Yellow in Scotland (part 1)

Right behind our house there is a field full of yellow dyeplants: dyer’s broom and gorse. But it is actually everywhere you look now in Scotland. So beautiful! And so great to have such stock of a yellow dye right at the doorstep. It means that I can experiment for free.

I have dyed with gorse again. I love the yellow it gives. Non of the pictures depict it well, it is baby yellow, soft yellow colour which turns into egg yolk yellow after washing soda dip, or even darker, depending on the dyeplant:fibre ratio.

I have tried dyer’s broom as well. It is supposed to contain the same yellow as historical dye weld, but in smaller amount per square meter. Oh, but here are hundreds of meters of it here right now. The yellow is brighter that the yellow from gorse, more greenish. And if the fibre is left in the dyebath longer the colour dulls (as in my case, I haven’t read the recipe properly. No wonder I am not a great cook. But I might be after all this dyeing .

And because I wasn’t very gentle to the fibre, most of it felted more than “healthy”. No pulling wisps or tufts. First I thought I would handcard it. Then I decided to just spread individual slivers into sort of pre-felts…

…. and have quite a few bats.

I would (o, o, o!!!) like to try to make a jacket out of them. So now I am off to felt. I will be back when “the thing” is done. Fingers crossed there will be part 2 to this post.