Life is what Happens...

"I wonder if I have been worrying so much that the worry muscles in my brain are now broken, permanently sharpened to a point of attention that is useless now, an ambulance siren for no one."

Jill Kolongowski from the article "Tart" in the March 2025 issue of the Sun magazine

The last few years have been challenging to say the least. Now, I realize that for several of them I had been going through a major, years long depressive espisode with its accompanying anxiety.  Sometime during the winter, my head finally poked out of the hole in the ground it had been in. Trouble is, I came up in the middle of a war zone. Between the crap the current administration is pulling that will directly affect my life and the lives of those I love and a lot of personal stuff, it is very tempting to crawl back in the hole. But, that isn't possible this time. Or, maybe like the above quote, the part of my brain that incessantly over thinks, is worn out and broken. Good.

My husband has had a stroke. He is doing pretty well all things considered. His vision being the biggest issue. He can see, but not well enough to drive or do the things he needs/wants to do. So, my life will change dramatically (already has) and so my art and the way I sell it will also. I ask for your patience as I figure this all out. It would help if the medical system in the US wasn't such a mess. Our first order of business is to get therapies for him to help with his sight. Due to a simple paperwork issue (by the hosptial and it took me a week just to figure out that it was an actual problem) this is taking much longer than it should, time being of the essence with his vision. Once that is scheduled the rest of life can be set up around that.

I see my life online expanding and am pondering what that will look like and the steps to get there. In the meantime, I could use your help. If you are in Spokane, please think of me and Pottery Place Plus when picking out gifts. We are at 203 N Washington in Downtown, next to Aunties books. If you are in Moscow Idaho, I have restocked Essential Art Gallery and Fine Gifts with my work and it should be available soon. My Etsy shop is filled with handmade buttons and pendants, as well as eco printed paper and fabric-with more to come. Oh, and a few scarves, if that is what you were after. Remember that you can click on the item and "send the seller a message" if what you see is close but no quite-I am happy to send pictures of things that are waiting their turn to be out in public, one way or the other.

I can still do classes and events here in town, I just can't be gone for days at this point so I have cancelled the Richland Art in the Park for this year. It makes me sad because I like that show a lot. If my class at the Spokane Art School on August 9th fills, it will go on. As far as scheduling other classes goes, until I get his therapy appointments in place I can't do much right now.

Thanks in advance for your support, it means the world to me.

I have been getting some paper done, along with a few other things as time permits. This is for the paper sets I sell on Etsy as well as my own work.

Summer is Here!

 Here are some links to events and classes (typing with one hand today, so this will be short) hope to see you soon!

Classes

Spokane Art School

Eco Printed Journal Class

June 28th

Eco Printed Paper Class

August 9th

Events

Terrain's Bazaar

June 21st, Downtown Spokane

Allied Arts Art in the Park

July 25th and 26th, Howard Amon Park, Richland WA

Sorry there are no descriptions here, but hit the links and you should be able to get your questions answered, thanks!

Merry Christmas!

"I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I am doing."

John Cage 

I have worked with poinsettia before. It works well on paper, not so much on fabric.

These pieces are with copper as the mordant, which I had never used for poinsettia on paper before. The prints are more diffuse, but the color is still lovely.

The top papers are with an alum mordant and the bottom row is with rusted water.

Yellow

 "Yellow is the color of the east, childhood, and morning."

Jeffrey D Anderson

A lovely use for spotted knapweed. The card on the left is using an alum mordant (along with some other plants) and the one on the right is using copper as the mordant.

The leaves of arrowleaf balsamroot also make a lovely limey to citrus yellow, see below.

It never ceases to amaze me that most everything starts out green!

The magic begins!

Arrowleaf balsamroot and spotted knapweed on silk

If you would like to see the yellow scarves in person I will be at the Manito Art Festival this Saturday from 10-6. Come by booth 37 and see all the pretty things!

If you are interested in eco printing on paper, I am offering an accordian journal class at the Spokane Art School on June 29th. 

Hope to see you soon!

Flower of the Month

 "Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith."

Margaret Shepard

Pincushion flower leaves on paper with copper mordant. 

All the Best in 2022

 "A bridge of silver wings stretches from the dead ashes of an unforgiving nightmare to the jeweled vision of a life started anew."

Aberjhani

Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

Coreopsis and salvia on Arches watercolor paper

Spring is on the way, although you wouldn't know it looking out the window here. I am plodding along preparing fabric for the coming eco printing season, working on pieces for a show I am having in April (more about that later), as well as catching up on things like this blog. Instead of sugar plums, show and class schedules dance in my head.

Take care and Have a Happy New Year. Onward!

