The sweet smell of ... hollyhocks?

Hollyhocks may have a lot of things going for them,

but scent is not one of them.

A driven plant breeder will probably develop a fragrant one some day

[breeders seem to strive for weird unusual attributes like that].

Till then, hollyhocks are hard to beat when it comes to garden stature.

And the so-called  *black*  ones?
They're unbeatable for  another  reason ...

This might be my favorite cloth from any of our dye sessions last season ... fresh rose leaves
as resists, surrounded by wild blackberries (here, the raspberry color)
cooked in a pot of carrot tops.
And that deep inky purple?  Well, that came from these fellas ....

~ photo courtesy of wood11 ~

If these aren't a variety called 'The Watchman,' then they are kin at least.

One of the flower floozies in our dye group had a patch in her garden and shared

the bounty.  Oooh, she is nice, isn't she?

And I almost kissed her when she handed all of us some seeds at season's end!

It was one of those wraps that as it came off the can

I literally caught my breath ... the colors were so unexpected, so intense.

I thought they'd end up a couple of shades lighter after the cloth dried,

but there has been virtually no change.

Now that spring has finally hit I've been like a madwoman working in the garden, one of my
greatest joys (and definitely my biggest backache, oy vey).  All so good, not complaining a bit really ...
with India Flint coming to teach us in September, I have decided to forego the quantity of veg
 I usually grow and fill those spaces with an assortment of floozie-ness
~ petals & leafage ~
for natural dyeing
instead.

There is an entire raised bed dedicated to just these hollyhocks.
I couldn't help myself.

:::


For a look at some inky BLUE color, go see what jude has been doing with black beans ...

Cliffhanger in the garden

When my garden puts on a patina of frost, it's her bone structure that becomes especially appealing.
I'm no longer distracted by color & foliage or swooning over petals [says the confessed flower floozie].
She becomes all lines, angles and shapes.  No nonsense, and easy to see through.
I always make plans for her at this time of year
except this year, they're especially big ones.
Never finished, constantly evolving ~ isn't that what they say about gardens?

For starters, some of the raised beds won't hold vegetables this year.
But they will hold other things meant for a cooking pot.

While mulling over these thoughts, I took a stroll to the Way Back to take a look at the pond.
A solid sheet of ice ...
rather raw feeling, but an inviting canvas

for crystals.

Like stitches.

The cotton skirt is still hanging from the dead cedar tree back there ...

it's been up two years since last September.

Just a little the worse for wear ... from critters and the odd 50 mph winds.

The skirt will come down  this  September ... in celebration of a very special event that's happening
here on our small island.  Most likely it will end up quite like this,
wrapped around native vegetation and colorful harvest from the garden.
Except it won't be alone in the pot ...

And I will leave you hanging there until my next post.

Tongs for dyehards

When our merry band of natural dyers decided (wholeheartedly) to gather one last time

before winter sets in and puts the big kabosch on outdoor *cooking,*

it seemed only fitting that this enthusiastic group of 

dyehards

should celebrate their past ~ and future! ~ successes

with a brand new pair of tongs ...

I think they liked them.

The November day was kind to us.  Plenty of sun, not a whisper of (normally biting) wind

and although we each worried a bit about the slimmer pickins of autumnal plant material,

we pulled it together with great exuberance

and generous sharing from each other's stash ...

including a bit of pilfering from S's hedgerow.

Somehow it  ALWAYS  works out.

We've been lucky that way.

Our brews:

1.  Carrot tops, peach leaves & wild blackberry leaves, with copper pipes in a stainless pot.

2.  Scraps of rusty metal in plain water (no vegetation) in a stainless pot.

3.  Red cabbage with sea salt & alum in an aluminum pot.

Wrapped inside my bundles:

cedar bark, onion skins, rusty washers, frozen blackberries, "ice flower" red scabiosas, 

purple elderberry leaves, madrone bark

and eucalyptus leaves ...

which flew in all the way from California.

(Mercy, THANK YOU!)

