Having received my yarns I was raring to get started on experimenting with different ways to use them and the first thing on my to do list was to test out colour options, for this I needed to mordant my yarns. The traditional way of doing this once involved using copper (poisonous), tin (expensive to get hold of and not as capable as some other alternatives) or urine (not 100% and i'm not sure how I - or the consumers- would feel about me weeing on their clothing!). I decided on alum, as it is the least invasive to us (there is a percentage of alum in drinking water etc - so it is already all around us - despite scepticism after reading articles about it being connected to altzheimer's when near skin, the positives for it far outweighed the potential cons). So I mordanted my yarns (split into quarters as I didn't have big enough pans!) in a mixture of alum, cream of tartar and hot water - simmering it for a number of hours and leaving to soak overnight in preparation for the dye workshop the next day!