Don’t ivy berries come in such a stunning range of colours? I can imagine a beautiful winter hat in a variegated yarn using these tones. Until I went out to pick this pretty lot I never realised how different plants can have such distinctive colours. A useful reminder to look closer when out and about. You never know what beautiful things you’re missing!
A few weeks ago I did a bit more natural dyeing using the mini skeins I prepared at the beginning of December. I loved the colours I achieved with avocado stones when I made my naturally dyed jumper so that was an obvious one to try again.
The mordanted skeins gave a lovely dusky pink colour while the unmordanted skeins were slightly duller.
Using the ivy berries, the dye liquid was a rich reddish purple colour. Disappointingly, but not entirely unexpectedly having seen the results others got with ivy berries, the mordanted skeins were a dull-ish sage green. The unmordanted skeins were almost a dove grey. 
Photos of both sets of skeins are below (the colours were quite difficult to capture accurately).
From left to right: Unmordanted silk/alpaca, mordanted silk/alpaca, mordanted alpaca/wool, unmordanted wool, mordanted wool.
From left to right: Unmordanted silk/alpaca, mordanted silk/alpaca, mordanted alpaca/wool, unmordanted wool, mordanted wool.
mako makes stuff 