Do it for the Process

 "Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work, All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case."

Chuck Close

You hear the first part of that quote a lot, but I think the rest of it is just as important, if not more so. This week, so far, has been all about process for me. Over the weekend Urban Art Cooperative had their raku firing, a ceramics process that could be compared to eco printing in that there is a lot of serendipity. Being there, learning about how to steer the variables gave me about a hundred other notions of what I would like to do with it. Sorry, no pictures this time, it is a process that goes pretty quickly and there really needs to be a designated photographer! Google raku and you will get the idea, lots of heat and flame with flashy results.

At the home studio it was the week for indigo. Keeping the poor Japanese indigo plants alive this year has been a real challenge. While they do enjoy heat, they weren't tolerating Hell's front porch very well. Neither was I. Indigo is something I haven't done very often, so I am still learning. I decided to use Rebecca Burgess's Harvesting Color as I had used it before with pretty good results. 

Heating the leaves

The magic with indigo is that the water is kind of a yellow green, but when you pull the fabric out, it turns blue right before your very eyes!

And here they are, turning blue!

I had eco printed paper laying around that was less than exciting, so on the third day, when the last pot of dye was pretty close to exhaustion, I decided to throw in a stack just to see what would happen. It is just as much fun to watch paper turn blue as it is fabric!

In addition to the cotton scarves, I did two silk blanks with a lot of folding so there would be  large white spaces for eco printing later. Then I had a couple eco printed scarves that I thought might benefit from an overdye. Since the scarves had been mordanted for the original eco prints, I was not sure what would happen, but proceeded anyway. The results were mixed, they came out a screaming turquoise color, and it seemed to take forever for them to thoroughly discharge, so not sure if that color is going to be permanent in the long run. The paper on the other hand, is leading me in all kinds of directions!

Watering the Grass

 "The grass is  not always greener on the other side of the fence. The grass is greenest where it is watered."

Robert Fulghum

This could be either Old Witch Grass or Purple Love Grass. The plant ID app can't seem to decide. The scientific names for either are not in my copy of Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia and the Inland Northwest or Northwest Weeds, so both the app and I could be on the wrong track. At any rate the common names are charming and it is an interesting element in the paper samples especially. As always, the fabric sample will hang with me over the next year and have an occasional bath, just to see what happens.

Watering the grass in our climate change fueled summer is pretty much a pointless endeavor, you can get brown grass without wasting a bunch of water and time. Mr. Man and I will be discussing its replacement this winter. Right now I am watering flower beds in order to weed them and put them to rest for winter, not to mention trying to keep my dye and print plants alive until they can go to sleep on their own. In poking around I found this crazy grass tuft that looks like a fiber optic lamp from the 80's. If it holds on fabric, it could be an interesting connecting element between leaf prints. It looks like Mr. Man and I will be having another chat about what is a weed and what is an art supply. 

Traveling Again

 "If I waited until I had all my ducks in a row, I'd never get across the street. Sometimes you just have to gather up what you've got and make a run for it."

Judge Lynn Toler

Coreopsis, catmint, and salvia on paper.

I am off to the Edmonds Arts Festival I hope to see you there. The paper pictured here is for a project that will be shown next April, I just thought it came out great and had to share it. I will have my wearables at the Edmonds show, booth 332, and the truck is packed to the rafters-come see!

ORANGE! (In a good way!)

 A few weeks ago I posted the start of an experiment with padauk sawdust my husband gave me-and here is the result!

The top is an overdye of an eco printed piece of silk crepe that I had done a "re-mordant" (is that a thing?) with alum; the next one down is silk twill that had a faint yellow dye on it (my guess would be tansy flower dye) to start with and thus some alum; the redish one is an overdye of an eco print on crepe with no additional mordant, just straight into the dye pot with it, and the vivid one at the bottom is another piece of silk twill that had an alum mordant applied. 

This is eco printed paper, front and back of the same piece. I have taken to keeping the "so-so" paper prints in a stack off to the side for "spent" dye baths. This particular paper was printed with poinsettia so the paper had alum applied before printing. I tossed it into the warmish padauk dye when I was all done and promptly forgot about it. So, imagine my surprise when I hauled the dye pot out to the compost pile and the last thing to come out of the pot was this piece of paper! It had sat in the dye so long it had sunk to the bottom.

I have another batch of sawdust soaking in vodka for another round of samples. This time I want to fiddle with the ph of the dye bath to see if I can get more of a red. Stay tuned!

Merry Christmas

 "My dear

In the midst of strife, I found there was,

within me, an invincible love.

In the midst of tears, I found there was

within me, an invincible smile.

