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 ...
Over the last few years I have begun to experiment with spinning yarn, dyeing and then weaving. Learning these new crafts is a big learning curve at times but the thrill of succeeding and learning from mistakes is worth all the effort.