Perendale with lily of the valley

So, it's that time of year when everything is coming up. I've been wanting to dye with lily of the valley for a while, ever since I had read about it and how you can get a green from it.

Doing research, many of the books/websites and more suggested a ratio of 2:1 of plant material to wool. I would definitely up it to 3:1 or even 4:1.

I started with:

5.4 ounces of lily of the valley (leaves and flower buds)

2.6 ounces of Perendale fleece (washed) mordanting in .5T alum and .5t CoT.

Leaves were harvested at night and put into a 6 ounce crock pot. Wool was soaked and entered into the dye bath several hours later. (It took a long time to extract any sort of dye color.)

Added about two more ounces of leaves, and some color could eventually be seen, left the leaves in, and let it soak on low for a while, and then turned off and let cool.

After several days of sitting in the crock pot, I reheated the dye bath with the wool in it. It seems to have given a pale, apple green. Left some leaves in there, added about 11 ounces of new leaves and turned on high to try to extract more color. Have 4.1 ounces of wool mordanting in  alum/CoT. Not sure if all of it will go to the lily of the valley bath, but most will.

It is definitely a pale, pale color, more like a tint. Worth trying again, and experimenting with.

One of the books talked about adding Glauber's salts and Tartaric acid to the dye bath. That's something to look into for next time.