As summer tentatively approaches we are beginning to get into some serious natural dyeing here at Renaissance Dyeing. The dryer weather means that the wood fired mordant vat can be used more often and the bigger out-side indigo and woad vat. So Adriaan is busy winding and mordanting and I am trying to get the wool dyed as fast as he can mordant it. We are dyeing lots as we are hoping to be at some French wool markets this summer, but more of that in the next newsletter.

Adriaan est occupé avec mordançage de la laine et j'essaie de teindre la laine aussi vite que possible. Nous sommes teinture beaucoup que nous espérons être à certains marchés de laine français cet été, mais plus de cela dans le prochain bulletin.

We have in a new batch of Blue-faced Leicester which is beginning to go through the vats. As you probably know the price of wool is soaring so as we add the newly dyed wool to the web-site the price will go up. There is still lots of Blue-faced Leicester available at the old price.

Nous avons dans un nouveau lot de Leicester Blue-face qui commence à passer par les cuves. Comme vous le savez sans doute le prix de la laine va monter. Alors que nous ajoutons la laine nouvellement teints au site web le prix va monter. Il ya encore beaucoup de Blue-faced Leicester disponibles à l'ancien prix.

Some of our woad dyed wool is featured in the May edition of Selvedge. Hop along to their web-site to take a look or better still buy the mag. Let me know if you would like to see this magazine for sale on our web-site.

Certains de nos laine teints de pastel est dans l'édition de mai de Selvedge. Allez sur leur site web à jeter un oeil ou mieux encore acheter le magazine. Dites-moi si vous voulez voir ce magazine en vente sur notre site web.

A few of you have sent in some pics of what they have knitted with their 12 x 25m lace weight skeins, you can see a few on the 12 skein blog entry. I know there are lot more of you out there, so we are intrigued to see how you have taken on the challenge.

Quelques-uns d'entre vous ont envoyé les photos de ce qu'ils ont tricoté avec leurs 12 x 25m écheveaux de la laine dentelle, vous pouvez voir quelques-uns sur le 12 écheveaux blog. Je sais qu'il ya beaucoup plus de vous là-bas, donc nous sommes intrigués de voir ce que vous avez fait.

If you want to naturally dye your own 12 skeins and more the natural dyeing workshop which I will be doing for the Wool Box in Pettinengo in Northern Italy is now bookable on line

Si vous voulez teindre naturellement vos propres 12 écheveaux et plus. L'atelier de teinture naturelle que je vais faire pour The Wool Box à Pettinengo en Italie du Nord est maintenant réserver en ligne.

This will be a three day workshop over the Whitsun week-end. I always aim that everybody leaves my workshops being able to dye their own wool at home and so we start from scratch. You will learn how to prepare the yarn skeins and mordant them with alum, then over the three days you will dye with weld, madder and an organic indigo vat. You will learn how to reuse the dye baths and modify the colours. You will go home with skeins dyed yellow, olive, orange, red, rust, blue, turquoise and green.. at least. And you will have the recipes to be able to do it all over again at home. The course will be in English with Italian hand signals. So maybe I will see you there?

And of course we will all eat Italian food!