So here is the foraging result on my patio, paper bag ready to receive the leaves. My kitchen now has various paper bags pegged up to the front of my shelves as my growing foraging finds mount up. And the fridge has several jars of dyes made from their results.
In the kitchen, there's also cooking, and today being a day to cook beets from my farmshare, I saved the steaming water and the skins and made a dyebath, in the hope that it would work.
Beets usually require the whole root, I think, but anyway, I tried out a piece of linen, shibori-wrapped in a sort of brick shape, used cream of tartar as a mordant and alum, and simmered the fabric, after soaking in water for an hour, in the dyebath complete with mordant. I'll leave it in overnight, probably, just to give the color a chance.
But since I took the picture, when the dyebath was reddish, I notice it's already, after half an hour, turning a rusty brown.
I know beet color is very fugitive in air, but if it gives me a warm rust brown that will work fine for one of my doorway pieces. We'll see!
