A video on colour

How many colours?  Enjoy the video

If you spin wool than probably you have also tried dyeing the wool with plant materials.  I spent several years doing it.   You need to work outside because it is messy.  You learn along the way, how plants behave.  The above video introduces you to the Japanese way of thinking about colour and it is very restful.

There is a thrill when you dye with indigo, it changes colour from a greenish hue to a beautiful blue as the air oxygenates the wool.  A brief moment of magic..

Mostly you will get soft greens, yellows.

Paul, being a collector of all things Japanese, had  glass topped cases of natural dyes both plant and mineral, you can see them here.

  My mother-in-law years ago gave me a Chinese silk piano cloth, beautifully embroidered with a great dragon and flowers, but it had lost all its colour.  Is now a cream background in which the embroidery shows up as a soft dove grey.  The colour bleached out by time.