Do you have this weed in your yard or in a field near you?  It is Deadnettle, Lamium Purpureum for the purists, and winter weed for the layman. It is a member of the mint family.

Using Sasha Duerr’s book “The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes” I sort of followed the directions for dyeing with mint.  I say sort of because Ron and I used a bundling technique as an experiment rather than just making a dye pot. We  put the bundles into a stainless steel pot and simmered for 40 minutes with washing soda and alum in the water. Tomorrow we will see what it looks like after the water cools. We are hoping for a medium mint green color. If they are, some of the pieces will then be put with an iron mordant to see if we get a deeper green.  By the way, this is cotton fabric that was scoured and then wetted before bundling. We used a 1/1 concentration of plant to WOF [weight of fabric].