz. of alum mordanted lambs wool. Not getting much color I added a little baking soda which turned the dye pot very dark:

Letting it soak a couple of days. Looks like it is going to possibly be a very dark green/grey/black color.

The daisies were harvested from roadside, field, and flower gardens: over 2 lbs worth was chopped up and boiled for a couple of hours

yielding this color of dye bath after straining:

Baking soda was added along with about 7 oz. of unmordanted wool. The addition of the baking soda is suppose to result in a chartruse colored wool. It didn't seem to be taking up much dye so I added alum as an additional mordant. So far the wool is looking Surprise!! Yellow.

Tomorrow after I take out the wool I am going to see what the addition of more baking soda will do the dye bath and dunk some of the wool back in to see if it changes any. If not, yellow IS a very pretty color.