I’m at the airport after teaching for 5 days at Sanborn Mills Farm in New Hampshire. Sanborn Mills Farm is a working organic farm and craft school specializing in traditional crafts such as blacksmithing, woodworking, basketry, kitchen and textile arts. We saw newborn lambs, massive draft horses and oxen and dormant grain fields just starting their spring activity. Sanborn Mills Farm is one of my favorite places to teach with a dye garden a few steps away and trails and farm animals to visit and observe. The weather was typical unsettled early spring and we encountered high winds, heavy rain, snow and perfectly beautiful days!
I taught The Nerd’s Guide to Mordants, where we covered an array of mordants to see how each reacted with certain fibers, and then branched into independent inquiries. Our group explored how to make pastel shades, getting green with iron and sometimes indigo, overdyeing one bath to another, and how tannin shades influence colors. In total, we created close to 200 colors over 4 fiber variables!
New to this class was a dive into indigo as we had access to iron, henna and indigo vats. Indigo really extended the palette and created depth in our color discoveries.
Sanborn Mills offers a myriad of craft workshops and is open from April through early November. Check out their offerings at sanbornmills.org