[gardeners] woad
Bob Kirk (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Tue, 27 Jun 2000 22:00:03 -0500 (CDT)
Guess you already got one recipe. A quick look at the first two pages of
Alta Vista search results yields several more. Obviously your friend isn't
going to be using a mush of the fermented plants as a dye bath, so there's
a high limit to that. As for the alkaline treatment, a search on {woad and
... well, not to offend - water} yields 104 hits. Delicacy forbids noting
why laws were passed against woaderies(?) being located close to towns or
why woad people tended to intermarry, but anyway, there's something of an
upper limit to that as well, either for a solitary dyer or one with N
cooperative friends and limited access to mundane lime-water.
Not much help, probably. No time to look up either the humorous bit on
woad in The Dogsbody Papers or the touching Wall Street Journal account of
the passing of the last woad farmer in Britain (fittingly drawn to his
reward on the old woad-waggon). Didn't spot any blue on the barbarians in
the opening scenes of Gladiator, either, though far from being endemic to
Britain, the plant appears to have spread across all of northern Europe
from Russia etc.
bk---
unwilling to spend another $7.50 to see the movie a second night running
just to double-check what I recall as a dubious inscription above the
entrance to the Colosseum. Anyway, their consultant (way down in the
credits) would never have missed it. But would she know the vernacular
Latin for "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."?