A friend of mine has some hawthorn growing at her home and generously gifted me with some branches as I pondered about its dyeing prospects. I know buckthorn to be a favourite of a lot my dyer friends, but I have yet to try it myself. More and more I try to move on to…

I am huge fan of starting your plant dyeing journey with food waste. Easily accessible and using something that would otherwise be discarded is exactly what I like! They may not be the most colour or light fast dyes so you need to choose carefully what to use (try to steer away from actual food…

Best sign of autumn in London is when my daughter starts coming home from school with conkers in her pockets. I told her that as they dry they omit a chemical that moths apparently dislike (and spriders too) so I love to collect them for my wool cupboads. We were wandering around on the park…

Finally time to dust off the cobwebs of my blog and start writing again. My head and heart have fully been involved in taking care of my kids and generally surviving this strange year. The dyepots have been simmering on the background, but nothing has really been documented. This year I’ve seen more cow parsley…

Last weekend I finally did my first harvest of my small indigo crop, which I have been growing in my garden The variety I have is Persicaria Tinctoria – Japanese indigo, grown from seeds I bought from Bailiwick Blue.  The seeds germinated beautifully indoors in the end of March and were planted outdoors in May. …

Recently my social media has been filled with people using salt to extract colour from fresh indigo leaves.  I tried this method with my woad plant last year with some less than exiting results, but not one to shy away from a failed attempt I wanted to have another go with indigo. I collected a…

Gardening season has started with a bang and I am lucky enough to have a small garden. It is largely taken up by paving and a patch of very shaded grass. Not much grows in the grass as builders have filled the ground with rubbish. Most of what I grow, is vegetables in pots with…

I am slightly cheating with my local winter dyeplant series as I must admit there aren’t many spruce trees near where I live in London. Nevertheless they do exist in the UK and my dye experiments were done with cones I brought back from Finland, where they definitely are a local plant. We have a…

Another dye plant perfect for winter experiments is Eucalyptus. I have a few different trees growing near me. I have no idea which these are, just know they are different looking at the leaves. There are over 35 varieties of eucalyptus in England alone and over a thousand in the world so I can barely…

Oak Galls are funny little round things that can be found growing on oak tree brances. An oak gall wasp lays eggs on the branch and these galls form around the larvae. They are incredibly tannin rich and have been used in ink making since medieval times when mixed with iron. I collect oak galls…

Although the weather has been milder than usually in January, we are in the middle of winter. Growing up in Finland that usually meant mandatory skiing in schools and freezing temperatures. Even Finland is lacking in snow this year and London has been depressingly warm. A lot of my dyer friends pack up their dye…

Every year I seem to be in London when the mushroom season is at it’s peak in Finland, There is a rainbow of colours to dye with in the fungi family and I love foraging them for food as well. When I visited home last month I was gifted some cortinarius semisanguineus and cortinarius sanguineus…

The generosity of dyers never seizes to amaze me. As well as having friends full of knowledge and advice to whatever dye enquiry I might have, I have been lucky to receive dye plants I have no access to experiment with. Last week I received a parcel of Bog Myrtle (myrica gale) sent to me…

As I write the walnut season is at its peak. I have been waiting for those beautiful green gems to start falling out of the trees since August, but now he constant rain is keeping me indoors. I found the joy of walnut dyeing last year and then discovered my neighbourhood filled with black walnut…

I have had such a love affair with goldenrod this year and two of its varieties; Canadian and European goldenrod. I’ts a plant worth waiting for as goldenrod blooms in the end of summer, around August when most other wild flowers begin to wilt. Canadian Goldenrod (solidago canadensis) has been and elusive plant for me…

Last year I missed acorn season completely. I think due to the hot summer, they came out earlier while I was busy concentrating on other plants. This year I’m early and they’re just starting to fall off the trees. I also have help finding them in the form of my 4 year who is an…

Whenever I stray away from my normal surroundings, I try and find a bit of time to explore what nature has to offer and find plants to dye with. Travelling back from Finland, my bags were full of plants to dry and freeze for the winter and my recent visit to the Lake District was…

My woad plant (Isatis Tinctoria) suffered quite an extensive catepillar attack while I was away this summer. I thought it best to dye with it as soon as possible before it got all eaten away. This is my second year of growing my own woad and my old plant produced plenty of seeds to grow…

