Happy New Year!

A new year – a fresh start! I hope you all had a really lovely Festive Break and are ready to take on the exciting new challenges ahead. I always feel January is the promise of new adventures so lets get going!

For me it is hard work ahead studying for my Post Graduate Research here in Leeds – lots of experiments, reading and writing up! We are moving to Leeds to accommodate all the learning and research that is happening, with no available dyehouse there, so commission work will have to go on hold until this is sorted. The shop is hopefully re opening later in the month!

It is recommended that regular writing – of a journal or blog is good practice, so I will try to get back to more informative posts, some may go back over past work, some with information of what we are discovering, hopefully all of interest to natural dyers and purchasers of naturally dyed materials.

Starting as I mean to go on –

One of the things I have avoided in the past is using too many chemical terms, people are more likely to recognise the plant names than the chemical names However, the reality is that when using natural dyes, just like synthetics we are using chemicals and doing CHEMISTRY. It makes me ANGRY when so called “eco dyers” insist on saying they aren’t using chemicals – YES THEY ARE!!!! I wish I could scream it all across the internet and get them to change their pages.

So from now on you will see the chemical name or names used in my posts, not just the plant names. A review of my old blog A history of Colour shows that I used to be a fairly keen blog post writer, with several posts there that could do with a re vamp – I look forward to adding to it all here! Hope you’ll join me along the way!