Natural Dyeing with the Seasons: Seasonal Colour Yarn Club: Spring 2020
The Seasonal Colour Yarn Club is a limited edition selection of 5 x 20g mini skeins or 1 x 50g skein, dyed with seasonal plants grown in my garden or foraged for locally. When I launched the first instalment of the club (Spring) at the end of Winter, Covid-19 was yet to properly hit the UK and my plans to dye the club yarn using foraged and homegrown plants seemed on track.
However, during March, my partner and I became ill with what-was-most-probably Covid-19 (tests weren’t readily available at this point) and we had to isolate for two weeks. Our symptoms were relatively mild, but I suffered with respiratory issues for about four weeks, meaning I was unable to work on the garden or venture outside to forage.
Whilst we were recovering, the UK went into lockdown, restricting movement to essential journeys only, with one hour of daily exercise permitted. Once I was able to walk outside without getting out of breath, I relished these walks and used them as an opportunity to discover the dye plants that were growing locally.
As it was the start of Spring, there was an abundance of young plants to harvest. I chose nettles for green, dandelions for a soft, buttery yellow and cow parsley for bright yellow. These plants are all considered weeds, and I only harvested from areas where there were a great amount, so as not to spoil the biodiversity of the land I found these little adventures a real tonic during an incredibly uncertain and stressful time, and was a lovely way to reconnect with my local area.
Once the plants were home, I left them outside for a day for any insects to escape, and proceeded to process for dye. It was important that the resulting colours complemented each other, as well as being local, sustainable and seasonal, so I made sure to test each dye first before committing to the final colour.
My garden plans were lagging seriously behind, for obvious reasons! The garden was left in its overwintering state until I felt able to spend any time in there again, and my new seedlings for this years’ growing were about a month behind schedule. The weather was glorious during our recovery time, which made the frustration at being unable to garden even worse! With hindsight, I am glad I followed the advice to take time to recover.
However, I was able to dye two shades using plants from the garden. A soft pink shade was achieved from my second year woad plants - seen in full bloom in the photo on the left. I dyed with the leaves of the plants I had thinned out, as I wanted to leave the strongest plants to make seeds for next years growing. (I will have A LOT of seeds!).
I also used dried calendula flowers saved from last Spring to overdye a nettle-green shade, which combined to produce a wonderful olive shade.
Once all the skeins were dyed, washed and dried, I wound them all into their mini skeins. This was a very fun activity to do at the end of a hot day, I love how the sun reflects off the yarn these photos, highlighting the bright tones and complementing the softer ones.
These were then split into sets and labelled up with details about the colours and where the plants came from, and parcelled up with a photo postcard and hand written note. From top to bottom the 20g mini skeins where dyed with: nettle and calendula, dandelions, nettles, woad leave and cow parsley. The 50g skeins were dyed with cow parsley and dip dyed in an iron solution to create the olive green shade.
If you’d like an exclusive set of naturally dyed mini skeins, the next installment of the Seasonal Yarn Club - Summer - is now open. It’s an exciting time for my garden, as plants are starting to flourish.
As with the Spring club, the shades will be a surprise, but expect some serious vibrancy this time around!