So where could a fly tyer of the Middle Ages have found his wool. Probably lots of places but in "A World of Insects" we learn that the word caddisfly comes from: "caddice men of the middle ages - itinerant salesmen that attached the pieces of yarn, cloth, and ribbons that they sold to their coats. ...

I used the British spelling because I used the word in the British context.

https://www.bcsba.org.uk/coloured-sheep ... red-sheep/

“The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language”
George Bernard Shaw

Alfred Ronalds Alder Fly

https://archive.org/details/flyfishento ... 9/mode/1up

The download goes to show, that without any new documentation, the mystery continues. Another recent discussion can be found in “The Poetics of Angling in Early Modern England”. The materials are more interesting to me though. John McDonald appears to favor John Waller Hills view that the Maure fly ...

That looks like a really interesting read. I’m waiting for a more peaceful time to read it. I dyed some wool yarn with Medieval era dyes and colors. The problem for me is that most tyers know a lot more about the current state of the art than the Middle Ages. So I’m hesitant to show them to anyone. ...

While black might have been a challenging color for a Medieval dyer; scraps of professionally dyed black yarn were probably readily available. Perhaps more so than black sheep. Much of English wool was sent abroad to be manufactured into cloth. A load contaminated with a few dark hairs could be reje...

No clue but the person was obviously literate. It would had to have been someone with the means to acquire an education. Royalty seemed to more concerned with hunting if the tapestries of the era are any indication. Monasteries were probably often located near rivers since they would have to be self...

The Treatyse was supposedly written by a nun. In those days priest’s vestments were made by nuns so they would have access to silk thread and dyed wool for embroidery. Guilds were very powerful and for someone to be dyeing wool then would similar to a non-union actor working on a movie set today. Wo...

Black in the Middle Ages was an expensive color. Of course a cheap black could be made of tannin and iron but the amount of iron needed to get black would eventually rot it. Black silk thread was once known for breaking easily, probably for the same reason. In some countries these iron tannate black...

I don’t want to be like Johnson in his definition of oatmeal, but dyeing wasn’t much of a thing in Ireland. While dyeing in Scotland is well documented; the same can’t be said of Ireland. I think Donegal tweed would well represent the Irish tradition. Wool that was dyed would be boiled until it felt...