O is for Oak Galls...
these are just a few. My oak tree is shedding them presently.
I read that you can make an ink dye out of them. Some even claim to be able to dye with them. I have not tried that yet. I find it interesting that a little wasp makes them. I have never seen the little wasp, except in photographs.
3 comments:
Hmmm .... interesting .... I must check out my oak tree, Harry, soon to see if he has any oak galls.
My oak trees are shedding oak galls. I find them when I walk for the mail. They have fascinated me, especially since we don't get to see the wasp that makes them. When I first noticed oak galls, I wondered what they were. You have a nice collection of them and given wonderful information--making dye, even.
Hi Cyndy
You can indeed dye with oak galls.
At our Guild dyeing day we were reading about it in a book called Wild Colour by Jenny Dean. It's a fantastic book (out of print though, bah!). She shows how to get 40 colours from one dye bath, by pre-soaking fibre in mordants and then dyeing, and again by after-soaking some of the skeins in acid or alkaline. A really interesting read.
I have also seen ground oak gall powder for sale on-line as a natural dye.
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