Weld, Woad or Madder? Natural Dyeing Day

Greetings - again!

I am holding a Dyeing Saturday School on 19th July 2008. I've attached my poster. Please deduct ~10% if you are SCA! (ie £46 not £52). Yes, it is a bit expensive, but much of this goes to the Inn keeper for his lunch - usually jolly good. A more civilised part to an otherwise slightly primitive day :-D

The observant may note that the poster (click to enlarge) features a sample of work by Racaire of Austria (by permission) who is coming to ID for the Coronation in June and also a few days either side. Free advert for her, too, and richly deserved - do look at her blog. http://racaire.blogspot.com/

Do take a look, too, at my website (a freebie, Weebly one): http://kentishdyes.weebly.com/ .

If you cannot get to this dye-day, feel free to ask me any questions about dyeing by e-mail or on this blog. I've now made a special note / bookmark so no excuses not to look/contribute more often. I hope to be at the Coronation in June but I don't intend to be teaching this time - I'm hoping to learn, instead!

YIS

Jenny

Good sources of info for Tyrian Purple

Greetings, especially to Gilbere.
I would recommend anyone on interested in doing natural dyeing to join the Yahoo Natural Dyes group. It has over (?) 1500 members worldwide and is a mine of knowledge. I entered 'Tyrian Purple' in their search box and got 13 hits. Consensus is that the dye IS dibromo-indigo - it can be made synthetically and is carcenogenic (beware). The natural source is the Mediterranean Murex snail. (Great heaps of the shells have been excavated in digs near to Haifa in Israel).
The following link is also given in one of the references: http://pourpre.inge.free.fr/GB/recherches/recherches.html which makes for VERY interesting reading.
Very best wishes with this one!
YIS
Jenny of Cranbrook
(about 12 miles from the real Cranbrook, Kent. I did have a studio there for a little while in 2007. The Lady Ariel attended one of my courses there.)

Thyrian Purple Reposted

Heya,
Gilberre posted this as a comment. I'm not sure how many will see it that way so I'm re-posting it here.
"Therigiua is now called Essouerra and is in Morroco The Nice lady doing the Dying workshop at Viceroy knows that the imperial roman robes dted thryian purple were made of silk and was able to define the actual dye chemical and the acid animal fibre dying process I will have to use so now I am a lot further along in using my dye.

I will have to look up Byantium as another way to research seashell dyes.
What colours were they getting ?
The shells fron Assouerra give either a stunning Purple (Male) or vibrant blue (female)
must find out how they are sexed for my documentation !"
Thanks for the great info Jenny & Gilberre!

Almost done with Viceroy A&S Prizes!

This will be the band that is given to the entry that Ursula chooses. The band below, will be given by the incoming Vicereine. I hope many of you, who have not already sent me your entry information will enter the competition on site! I have four entries as of today and would love to see a few more than that!

Progress!

I finished the initial piece and have warped the loom again! I need at least two more prizes. If I can get this 6 yards done, then I will have two lengths for prizes and one length to cut up as tokens for the Viceroy A&S Competition. I hope to have tokens that the populace can give to the entrants.
I'm making 3 prizes so both the outgoing and incoming Vicereine's may choose their favorite entry. There will also be a prize for the overall winner. I would like to keep this going. So here is another plea for help. Would someone be willing to make a prize for the incoming fall Vicereine to give to her chosen artisan? I'm asking well in advance, because I would like this be a very nice "favor" for her to give.

I would also like to reiterate my plea for a volunteer to lead the guild and help us build up some steam! Even if you don't want to take on this job, I would love for each of you to recruit a new group member before Raglan!

More on Raglan in a later post!
J:)