If he's going to do the work .... planting, weeding AND the dyeing, GO FOR IT!!! Lobo ; ) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Delete the obvious to reply to me personally. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> I think DH may have gone stark staring bonkers.
>
> I have always known he has had a vague interest in natural dyes. And
> of course whenever he runs across something bad about synthetics he
> comes arunnng to me with it. The man is still trying to convince me to
> dye my hair with indigo because he doesn't trust the comercial hair > dyes.
>
> So I am finalizing the seed order for the garden this year and
> figuring out which bits can be crammed in where, and how much work
> certain things would be to either keep alive or keep reined in, and
> etc. Then he pops up with several suggestions all aimed towards dying,
> and giving me the whats, and wherefors on them. I got told about how
> to successfully extract and use bugloss, how we may be able to make
> woad and madder survive, what larkspur gives the best blue, and a
> compare and contrast of the uses of yellow dock and dyers broom. Also
> pointing out that if I took to using the yellow dock for something it
> would no doubt die out on me. And that was just the tip of it.
> He is actually talking about a semipermanent coldframe-greenhouse
> cross sort of thing _and_ a small contained boggy area just to get
> some of these plants to mature!
>
> I just sat there and gaped at him.
> Honestly I don't know what to think.
> He obviously has taken the notion to heart, but natural dying is a
> fair bit more work than the much simpler chemical dyes.
> I asked and it is in part a toxicity issue. It is not that natual
> dyes are less toxic, some of the mordants are quite heinous, and some
> of the materials themselves are poisonous, but the knowing what is > toxic and why.
> It apparently bothers him not to know what I am paddling about in.
> He knows his weeds, and he is rather good at chemstry, but even the
> suggestion that I ask for MSDS on everything did not suit him.
> The other part seems to be the monetary saving in planting a dye
> rather than buying it. So long as I am already gardening it only
> makes sense to plant some dyes. I can see that. I am not sure how
> much saving there would be after getting the needed variety of
> mordants though.
>
> I am considering planting a few of the less work intensive plants.
> Just a sampling to see how viable it would be to try.
> I have my current growing spaces planted or planned darn near by the
> inch, breaking lot more new ground in the increasingly smaller free
> space was not excactly what I had in mind this year.
>
> Whatcha think?
>
> NightMist
> --
>
> Nothing has been the same since that house fell on my sister.