Color.... dyes from our food

There is a great little article in a New York Times issue about how to use food scraps to dye shirts and towels with onions, cabbage, curry or whatever is left over in the kitchen.  Fascinating. An earlier article talk about dye plants available in the garden. such as marigolds, Oxalis, and madder (Rubia, which of course makes red).

The article ends with these words, which I like a lot:

Will these gorgeous new hues be permanent? Short answer: who knows? If it’s any consolation, on a celestial scale, nothing lasts. Cosmologists suggest the universe has passed through its own dye bath over the eons, shifting from bluish to reddish.

How often do you see the physical phenomenon of red shift being mentioned in a craft article? :) Nice.

Now I want to go out and boil up lots of weeds, but it is winter...