A couple months ago I mentioned that I’d started soaking some apple bark in preparation for using it in a dye bath, based on info in a new-to-me book, Wild Color by Jenny Dean.
I had an opportunity a week or so ago to cook it up- here’s the bucket with the soaking bark before heating (nevermind the indigo residue ring!)
and this is the color of the bath after a few hours of simmering
I decided to dye a variety of natural shades- bright white, creamy white, beige, and silvery gray (but didn’t get good “before” pictures, sorry). They weren’t mordanted, because the book indicated that it wasn’t necessary to mordant the goods for dyeing with apple bark, and I was hoping to get something like that rosy color (4th color swatch down in book photo above), which corresponded to the unmordanted sample.
Here are my results from this batch-
Not exactly rosy, but a soft, warm yellow. Hard to capture the color accurately wit my camera, but on the grey it reads a bit like a loden green. and it turned the beige a lovely golden brown. remains to be seen how lightfast it will be. Before I do any testing on that I plan to to another round- this time mordanted with Aluminum Triformate.
In garden news, I’m excited to have developed a plan for a runner bean arch –
Still needs a bit of cross-bracing, but hopefully by mid-summer it will be covered in Weinlanderin beans, (and maybe some scarlet runners as well), with enough clearance underneath to stillbe able to mow the between the beds.
OK, that’s all I’ve got for now. Have a good week folks-