Show your colours - yellow

today the colour is yellow! there's no shortage of this during spring in ireland. there is the ubiquitious gorze (which flowers on and off during most months of the year...) - which I used for dyeing again yesterday. every spring I do acupuncture for my fingertips, by picking a potful of gorze flowers.... I really like the yellow it gives on wool and silk; though not as strong as the flowers themselves, but a nice lemony colour nonetheless. the astonishing thing about this is that the dried or frozen flowers or those, which have been standing around for a few hours, don't give this bright yellow! they do still dye - but the result is a golden yellow, very different from this! btw, the yarn on the left is the lace yarn from Wollpoldi in germany, the ball (well, what's left of it in the pic, sorry:)) is teeswater top - both on 10 % alum mordant.

of course most dye plants give a yellow, so here are a few more from my stash. the strong yellow on top is wool/silk with dyer's chamomile, the others are from yellow cosmos, heather and onions - but all 2nd or 3rd dips, where the colours loose the intensity a bit - and become very soft and easy to use with other colours. there are plenty more in my stash - those are just some that I could grab from the top.

as I said, there are plenty of yellow spring flowers, apart from the gorze. another plant that grows pretty much everywhere is the yellow primrose, with pastel yellow flowers and a darker yellow center...

this is not a wild plant, it's a corydalis lutea, with finely divided leaves and nice, trumpetlike flowers - that grows well in the shade here.

I left out obvious choices - I am sure someone came up with dandelion! or the yellow rubber gloves I use for dyeing... or the yellow duster... there must be plenty of household things in yellow, because it is a cheery colour. take the dishwashing liquid, the neon yellow text marker etc. but I am going to concentrate on garden and stash - if I can find the required colour:))

and no, I am not colour blind - I know this isn't yellow. it's a rather depressing khaki-olive green - on wool and soy silk. mordanted with 10 % alum as well (and treated with iron vinegar afterwards; it was even uglier when it came out of the dyebath first!) - and dyed with the previously described rhamnus frangula berries gone mouldy. the green is a bit better in reality - but not all that much! esp. not when compared with the lovely dusty blue I dyed with the fresh berries! I thought at first about overdyeing it, maybe with madder. but very likely the colour will muddy up even more - so khaki it is! maybe it's a good choice for the Laminaria shawl from knitty? seaweed can look this ugly:))

back to the garden until the rain comes in....