FLYMPH FORUM

A nice find, Mike -- passably poetic and practical to boot. Thanks for sharing. I've always felt that there were "colors to suit the seasons", and obviously this concept is not new.
What I do wonder about now is whether the same colors in the specified time frames would apply to the modern New World as they once did to the Emerald Isle?

"The most extensive and best dyer of wool and feathers we ever knew was the late Mr Thomas Ettingsall, Merchants' Quay, Dublin. Many and many an hour have we spent in the long, lumbered, and supremely dirty loft he called his laboratory ; but he was a poet, and poets would be nothing without the faculty of imagination. A careless disciple in those days, we yet remember his lectures on his favourite art. " No single dye stuff, whether vegetable or mineral," he was wont to say, " will give a reliable tint. There must be admixture. The material to be dyed should undergo at least two processes, when the separate results combining in the pores of the article will, if a man understands his business, produce the colour required.""

From "The Field Quarterly and Review" 1870

Bill

Mike,
It was Malone who first got me in to playing around with dubbing blends.... he writes very well on it. I am a bit of a sucker for the Irish flies...

Andrew.