The first session of this 4-part course

Basing ourselves in a beautiful Cumbrian woodland in the Rusland Valley, we will prepare a fire to gather around, cook on and heat up our dye baths. For the first part of the day we will be peeling oak. A traditional woodland skill, bark peeling involves removing the bark from felled oak trees. The bark is traditionally used by tanneries to tan leather but we will use it in our natural dyeing experiments and the now clean, smooth oak we can use in our creative projects. After bark peeling, we will walk in the woods to forage other plants to experiment with before returning to our fire to prepare dye baths and soak the fabric.

The rest of the day will be spent learning about the woodland, connecting with our surroundings, checking on our dye experiments and finally, we will stoke up the fire and have our own Beltane celebration to finish our first day together!

To book or find out more go to the Soaking in the Seasons page