Where does all the red go from the peel? Having been more successful with the betel nuts after an alkaline soak, I decided to try with pomegranates. A fair amount of peel was dried off in the food drier; it’s getting cooler and damp at the moment, so I wanted to avoid the harvest going mouldy.

A jam jar was filled to about a third of the way up with dried peel broken into small pieces, then water was added to within an inch from the top (to allow for bubbling, etc.) and then a good spoonful of bicarb. The colour came out shyly over the first few hours, but after a while and with a bit of stirring….. treacle.

What with a host of other projects on the go, I actually forgot about this for a day, and couldn’t do anything until the third day anyway. A small skein of scoured cotton was added to liquor in a larger jar and left for a day (or two?). For the sake of speed, I gave the skein a wash in laundry powder (which made it go darker at first), then rinsed until clear. You can see that it produced quite an acceptable colour.

I didn’t want to leave wool soaking for so long in the liquor – pH10 – but then tossed between an alkaline soak and an alkaline boil and which would be the most damaging. Boil it was – for about twenty minutes. The colour isn’t all that bad, but the damage caused doesn’t really make the risk worthwhile. Maybe like a home perm.