Natural Dye - Day 2 - BLACKBERRIES! (part one)

Blackberries!

Look at the size of this berry!

Today I get to make dye! I'm following the instructions from this site.

I'm using some fresh berries I picked from my backyard this morning and some frozen ones I picked last year. Right now I've got them all simmering in a pot and waiting...

waiting...

waiting...

The instructions say to heat, but not simmer or boil the berries for about 45 minutes... which means not leaving the pot - because of course even on the lowest temp it'll boil the moment I walk out of the room... and just waiting...

This practice takes patience, something I have been known to have little of - especially when I'm excited about something.

It smells pretty good...

Update: the frozen berries have thawed and I've blended all the berries with a hand blender. The instructions suggest straining out the chunky bits and while I've like to have seedless wool at the end of this process - I really don't see how I'm going to strain this smoothie out.

While we wait... once at Guide camp we tried to make blackberry dye. We dyed bandanna's. They turned out a pale pink colour. I suspect the fabric wasn't 100% cotton and I'm pretty sure we boiled the berries - having no idea what we were doing. It was fun tho and I'd forgotten all about that camp until I started reading about making dyes from berries and other local plants.

This "local" thing is why I've picked blackberries - I pick them in my backyard. They're about as local as one can get. Sure the wool isn't local, but theres something kinda cool about being able to say: I spun this wool and dyed it with berries from my backyard.

In the end, I don't think I'll mind what colour the wool turns into - because I'm using a variegated wool anyway I'm sure it'll look interesting whether it is pink, purple, blue or doesn't work at all.

It's about the adventure of trying it out, for me.

30 minutes later... so now that I've let the berries heat, but not boil or simmer I need to wait for them to cool back down to room temp...

... more waiting... but at least I can leave the room now and do other stuff...

Wool that's also waiting...