Christina here. With life in the 21st century increasingly hectic, there are quite a few people who decide they want to escape from the rat race and live a simpler way. Buying a smallholding or croft can be the start of a new way of life, and that is exactly what the heroine in my recent novel HIDDEN IN THE MISTS did. She wanted to live in tune with nature, be healthier and happier by spending more time outdoors, and growing/producing as much of her own food as possible. It’s something I think a lot of us dream about and after being cooped up in cities during the pandemic, many people went on to follow that dream.
Clearly it is not for the faint-hearted though – there is no doubt it is hard work. Keeping chickens for eggs, having a cow or two for milk (and/or goats), a flock of sheep for wool, and perhaps other animals for slaughter is probably a must. (Not to mention having to learn how to look after them and doing things like milking.) As is growing copious amounts of vegetables and having fruit trees and berry bushes, as well as foraging in any nearby forests. My heroine is lucky in that she lives on the west coast of Scotland so she is also able to go fishing, which is an added bonus.
Unless you have another job, perhaps working remotely from home, making ends meet can be a challenge, as my heroine soon finds out. You might need to branch out in lots of different ways to earn money. Apart from surplus meat, fruit and veg, there are lots of items that can be produced to sell of course – cheese or other dairy products, jams and preserves, home-made soap, candles, honey, and wool either as yarn or finished craft projects. There’s the possibility of offering Bed & Breakfast if you have the room, or even converting outbuildings to holiday homes to let out. There are lots of other interesting suggestions on the internet but for my heroine, I chose the holiday letting business.
Having recently become interested in weaving myself, I decided she would mainly be into handicrafts that involved the production of woollen yarn and items made from that. She spins, dyes and sells wool from her own sheep (and additional fleeces she buys from local farmers), and she knits, weaves and crochets to order as well. This meant I had to do quite a bit of research and I became particularly fascinated by the process of dyeing using plants or other things from nature to colour wool and material. The possibilities seemed endless!
My own interest in this was first piqued by one of my aunts who was always dyeing wool using plants she found in the forest around her Swedish summer cottage. She showed me the many varied colours that could be achieved and it demonstrated that our ancestors definitely didn’t need to wear boring clothing. Many of the shades are muted, but by no means dull. By utilising what is around you, the most gorgeous tints can be created.
For my book, I needed to learn more about this and when doing research I trawled the internet for information and advice. I also used a book called Wild Colour by Jenny Dean. It tells you all about dyeing techniques and which plants to use for whatever colour you want and I would highly recommend it if it’s something you’d like to try. It is a whole science!
First, obviously, the wool needs to be thoroughly clean. Having once tried my hand at sheep-shearing (research for another book), I have seen first-hand just how dirty and greasy a fleece is. Believe me, no dye would stick to that! Once clean, carded and spun into yarn, it has to be wound into skeins. That makes it easier to dye them and for the colour to turn out even. These days wool is spun using spinning wheels, but there are still people who know how to use a drop spindle and I’m hoping to learn this at some point. I’m guessing it isn’t easy, but it’s something all women had to learn from an early age in the past and it probably becomes second nature once you’ve acquired the skill.
The most common colours (and those that are easiest to achieve) are yellows and greens – a simple thing like onion skins will give strong yellow and ochre – but nature also provides blue in the form of woad, and red from madder roots. Berries can result in soft pinks or lilacs, and a lichen called cudbear will give a vivid purple.
These days indigo is more commonly used for blue as it gives a stronger colour, but people in the past wouldn’t have had access to that unless they lived around the Mediterranean or near a trade route to the East. The Romans, for example, were connected to those. (As an aside, I recently found out that Roman aristocrats wanted a particular dye to colour the trim of their togas a beautiful purple – for that they had to have murex dye which is produced from the shells of mussels and it needed 10,000 shells for one single toga!)
When dyeing wool, to make sure the colour sets it’s important to soak it in a mordant (a fixing agent) like alum first, although some things like woad don’t always need this depending on what colour you’re aiming for. Incidentally, I learned that woad is biennial (i.e. the plant lives for two years) and you use the leaves which grow in the first year for dyeing. In the second year the plant produces flowers and seeds that you can grow for the following year. Woad is also apparently an antiseptic that was used to heal wounds.
Dyeing can, of course, be done with materials/fabrics, not just wool or yarn. I recently attended a weekend course in eco dyeing (or print dyeing) which was fascinating. We were given little squares of silk or cotton (it works best on pure silk) and experimented with adding various things to make patterns. We started with onion skins – yellow and red – which were shredded and put inside, then the material was rolled into a small ball, very tightly. We tied string around it to keep everything in place, then boiled it (well, simmered really) for an hour or so. The result was a stunning orange/brown pattern!
We tried the same process with eucalyptus leaves (the imported kind are apparently best but UK grown ones work too), and also leaves from various indigenous trees and bushes. Using different fixing agents gives different results and we tried several – iron, copper and alum. The shape and texture of the leaves showed up perfectly and I was thrilled with the result.
Finally, we were given a white silk scarf to dye and it turned out quite well. Personally, I prefer less earthy colours, but since this was my first try, I was very satisfied with this.
Have you ever tried your hand at dyeing anything, whether with plant material or shop-bought dyes? It can be a great way of refreshing your wardrobe! And the results can be unexpected to say the least – do tell!
