Truly natural colour – squezed from a squishy pelargonium stalk

Homemade ink sketches of shadows in the garden on a rare sunny day

Dye results from hazel catkins – an unexpectedly wide range of colours

More of an inky week… I’ve enjoyed using my homemade inks to draw another garden map, and also some sketches from photos of shadows in the garden on a rare sunny Spring day. It will be interesting to see if the colour will change over time. I was pruning my pelargoniums after re-potting them and noticed that a dark coloured liquid was oozing out of a particularly squishy stem - I squeezed it onto watercolour paper and was very surprised by the range of tones and intensity of colour when it dried. I was very pleased with the results of dyeing with hazel catkins - very plentiful in the garden at the moment. The colour was almost as strong on the cotton and linen as on the yarn and woollen blanket squares, and it shifted to a lovely dark brown with iron oxide. I’m guessing this indicates the presence of tannins, but botany is not my strong point. I’m going to dye a larger piece of woollen blanket as I’d like to try some embroidery with my dyed threads.