Just when I'd begun to think that I was finally achieving a small grasp on this whole dye thing

the eucalyptus has to come along and throw me a curve ball.

What? I thought eucalyptus was supposed to be fairly easy to "manage."

I was dead set certain these babies would leave gorgeous ORANGE-RED marks.

The onion skins did not fail me ... but pale  spring green  from these eucs???

*sigh*

Oh well.  Maybe it's the water.

In any case, I am ever so grateful to my dye pals for their fortitude, unbounded enthusiasm, 

rip roaring senses of humor and most importantly, their kindness & camaraderie.  It truly has been,

"the more, the merrier,"

and I can't wait to see where we'll be heading next spring ...

Abundance, of sorts...

Our merry band of dyers reconvened, armed with the bounty of the season...

solidago (goldenrod), spent blooms of deep purple hollyhocks,

madrone bark, perennial sunflowers,

the last of the red carrot tops,

and a sumptuous, aromatic pile of wild blackberries.

Cooked to (hopefully) perfection.

Finally, I was able to attain two of my favorite colors on the same cloth...sage green

and purple.

I almost fell into a swoon.

Of particular interest was the mottling effect caused by

the resist marks of the blackberry seeds.

As it happens, I am nearing the end of this very good read...

along with the "heroine" of the story.

Nearing her end, that is.

After finishing Ahab's Wife (also penned by Naslund), I was craving more by this author

and although I have not been quite as captivated throughout this one,

it has been a fascinating walk through the decadence and royal life of 1700's France nonetheless.

I don't know what has happened to me.

I hated Chemistry in school and never before have I been attracted to *historical* books,

even fictional ones.

Now, I seem to be quite obsessed with both.

I found myself pre-mixing a copper mordant 

to see if the carrot top bath would become an enhanced shade of green,

and today I'm contemplating the best method to perform lightfastness strip tests 

on the cloth life of a blackberry!

When I gaze at this portrait of Marie Antoinette, I barely notice its finer attributes

such as the delicately honed lace detail or the luminous quality of the skin.

Instead, when I look at this scrumptious painting

painted by Her Majesty's most beloved court painter , Elizabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun, 

in 1783,

I wonder about the color source for the blue dye of that silk dress...

Navigation: bundle #4

Looks like a dirty old rag.

If you walked by it on the street, you wouldn't stop to pick it up...

if you saw it laying on a park bench,

you probably wouldn't want to sit next to it....

even if you knew there were red rose petals stuffed inside

or that it was a delicately edged vintage napkin hiding under all that *grime*.

Strange things can happen during a two-day eucalyptus and iron soak...

Heavy linen seems to love being pre-mordanted with ash water.

Oh, what a learning curve all this trial & error has been....is....

every cloth becomes another building block towards understanding.  There are moments

when it all feels uphill and quite arduous,

and

very labor intensive.

Thank goodness for important reminders.

Just

keep

going.

: : :

'Saint Vitus Cathedral'

by Josef Sudek, 1924-25

Navigation: bundle #3

After a certain amount of bundling, you start to look for signs...

any kind of indication that something is brewing inside.

That green there in the center?

That's a promise waiting to be exposed.

Silk organza,

a few square chips of copper sheeting, some sprigs of purple Salvia 'Caradonna' 

and a handful of fresh salal leaves (Gaultheria shalon), wrapped around a small can

and simmered in a bath of red-leaved berberis for about an hour,

then left to air dry for - you guessed it - three weeks...

Do you see the imprint of the salal leaf there on the top half, about center?

Not one iota of color to be found!

Now, India says that  everything  gives color, one way or the other,

but so far (and after four tries) salal is my nemesis.

Known for its medicinal qualities, it can be prepared as a tincture or tea

and used as a poultice for insect bites & stings...

but as a dye plant...

meh.

What to try next...

perhaps soaking the leaves in vinegar first?

Sing them a lullaby?  Beg on bended knee?

There might be a wee gift in it for anyone reading who can provide the secret...

