Indigo Days

It was time to give my wish for blue a whet. Winter has brought us some kind and some brilliant days this time around, but colour has been in short supply. Blue is almost always the exception, with skies that "present in sheets the solid hue" (Robert Frost, Fragmentary Blue) . But still, it is the first colour I go to when I think about capturing something in the dye pot.

This is thanks to indigo. It's hard to recall how frightened I was of this natural dye, the first time Helene. my dye mentor and inspiration, explained the process to me. I couldn't get my mind around "thiurea dioxide", let alone pronounce it, and as she spoke of stock solutions, reducing, vats and oxidizing, I had a brief and uncomfortable flashback to chemistry 101, and then decided that more likely she was involved in some kind of witchcraft that was best left alone by a novice like me. So I put away the little baggie of powdered indigo she gave me to try, along with the mysterious white powder that came with it and the sheet of instructions that were so fetchingly printed in indigo blue on natural coloured paper, and instead played with dyestuffs that were more or less straightforward. Simmering tree bark in a pot until it gives colour is not that different from making soup, really - just a little bit smellier. Usually.

Now, indigo is one of my favourite ways to colour wool. I'm even growing my own Japanese Indigo, in the hope that I might coax a little bit of blue out of my northern garden. In the interim, Maiwa Handprints (www.maiwa.com) has been an invaluable source of both natural and synthetic indigo, and all the trimmings to make it work. They send instructions with your purchase, but you can also revisit their website and print out the instruction sheets if, like me, it takes you a while to remember to put that stuff in your binder and stop leaving it on the kitchen counter, or beside the bed.

Indigo dyeing can be messy. The thiurea dioxide has a smell which is reminiscent of - well - farts. And indigo seems to like to stick to just about everything. If you can't work outside, which is my favourite, you really need a place with water handy and where you can either protect your surfaces or a little bit of blue won't bother you. In the winter I am lucky to have access to a laundry sink in a basement area. I try to keep everything contained, but I always find a splash or two of blue that I've missed. Tools, jars, bucket and everything turn blue, and I always end up with blue tinted fingers, despite the rubber gloves.

All this is worth it, as there is nothing quite so satisfying as pulling the wool out of the vat and watching the initially disappointing yellowish green colour turn slowly and surely to blue. It is the best kind of magic - for one thing it works every time. For another, you can to some extent control the depth of shade you get. You can re-dip your fibre several times, allowing the colour to develop for 30 minutes or so between dips, and it will get darker as you go. Indigo likes to take its time, so leave yourself a whole day to get your fibre to the depth of shade you want.

I did one section of my recycled wool in a light blue, like faded denim jeans, by taking it out of the first vat and washing it as soon as the colour had developed. The second pieces I redipped 3 times - waiting between each dip and then leaving the sections overnight before washing them. The result is a very dark blue, close to new denim. I'll be cutting these pieces up for rug hooking.