‘Tis the season for roundups and look backs, so here I am. I’ve personally had an excellent year in SCA terms in 2023 and I think it’s safe to say that this little dyeing community is a great part of that. It is a wonderful thing to run a workshop and have people enthusiastically participate, and to keep coming back, to see what people have done with the material and how they are running with their own projects, experiments and so on.  I adore seeing things we’ve done on people’s garb (Mallymkun’s tablet woven belt, Anneke making thread for Etienne, Anneleyn including purple wool into the belt for my *AMAZING* dress she made for me)

Since the Great Madder Experiment, Katie has been to every workshop I’ve run and taken the wool that we’ve dyed and rinsed and collated it, so we have this amazing record of what colours we’ve achieved so far on wool, and how we achieved them. I am so excited about broadening out our range, getting some more brights in there and seeing how much better we get at achieving certain colours, more or less on demand. 

In 2024 I intend to start including linen and cotton samples in each test dye we do to broaden our result pool, to go along with our alum, copper, iron and tannin mordanted wool. I want to do something to help us include modifiers as well, and record those results more formally. 

I am so thrilled people have been keen to join me in exploring all of this, I will treasure all the squees, the “for sciences!” (looking at you Farraige and that awesome purple), the alchemical querying, the oohs and aaahs we’ve all had – you are all awesome! One of my other interests is in metal casting, so I want to create little tokens for dyers to recognise fellow dyers and swap notes. More on that project very soon! 

Next up Indigo part two and lincoln green tomorrow, Saturday 16th January and then the Pursuit of Purple after archery in Clara on the 13th January. Lots more pictures to follow!!