I’d assumed dyeing was steam in a pot and done when I backed Caitlin ffrench’s Gathering Colour on Kickstarter to learn how it works and how to work with colours. The book has some good instruction in it. There’s also more ritual and belief than I wanted, and enough repetition to make the reading dry; unless you’re big into crafting with your own supplies, I don’t think it’s worth the time.
The paint chapters gave me the most to latch onto, since I studied physics and have dabbled a little in painting. Paint is pigment in a binder, about three parts to one, and it sits on top of the paper where ink soaks in. Dyeing was the part I had nothing to build on. The book shows that fibre has to be scoured and then mordanted before any dye will hold, and I appreciate the process a lot more for knowing it. I never knew how these materials went together or how to apply them; now I have a reference if I need it.
The ritual sits at both ends of the book. It opens on the eight pagan holidays and the phases of the moon before the first recipe, and closes on moon water, incense, and the four elements after the last. In between, projects like the eco-printed patch and the altar cloth open with the magic in them before the list of what you need. The rule against gathering flowers after the Harvest Moon comes up four times. That’s the author’s prerogative, but it wasn’t what I came for.
The repetition makes it dry. The solstice wreath turns up as a ritual near the start, as a project near the end, and again in the conclusion, so between the recipes the reading drags.
I’m not a crafter, though my partner is, and I don’t know whether someone who already crafts would weigh the recipes against the ritual the way I did.