Bottom: Iron mordant adjunct

Middle: Copper mordant adjunct

Top: Aluminum Sulfate adjunct

Jar: Bubbling lake pigment

Left corner: Used sandpaper

I have a potato phone.

But they are all peachy colours. The jar is stained red from other dyes, it doesn’t come out.

Wool roving usually starts to felt during this process, I have carders to fluffy it back up after.

Don’t do it.

It made my whole kitchen smell like old eggs and the colour just wasn’t worth it, and that was before the aluminum sulfate.

But I’ll probably try it again with different wools and mordants…

Anyway, I peeled about 300g from paper birch trees (respectfully, a little bit from each tree,) and soaked it in water for two days. Then, I simmered it on low heat a couple hours, let stand another day (I was busy) then added about 50g wool I’d mordanted with soda ash.

The wool simmered for a couple hours then sat in the dye bath for another day. After that, I rinsed, tried some different mordants, then added aluminum sulfate solution in water to the dye bath to extract the rest of the pigment… which really made it smell like rotten eggs. I’m in the frozen north with my door wide open, now.

Maybe I’ll try again in the summer time.

I’ll break down and recycle the spent bark into paper as well. Stay tuned for that.