Woad are we!

This past Saturday, Bonnie and I spent the Day in Elysian Park with 50 other people learning the craft of woad from Master Woader Denise (who flew in from France!).  We signed up for the workshop through one of our favorite craft venues French General.  What a great experience we had!

We started the day at the French General Store

And moved to the park where Denise gave us a lecture on the history of woad and woaders.  The white balance on my camera was not set right and all of my pictures came out with a blue tint to them.  It was very appropriate for the day!

Then we moved on to the dye vats and spent hours dying anything we could!  Here is what we started with

The dying process

  

Woad dyed items hanging to dry.  The blues that woad makes are so pretty!

The end result

And then back to French General for some relaxing and Lillet!  We are wearing our newly dyed scarves, which started out as pure white!  The Master Woader herself complimented us on what a nice color it came out.

And to finish it off, a newly dyed Irish Tea Towel converted into a table cloth for my back patio

The best part of the day was watching how each time we put fabric in the dye vat it came out a new and equally gorgeous shade of blue.  I tried my hardest to get the deepest richest blues I could and I think I succeeded!  And amazingly, you can dye pretty much anything you can think of!  Bonnie and I bought some woad pigment to take home with us - I can't wait to have our own woad dying day!

In other news, we added a few new items to our etsy store.  Check them out!

LOVE Card

Skull Postcard