Dancing around the cauldron

Picture-heavy and unspellchecked!!

The coven has an annual tradition of a summer dye day. The idea being that as it is summer, the work can be done outside.

Unfortunately, no-one can ever be certain that the weather will co-operate, and this year we had rain and hail. With some sunny intervals, so all was not lost.

Latterly, the original coven has augmented itself for some particularly festive occasions, and let us be honest, probably to widen the range of food on offer as well. It is unusual for much alcohol to be consumed, as several attendees will be driving, although it has not been completely unknown for Arrangements To Be Made when birthdays are being celebrated. But yesterday was a regular event, so - eventually, as there was a fair amount of natter to get through first - totally sober dyeing took place.



The weld dyepot. It didn't look very inspiring, but none of it was destined to remain as yellow.



The cochineal dyepot.



And the indigo vat.



Cochineal coming out of the pot. The colour was better than this in real life - see later photograph.



Indigo coming out.



And airing.





Nice reds, blues and greens appearing.



Experimenting on a t-shirt.



And the experiment being judged a success.

I hadn't taken much to dye this time - I'm working on a collection of naturally dyed skeins of whitefaced woodland to make a throw, and I only had two. Which are now a rich indigo and a fair approximation of a Lincoln green (well, I like to think so, anyway.) So I had fun taking photographs (as well as lunching, laughing and chatting a lot...) whilst Freyalyn did most of the hard graft.

That meant that I managed to take a few video clips as well (sadly, none of them showing anything raucous or incriminating....)





Too much fun. We should make it more frequent than once a year!