If I am repeating information that others already know, I apologize. But I recently came across a page talking about a much simplified method of cold dyeing with madder root. Results look very good and cover all ranges. Sounds a lot easier than keeping it near boil.
Now if I can just get that yellow brown color right for my sagum.
http://www.rugreview.com/13-3nest.htm
Fascinating, thanks for sharing that! Presumably you'll be planting a crop of madder in the spring?
One minor thing I'll quibble with is her assumption that "primitive peoples" wouldn't have spent all the time and effort to gather firewood for this, etc. Seems to me that most people doing dyeing on any significan scale are far above "primitive", in fact they're generally professional dyers. That's their job, so yes, they'll get what they need to do it. You would be AMAZED at the effort ancient people went to for fancy textiles--and many other things!--even if they seem like unnecessary frivolities to us today. On a non-professional level, since any house had a fire going constantly for heat and cooking, it's easy enough to stick a dyepot at one side to stay hot. That's how many households did indigo dyeing in the 17th and 18th centuries.
So, get cooking!
Matthew
I posted some questions about this some time ago (with the exact same website:wink: ).
I've tried this method and had fairly good results with it. The only problem lies with the cold mordating of the wool. It's better to do this warm as otherwise the alumn won't have enough energy to get the job done properly. The best would be if you could do this in the summer. You get much nicer results when dyeing with madder if the temperature remains around 45°C for a few days than you get from a few hours of dyeing at 60-65°C.
I dyed some wool without heating in our greenhouse last summer. The red I got from the madder with this method is magnificent.
For more info on deying and asking questions you can try the Flinkhand forum. There are a lot of dyers on that forum and although most people post in German you can post questions in English and most of the time they'll answer you in English.
Vale,
Jef