Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I noticed others' complaints that this book lacked "recipes," and assumed they wanted very exact procedures with exact ingredients and amounts. Usually satisfied with more abstract instruction, I went ahead and ordered it -- expecting still to find outlines of generic procedures, some suggested effective combinations of mordants and plant materials, and a bit of orientation for those of us whose prior dying experience has been limited to commercial synthetic dyes on the stovetop. Be warned: What little this book offers in the way of instruction is buried in long, wool-gathering reflections and chatty anecdotes. If you can discern a complete process, you will have extracted it by flipping around scanning for hints, in rambling text nearly free of useful rubrics other than chapter headings. It may please you to know, from an amusing sidebar, that the ancient Scots considered little boys' urine ideal for dying with one particular material (woad). But I, for one, would like to know for any of the mordants: how much, for how long, in approximately what dilution, for what fiber types, and when in the process? No-one is born knowing this stuff; we buy books in hopes of learning it. India's work is inspiring to look at and her beautiful book would grace an artsy coffee table, but her prose misses the tutorial mark pretty badly.