Over the last couple of years I have been meticulously putting away all the onion skins I have in order to make some onion skin dye. I have heard a lot of people say it is really easy and skim over the details so I decided to give it a go and make up the method as I went along. First I jammed in loads of onion skins into my stainless steel stock pot and poured boiling water on as I went along to stop them flying away and to wilt them so I could get more in. The pot was brought to the boil and was left to simmer for 30 mins then left to cool. When the dye was tepid I poured it through a sieve to get rid of the skins which went on the compost heap. I then added the wool - a lovely long haired leicester long wool which I bought at a Rare Breeds Show (see previous Blog) which I had washed to remove the grease. It was all brought up to nearly boiling and was left to simmer for 30 mins. The lid was then put on and the wool left in the dye pot whilst I ...
Last weekend, hubby and I went down to The Glastonbury Wool Festival which promotes English wool and its use. Hubby with a useful leaning post! We arrived in Glastonbury at 9:30am ready for the sheep to be run down the high street. After a quick dash back to the car to get the forgotten camera by kind hubby (not the only time I sent him dashing back to the car that weekend!) we positioned ourselves in a suitable spot amongst the rapidly gathering crowds. The well behaved Alpacas Just after 10am we caught our first glimpses of animals moving towards us and on further inspection we discovered that it was some Lamas on leads accompanied by their two owners. The sheep making a run for it! Following on behind in a rather less orderly fashion were a small group of sheep who were more intent on making a dash for it in any direction they could manage. Human intervention. A couple of them had a munch of the flower displays en-route! Wit...