There is a patience to natural dye that no factory can teach. This week I made a bath of beetroot, soaking a pound of undyed merino for three days in a pot on the back stove, stirring it with a wooden spoon, and whispering the occasional encouragement. The result was a deep, dusty pink, the colour of the inside of an ear.
It will fade a little, as everything does, and I find I do not mind. Colour that is gone is only colour that has been loved. I am selling the skeins at $8 each, and keeping one for myself, which I shall turn into something I will, in all likelihood, not finish. Do come and look. The pink is, I think, one of my best, and I am told it takes well to being taken apart.
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