The 20/21/22 weekend was the first long weekend of the summer in Canada, celebrating Queen Victoria's birthday. We're weird that way about the Royalty in Canada.
On saturday, we went to the first camping SCA event of the year. Neil and I just dropped in for a day to teach some Arts and Sciences classes and I got a tad fried by the sun.
Nina asked me to help her out with a class on hedge-row dyeing. I brought some madder for one dyepot....
...and we picked dandelions for the other dyepot.
After a few hours of simmering on the fire, while the people simmered in the sun, we felt like we weren't really getting very much colour out of either pot. Neither of us had remembered to bring a mordant to add to the pots.
So I suggested to Nina, who was camping that weekend, that she keep the materials in the pots overnight and take it out in the morning. I'd hoped the longer time in would give the dyebath more time to leach metal from pots - one copper and one alum.
I've seen the madder results, but not the dandelion ones yet. I'll have to take pictures of both soon.
This most recent weekend, we went up to the Wareham Forge homestead to visit our friends, Darrell and Vandy.
Darrell's goal: enlist big, smelly menfolk to build a semi-permanent smelter and smelter cover in his backyard.
Karen and Vandy's goal: escape from the boys, and go visit some pretty shetland sheep being sheared. Come home with fleece for dyeing, spinning and weaving.
Both goals were accomplished. Details in the next post, when the pictures are ready. They're off the camera, but not yet disseminated, thumbnailed, or put up on the web. Soon, I hope.
Karen
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