All yellow

I've been brewing again - thought I'd better get on with it as we're getting into autumn now and there won't be much left to work with in terms of plants.

The yarn in the left-hand picture was dyed with horsetail of some kind - I'm not that great at recognising weeds - and initially just looked off-white but turned out to be a very attractive pale yellow.



For the next batch I used the same liquor but chucked in a few marigold heads to see if that did anything. And really I do mean a few - maybe four at most that had lost their petals already and one that still had petals but was past its best. The picture above is how it looked while stewing. If you're doing this properly you're supposed to simmer the plant in the water, then strain before adding the wool. Needless to say, I couldn't be bothered! And actually once I'd dyed the yarn and given it a rinse, most of the bits of marigold came out pretty easily - flapping the skein around helps!

This is it drying on the line - the photo doesn't do justice to how mustardy it was looking - I was really taken aback at how much of a difference to the colour those few manky bits of marigold made!

And the finished result!

You wouldn't believe how happy this made me! Ridiculously so. Though the kitchen smelled of weeds and wet sheep for some time..

I just googled 'yellow lyrics' and discovered that that yellow song is by Coldplay. Oh dear, I'm so out of touch.