Oxalis stricta
Called Wood Sorrel or Gaukasśra, when I was little we used to eat the pods of this plant. They are sort of lemon-flavoured. (Isn't it amazing what random things one eats when one is small?)
I decided to try to try dyeing with it, here's what I got:
At first, I didn't like the beigey colour, but it kind of grew on me over time, there is something fun and old-fashioned about it.
For colour reference, here it is next to the Polygonum perscicaria yarn (the more green one) and goldenrod yarn from a few years ago (the gold colour).
I took out some dye books from the library this week:
Natural Dyes Plants & Processes by Jack Kramer
Craft of the Dyer: Colour from Plants and Lichens by Karen Leigh Casselman
Create Your Own Natural Dyes by Kathleen Schultz
The Investigative Method of Natural Dyeing by Frederick H Gerber
Most of them had pretty much the same standard info as other natural dye books I have read: information about madder, information about indigo, etc. The one by Karen Leigh Casselman I found to be the most interesting; I think I would like a copy of it myself. She lists many different dye plants (including acorns!) and how to use them, and what kind of lightfastness she got from them.
I've also been "steeping" some copper pipe in ammonia for a couple of weeks, this is an old dye called copper penny blue. I plan to overdye one of the yellows with this at some point.
Labels: natural dyeing
