nichepoetryandprose

Since last September, a small bunch of Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare L.) has hung on the line in my kitchen.  Now, with a small batch of alum-treated wool, I am able to see what colour will come from the dried and lifeless flowers.

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dried Tansy, collected in 2013

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To extract the dye, I crumbled the flowers and leaves and soaked them in water overnight.  Then I added more water and brought them slowly to a boil in my big, well-marked dyepot (marked so I will not use it for food by mistake).  After an hour’s boil, I let the dye cool and strained the liquid.  The result was a clear, amber-yellow dye.

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dye from Tansy and water, simmered

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To dye the wool, I added water, immersed a shank of alum-treated wool and slowly brought the dye to a simmer – one hour and then the long process of cooling (I am realising that dyeing is more about waiting than doing!!!!!!!!!!!). The result is a green-yellow, almost exactly the colour shown for Tansy-dyed fibre in Jenny Dean’s book (Wild Color) !!!  My photo is not clear because the drying line insists on vibrating but you can clearly see the colours – left to right – the brown of the lichen-dyed wool from a few days ago), the green-yellow of the Tansy-dyed wool and the tan of the undyed wool.

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three shanks of wool, dyed with the lichen Usnea (left), dyed with Tansy (center) and raw wool (treated with alum)

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I wrote my poem to the heady yet sleepy smells of the Tansy boiling in its dye pot.  I remembered the living Tansy, growing in the ditch last summer, each flower cluster hiding a sleepy bumblebee that had to be shaken from its resting.  I was also reminded in my reading that Tansy was used so often at funerals in New England in the 19th century that people associated its smell with death.

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Tansy in the ditch

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sleep before dyeing

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Tanacetum vulgare L. – Common Tansy, Mugwort, Bitter Buttons

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Bitter Buttons hover in the dye pot

simmering on the kitchen stove

drowsy scent of camomile

camphor and rosemary

liquid amber, saffron sallow

jaundiced pale of Tansy

reclines in the roadside ditch

each flat-topped cluster

hibernaculum

for a furred and yellow

unconcerned

and mellow

bumblebee

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Copyright  2014   Jane Tims