We have started taking bookings for our new Dye to Spin week. We are so excited about this new week, as Bridie is going to be running the Spinning part of the week for us. Bridie has been running spinning classes in Ullapool for years and is a very experienced teacher. We run all our … read more…
Wild Rose Makes We have just finished, washing, dyeing and drying the wool for our new needle felting kits. They will contain our own naturally dyed wool, Shetland, Hebridian, Cheviot fleece, two felting needles, a sponge and instructions. We are starting off with Blue-tit and Robin kits. The kits contain everything needed to make a … read more…
Today was day one of our June Natural Dyeing course. We seemed to have every sort of weather, but we kept the fires going and foraged for dye plants including, Bracken, Broom flowers and tree lichen. We managed to chop, sort, mix and make 4 lovely dyes, but will end up with about eight different … read more…
We had a fantastic weekend of natural dyeing, creating nearly 30 different shades, a complete rainbow of beautiful hues. Over the weekend we dyed with; Gorse flowers, elderberries, tree lichen (small amounts from fallen branches), madder, cochineal, indigo, turmeric and and onion skins. We had eight dye pots on the go at different times, two … read more…
Spring is here -it is time to start natural dyeing! The Gorse flowers are now out in the Highlands and that is always a good sign, Gorse is always one of my first flower dyes of the year. Gorse makes a lovely creamy yellow dye. I also dye with barks and fir cones this time … read more…
Spring Newsletter Finally spring is here -then it’s gone and now it’s back again! We have had beautiful sunshine through to snow over the last few weeks, but back to sunshine now, so let’s hope it lasts for the sake of our seedlings! Everything seems to be late this year, the nettles are just … read more…
Mongolian style felt-making We have just finished our fleece to felt week for this year. We had an excellent group of people and a lovely week. We had a great dyeing session making nearly 30 shades of colour, we visited Nathalie on her farm, where we saw her beautiful Shetland sheep, we also had a … read more…
I thought it might be quite handy to have a few instructions in case anyone wants to try this method at home! Part of the finished wall hanging! If you have watched the short film below, it gives you some idea of how we did it. We started by washing a dyeing local fleece. … read more…
For the last few weeks Alex and I have been getting ready for the season. Our friends Ele and Craig have lent us thier Mongolian Ger (Yurt), which we put up with the help of Julie last weekend. It was a last minute decision, as it looked like the weather was going to turn for the rest … read more…
This Spring you can find us in Permaculture magazine. I wrote a ‘how to’ article on Natural Dyeing and Felt-Making. It’s an interesting magazine full of lots of great articles, with a really good course listings in the back.
