The sock yarn below was dyed not exactly on a compost heap but in buckets of left over dye stuffs that were left in the sun for a few weeks.

It was a continuation of the use of the home-grown madder written about in the previous article Madder and Madder.

The madder in question had already been used to dye over one and a half times its weight, however because the madder was quite coarsely chopped I could see both from the wool dyed and the madder that was left over that the red pigments had not yet been fully ...

Lots of you have asked how I would process the madder harvested last year.

Well, it has dried very well, hanging in my neighbours' barn and was only brought inside just as the cyclone arrived last January. I wasn't going to risk my madder being blown away! It had dried so well that it was possible to snap it into smaller pieces, but not small enough.

I have saved this home grown madder for this Autumn's sock collection not only because I have heard that madder needs to mature for a year but also I thought that Jan ...