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The flowering season for Common Reed (phragmites australis) goes away as quickly as Christmas. The purple bushy shoots dye beautiful greens. They need to be used on the same day of picking, which makes the dye season even shorter. The lakeline near my home is abundant in…

I am fully taking advantage of my summer holiday at home and experimenting with new to me plants. St Johns-wort (hypericum perforatum) is one of these and what a fantastic little flower. According to Jenny Dean’s Wild Colour; four colours can be extracted in one dye bath! I went on to try this with some…

I have been engrossed in a dye plant mystery this past week. I am holidaying home in Finland and have enjoyed the summer plants in bloom here, experimenting with plants I haven’t before. The other day I picked a bucket full of a grassy reed, which I suspected to be in the common reed family…

All through last summer I saw people dyeing with fresh indigo and salt, simply rubbing the leaves and salt together creating a mushy liquid paste and then rubbing this into fibre. I spotted on instagram @plants_and_colour had tried this with woad. After my unsuccesfull indigo growing attempt this year, I planted plenty of woad to…

I love living where I do for various reasons, one of them is being surrounded by miles of riversides perfect for long walks. Few weeks ago whilst enjoying family walk, I came across a barren area near the water, overgrown with brambles and weeds. In the midst of them a familiar plant caught my eye;…

Dock leaves are one of my most commonly used dye plants due to their year round availability in London. A friend of mine Louise, who runs South Down Yarns had a great idea to do some tests on dock dyeing in different places using different varieties and share our results and as a huge lover…

The one thing I really love about living in London is that the dyeing season never really stops. There are plenty of plants for forage even in winter such as alder cones, oak galls, ivy leaves, scotch broom etc. When the weather starts getting warmer, the ground starts turning to green quite rapidly. Some of…

A week ago with my daughter in tow, I headed to Greece to visit my friend Christiana for a little holiday and a chance to explore some Greek dye plants. It was a refreshing change from waiting for the London spring to arrive and see flowers in bloom and trees full of leaves. After a…

Here and there I dye with avocado stones. The pinks they give as well as the greys when dipped in iron water are simply stunning and a joy to use up something that would just be put in the bin. I’ve convinced a few my friends to save me their stones as I don’t eat…

Few weeks ago I spent some time in Glasgow and the Highlands. I even managed to fit in a little bit of foraging as the temptation of dyeing with Scottish flora was too much to resist! Me and my friend Jules collected some Gorse blooms for a little dye pot. Only 20 grams and put…

Over the last month or so I have been dyeing a lot with madder (rubia tinctorum), trying to get a clear red, which can be a bit elusive to achieve. I thought I’d write a little blog post about it as there has been a lot of reading and experimenting involved, a lot of swearing…

Yesterday I taught my second dye course at Tribe Yarns in London. It’s bringing me such immense pleasure to teach natural dyeing, all in the hope people will fall in love with it as much as I have. I taught an introductory course where we dyed with two dye plants; avocados and ivy. I want…

During late summer buddleia or butterfly bush starts to flower. Suddenly the riverbanks and railways of London are shining in purple glow attracting insects and natural dyers. Buddleia was one of those plants that everyone was dyeing with this summer so I thought I would too. I don’t normally dye with flowers, the light and…

Earlier this month I continued my experiments on the sumac trees near my home. This time I moved on to dyeing with leaves. I gathered a bagful of leaves to dye a 50g skein of yarn. I forgot to weigh my leaves, silly mistake as I wish I knew how much I had exactly. I…

One of the first things I do when I go home to Finland in the summer is set up my dyepot. My dad very generously lets me take over his barbeque hut for my experiments. It’s an old granary building, that my parents have converted to a dining area. I love dyeing yarn at home…

I am not a fan of dyeing with berries! Generally the colours aren’t fast and if we’re talking edible berries, I would much rather eat them. Sumac trees are a new discovery in my dye pot and to be honest, I hadn’t paid any attention to them on the road sides until I heard about…

First of all it’s so much fun! I always like to fill my days with fun and natural dyeing ticks a lot of boxes for me. Bear with me when I list ‘a few’ of them! I am a knitter who loves her yarn and a bit of a yarn snob also. I like to…