Thursday, September 6, 2012

Day #593 Pokeberry Dye


The next time you eat honey, take a moment to appreciate the work (by the bees) that went into creating it and the work (by humans) that went into harvesting and packaging it. And that reminds me of another close-to-the-land industry: yarn.

When I was in Washington DC a year or so ago, I met the wonderful people at Solitude Wool. I signed up for email notices, and get some of the cutest pictures as a result.

In yesterday's newsletter, they were talking about making dyes from pokeberries. I doubt I could ever gather enough pokeberries because the cardinals in my yard eat them faster than imaginable. At any rate, they gathered a huge pan full of berries, mushed them and strained them, cooked them like crazy for hours and hours, and got enough dye for one skein of yarn.

In their own words, “it took 2.5 pounds of pokeberries to dye 1.6 oz of yarn. That is nuts! To do a 4 pound dye lot, I would need 100 pounds of poke berries. Don't expect to be seeing pokeberry dyed yarn for sale at the market…”

BEEattitude for Day #593:
       Blessed are those who appreciate the work we bees do, for their honey shall taste sweeter.

_______________________________ 
The teeny details:
my books:  http://www.franstewart.com Please buy them from an independent bookstore or directly from my website.


4 comments:

AggiePete said...

What precious lambs! I love to knit & crochet and I'll bet the pokeberry yarn is beautiful.

Fran Stewart said...

The email had beautiful pictures in it, but they were embedded somehow or other, and I couldn't copy them. Too bad. I would have loved to share them with you.

And I deleted the email, too. I have this picky habit of emptying my e-trash on a regular basis. Usually that's a good idea, but sometimes--like now--I wish I hadn't emptied it quite so fast.

AggiePete said...

Hey, you meet yourself coming & going, I'm sure. You got a great message & photo across.

Fran Stewart said...

Glad you enjoyed it !