Navigation: bundle #2

Doesn't look like much, does it?  Pretty blah.  And covered in mildew.

Looks can be deceiving.

Take an old thrift store napkin, soak it overnight in some soy milk,

stuff it's folded innards with some eucalyptus leaves, helenium blossoms, a couple nails

and a few rusty screws.

Roll the whole kit'nkboodle around a piece of driftwood, 

binding it as tight as you can with any old ratty garden twine ...

plunk the whole thing into a cast iron pot packed full with more of those euc leaves

and simmer away for a good 45 minutes or so.

Leave to air dry for about three weeks.

In case you might want some,

poor air circulation and/or lack of (drying) heat will bring on the pesky microflora.

May not be a bad thing, but I admit to going to battle with this batch of bundles

who ended up spending considerable time basking in my warming oven

and then received an extra steam treatment and a very hot hour in the dryer ...

+++++ STOP ++++++

you little mildewy buggers!

Many thanks to Fabienne for her encouragement & special steps walking me through that one ...

I had a good chuckle when I read the back side of this tag:

"Machine wash cold

Do not bleach

Tumble dry low

Warm iron as needed

Dry clean recommended"

It seems eco-printing is a made-in-heaven enterprise for rule breakers.

: : :

I have to include this one particular close-up ...

this face is for Jude ...

who still teaches me to  *see*  in many unexpected ways ...

thank you.

:::

It'll be a night for blue moon dreaming ....

let's all  just let it roll.

Navigation: bundle #1

There appears to be no direct course ~ certainly no guarantees ~ for coaxing plants

to give up their colors on cloth.

Perhaps that's part of the thrill of it, all those unknown factors

working together to give us something we could never plan ...

like a party, where the group of invitees is such an odd assortment of characters

one has no idea of the party's outcome.

Will it break out in fistfights?  Be dull as dirt? (no offense to dirt)

Or encourage happy mingling with lots of pleasant repartee? 

Surely, the best way through a (new) thing is to just  GO ...

before you realize it,

you've set a course for yourself, one way or the other.

Back in July, I wrote  this post  about our merry band of island stitchers who happened

to take a quite unexpected detour from traditional shibori and sailed away (quite joyously) 

into another realm entirely ...

the one where  India Flint  lives.

We "bundled" our hearts out.

And over innumerable cooking pots of assorted vegetation,

a few of us lost our hearts to the process ...

For the next few days I thought I would post, one bundle at a time, my results ...

a good way perhaps, to keep permanent notes on how the colors came to be

and generally place some records here about this very special kind of mark-making.

:::

Bundle #1 was a scrap of silk (no mordant) folded around purple pansies,

madrone bark, metal washers and one rusty nail,

wrapped around a piece of driftwood, secured with rubber bands,

steamed for 45 minutes,

then left to air dry for three weeks.

Biggest surprise?  That lovely peach color (below the washers) from the Pacific madrone bark.

Some great potential there in our native Arbutus menziesii !

Texture Tuesday...heat

We have been bathed in heat.

The grass has, at last, stopped growing ... bye bye, miz mower machine, enjoy your vacay.

 One thing is certain ... the beans have loved the heat.

Remember that trellis I built?   It's all but disappeared beneath beanie leafage ...

it's a proverbial jungle out there.

This was the just the kind of heat we needed for bundle drying a couple weeks back ...
dry heat to prevent mildew.

Instead,

they were banished to the warming drawer in the kitchen (not an optimal choice).

We do what we must do, taught as we are to scorn the black, spotty stuff.

Oddly, it does create some interesting marks ...

I'll show you everything in my next post.

PROMISE.

In the meantime, I've been lying underneath some whirling blades

reading the most stupendously marvelous book.
You know you've found an all-absorbing tale when thoughts of it follow you throughout the day,
willing you, enticing you, to read     one     more     page.
Ahab's Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund, has wrapped me in its watery spell.
Woven in and out and around the sea for 704 pages, it is nothing short of masterful.


