The Dye Garden – Part 1: Cochineal

"It is a beetle," said Valentina.

"It's a bag of beetles," said June.

"Dried. Crushed. They make the red."

June looked at the small grey paper sack on the stone workbench, then at the mortar and pestle. The dye garden lay at the back of a weaving studio on the edge of Oaxaca, a walled courtyard full of sun, with rows of indigo plants, marigolds, pomegranate trees and cactus pads. Skeins of wool hung drying on lines in every colour: ochre, rose, emerald, deep blue.

She was thirty-one, a textile student from Glasgow, in a smock already stained, with sandy hair in a bandana and a notebook full of colour charts. Valentina, thirty-four, the weaver, was lean and sunburnt, with a long black braid, a cotton apron and the unhurried air of a woman who had grown up among looms. She held out a pestle.

"Grind."

June ground. A fine reddish-brown dust rose and stained her fingers. Valentina poured the powder into a pot of warm water and lemon juice. The liquid blushed from brown to deep crimson. June gasped.

"It's red."

"It was always red. It was hiding."

They dyed a skein of white wool together, dipping it, wringing it, lifting it out in a long, shining ribbon of scarlet. It hung from the line, dripping, glowing in the sun like a flame. June stared at it.

"I've used this colour in a thousand designs," she said. "I never knew where it came from."

"Now you know."

"It's incredible."

"It's a lot of beetles."

June laughed, and Valentina's face softened. Over the next weeks, she taught June everything: indigo fermentation in great clay jars, golden marigold, pomegranate rind for sage-green. She taught her to feel the right moment to lift the wool. June's hands turned blue, then yellow, then red. They worked side by side in the sun, talking, laughing, working.

"Can I ask you something?" said June, one afternoon.

"Yes."

"Why do you do it this way? It's so slow."

"Because the colours are alive," said Valentina. "They have patience. I try to learn it."

"Green?" said June, a leaf, a dye.

"Green," said Valentina, smiling. "Very green. We make it tomorrow, with the indigo and the marigold."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Two Colours.