que?

opening the mail this morning i nearly choked on my porridge

when i read the unequivocal statement below

while the second sentence is true,

my response to the first was quite simply "bollox".

if you don't know what that means, good.

if you do, be assured that i have put a gold-coloured coin into the swear jar.

the reason green is traditionally considered to be a "difficult to achieve" colour is quite simply because of the way the plants have been processed.

most water supplies contain at least a little sodium

which tends to make everything yellow.

if you're lucky enough to live in Philadelphia

or Göttingen or other places where the water is rich in calcium; or if your water comes from a copper-rich bore/well then you'll be familiar with beautiful greens too

 or you could go play at Mount Tamborine

where the climate and soil and magic-in-the-air gave us lovely greens

there's an old Japanese dyeing family whose name sadly escapes me for now

but you could google them if you had half an hour to spare, Dr something-beginning-with-K

spoke at the UNESCO dye conference in Hyderabad in 2006

and i distinctly recall him showing slides of the 167 repeatable and named 

shades of green that his family could dye to order

[i'm pretty sure there must be either copper or calcium or both in their water]

their sample books go back over six or seven generations.

the samples above were dyed at Gore, New Zealand

and here's a link to the process we used at Warrnambool, Victoria

bundle-dyeing or ecoprinting [much the same thing]

is by far the best way to achieve greens

as the outside of the bundle acts as a filter

so what reaches the inside is relatively pure steam

without nasties that will dull the greens or change them to gold

and if you've pre-soaked your cloth

in a diluted copper+vinegar solution 

[NOT copper sulphate, it is toxic and corrosive]

success is guaranteed.

now that i've got that off my chest

i'll clear up the mess of spluttered porridge

and get back to the dyepot...

its contents have to be packed and on a plane on Tuesday.