My sweet companion ~ who neither swims, nor reads ~ finds other ways to stay cool

and claims the last shady spot nearest the pond.
Must keep a lookout, you see, should any wayward duck decide to land in HER territory.

On another trellis the sweet peas are running riot, but they won't last much longer ...
they are ephemeral beauties, not fond of heat
so I enjoy every moment I have with them.

They are, after all, my namesake and the reason I came to write this blog in the first place.

: : :



Linking up this week for another Texture Tuesday over at Kim's place.
Our challenge?  Anything goes ...
so I went for it:  texturizing layers of grunge, blurs & special effects using the Snapseed app.
Mosey on over and see what the rest of the crowd got up to ... so much inspiration!

The circle that binds

There are many things to astound as one hangs over a dye pot and in a curious twist of timing

(fate?)

a question I've been asking myself presented a sealing wax answer.

The question was, why am I spending so much time learning about natural dyeing

when I could be spending all this time on stitching and beading?

Surely there is enough dyed fabric available to use as it is ...

Let me backstory just a little to fill in some blanks ...

Our merry band of shibori stitchers here on the island has morphed a bit 

into a quite smitten (still merry!) band of natural dyers and we've been meeting regularly to 

dip into uncharted waters (so to speak).  It's been a wild time with some raucous experimenting.

We met last week and one member brought a  HUGE  selection of clippings to share ...

that's her garden above, so lovely ...

in the mix was a red-leaved barberry (Berberis thunbergii atropurpurea sp.) which produced

such a yummy mauve it caused considerable swooning.  Much swooning, in fact.

She was very productive that day.

What a stash!

But I digress ...

the dye pot had been so full there wasn't room for many bundles

so this generous owner of said barberry shrub offered to let us come and clip some more,

should we have the desire ~

which I sorely did.

I brought my treasure bag home and chopped up everything - leaves, stems, thorns, everything, 

and put the pot on to simmer, marveling at the brilliant red color

before covering tightly to raise the heat quickly.

Inside, I wrapped my bundles and periodically stepped out onto the porch to give the brew

a stir.  This took a fair bit of time ... one-burner hot plates are not the Ferrari's of the heating world.

In about an hour, I raised the lid and was engulfed in the magnificent aroma of steaming roses.

Roses???!

I kid you not.

It was then I knew for sure and my question finally had an answer:  the mystery of plants 

has long held me in its grip ... I am a 

flower floozie and plantaholic from way back, a garden "ho"... does it not make complete and utter sense

that I'm now captivated by one more of their alluring properties,

their ability to dye cloth?

I see what's happened now ... I've come full circle.

Here was the barberry shrub in the garden (far right)

...and here it is on the cloth.

: : :

Resting quietly in the shade until unwrapping day, July 30th ...

Beneficial waters

When it started to rain yesterday, then didn't stop raining,

and didn't stop,

and well, just continued to bucket for hours...

I decided it was time for another science experiment.

It might be considered odd (by some) to be inspired by 1/3 of an aging red cabbage but I am learning

that many mysteries worth exploring are hiding within such dregs.  So onto the chopping block it went.

Two bundles from reclaimed clothing:  100% silk on the left, and 100% ramie,

each containing the exact same assortment of ingredients (all shall be revealed later).

I'm trying to understand how different cloths absorb the same colors.

Already different, as you can see, after simmering for twenty minutes and sitting overnight.

Love the bits of spent blue cabbage sticking out...

Then I went and did something which might have been stupid and has completely altered the color

of one.

I won't know for a few days.

They are resting now.

Hopefully time will be good to me, fingers crossed.

Outside, the rainwater is causing some explosions.

Why is it that we can water, water, water with the garden hose and yet one good rain

and the garden responds like its won the lottery?!

When I planted this honeysuckle three years ago it was a puny cutting, barely six inches tall.

Now it has passed  NINE  feet.

And this is one of the reasons that I shall be a gardener until I can no longer lift a trowel.