The first indication that we were in for extreme plant use came with an email from our tutor Catherine instructing us to bring onion skins into this week’s Herbology class. Onion skins? Yes, really. Onion skins. Let’s just say that Lab Room Two had a pungent whiff of Allium cepa by early morning. Time for a class in spinning and natural dyeing from local expert Vicki Ferguson.
By the time Vicki (pictured) was set up, the room looked like a throw-back to a cottage in pre-industrial revolution Scotland. Spinning wheels nestled in one corner. Uncombed sheep fleece in another. Next to them was stacked an array of large and well-loved saucepans, the metal stained purple by dyeing. Sieves, tongs, scales and yarn covered the work surface.
Vicki gave us each a choice of dye to use on skeins of yarn she handed out. She had prepared these lengths at home on her own, working from great snowy clouds of fleece. Vicki works by hand on time-honoured equipment like that pictured. Oh, wonderful! The idea was we could get cracking straightaway on the dyeing process. We were spoilt for choice when it came to picking both medium and colour. Onion skins - yes, we were to use them for dyeing! - were just one option.
Also up for grabs were large plastic bottles containing clear pink liquid (pictured here later on the hob, with skeins of yarn, above). These initially looked just like home-made fizzy pop. Until, that is, Vicki explained that the liquid was not, of course, fizzy pop, but rather pink dye from the roots of Rubia tinctorurum (dyer’s madder) that Vicki had pre-soaked the night before. The process takes many hours - too long to do in class.
In one bowl sat a pile of Fucus vesiculosus (the bladderwrack seaweed, pictured), useful for dyeing sheep yarn (pictured) a pleasing fawn. In another were lavender heads, just the thing if you want your jumpers purple.
Catherine and Jill unearthed the Hippophae rhamnoides (sea buckthorn) berries from the freezer, so we could work with those too. Also available, brazilwood, tea and logwood.
By lunchtime, we all had a cauldron (pictured) bubbling with water and dye, ready for us to add our yarn later in the afternoon. I went for bladderwrack, entranced by its black tentacles and smell of the sea. As we stirred our broths, Vicki showed us skeins of wool she had dyed at home. All had natural tones that made the colours of our modern clothing suddenly feel, well, almost brash, next to these subtle hues. After all these years of reading Jane Austen, at last I could imagine - I mean properly imagine - the colours of Mr Darcy's clothes.
“Can you guess what I used for dyeing this?” Vicki asked, holding up a yarn dyed a delicate golden colour. I shook my head, unable to guess, reeling from the smell of boiling lavender in one pot, bladderwrack in another, overwhelmed by colour and aroma. “Have a look in there,” she suggested. And smiled as she pointed to a bag of onion skins laid out on the bench.