In the midst of chaos, I found there was

within me, an invincible calm.

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that

within me, there lay, an invincible summer. 

And, that makes me happy.

For it says, that no matter how hard

the world pushes against me, within me,

there's something stronger..."

Albert Camus

Poinsettia on watercolor paper treated with alum alone. Very Bright and zingy! The yellow is from the green leaves of the plant, the purples and greens from the red leaves of the plant.

Poinsettia on watercolor paper. Half the papers were treated with alum and half with a soak in iron water; then the papers were layered alternately so that both mordants effect the colors from the leaves. Some might say darker and more somber, but I think they are very interesting to look at.

A few years ago I did a post about poinsettia, such as its poisonous reputation etc., you can check that out here.

Have a wonderful holiday season, make the best of it any way you can while protecting yourself and those around you. Dig deep enough and you will find your invincible summer.

Experiments on Paper

 "When a path opens up before us that leads we know not where, don't be afraid to follow it. Our lives are meant to be mysterious journeys, unfolding one step at a time. Often we follow a path worn smooth by the many and in doing so we lose our authenticity, our individuality, our own unique expression. Do not be afraid to lose your way. Out of chaos, clarity will eventually rise. Out of not knowing, something new and unknown will ultimately come. Do not order things too swiftly. Wait and the miracle will appear."

Ann Mortifee

This is a print from the leaves of the pincushion flower. Left to right; watercolor paper soaked in iron water, watercolor paper soaked in alum, and the third is watercolor paper soaked in copper-love the red! If you click on the picture and look closely, you might also see the creepy little face at the top of that print! The first two were steamed in a stack of paper that I alternated the paper soaked in iron water with the paper soaked in alum, so the leaf in between was affected by both. In the case of the alum paper the print is a more golden yellow. Normally with just alum by itself it would be a bright lemon yellow-both nice, but it is good to have options!

Eco Printing on Paper

"One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else." K.L. Toth

New Weed

And no, I am not trying to increase my SEO (search engine optimization) with that title-although it did cross my mind. Any-hoo, I thought I would show you my results using Watson's Willowherb.

This is what it looks like, sorry it is not the greatest picture, by the time I decided to try the plant it was at the end of its season. Those long curly things are the seed pods.

I decided to throw it in a stack of paper. I was alternating sheets soaked in iron with sheets soaked in alum. I do like the burgundy red with the mint green and I was really excited to see the wispy seed pods printed too.

Of course, I had to see what would happen on fabric so I went scrounging around in the weediest garden border on the north side of the yard and lucked out-there was some hiding behind the sour cherry tree! Since it worked really well with the iron/alum combo on paper I decided to do the same with fabric. This is silk crepe de chine pretreated with alum using an iron blanket.

And this is the iron blanket! I was so surprised this printed so well.

Be sure to check out my Etsy shop, there are lots of new things and I have been restocking the old. 

And Now We Wait

I taught a class last weekend and while I was gathering plant material I grabbed a couple of "experimental" ones. Meaning, either by some miracle I had never tried them, or, I did and couldn't remember whether they worked or not. I like to include an unknown as I think it gives students the "permission" to go out and take a chance on something. It is not the end of the world if it doesn't print; and then I remind them that just because it didn't work with the mordant we are using, or at the time of year the plant was picked doesn't mean that it wouldn't print under other circumstances.

We are living in a jungle of  flea bane (Conyza canadensis), also known as Horseweed as supposedly it is irritating to horses. There doesn't seem to be a consensus as to whether it actually repels fleas, but our dogs never had any!

Conyza canadensis, also known as flea bane or horseweed with antique tractor.

I simply love it when I find something that is everywhere, in the way, and generally making a nuisance of itself, prints. In this case it is a member of the sunflower family, so it does make sense that it printed yellow or green.

On paper. On the left the paper was soaked in alum water and the flea bane was soaked in iron water. On the right the paper was soaked in alum water and the plant material used as is.

Top photo silk crepe de chine pretreated with alum plant material used as picked. Middle photo silk crepe treated with alum, plant material soaked in iron water. Bottom photo silk twill soaked in iron water, plant material used as is. Be sure to click on the pictures to enlarge them in order to see the details.

   Since it is a member of the sunflower family and it "should" do this I have no reason to believe the paper would change much over time. Fabric can be a different ballgame so I will leave it hang on my studio closet doors until next spring to see what happens to it. Once the out of control grapevine has been put back in its place for the year that wall will get moderate morning sun through the windows until we really hit the depths of winter so that is a pretty good test on "wearability". I will wash it out then and see what it looks like.

Side by side comparison

Remember to take a look at my Etsy Shop, Facebook page and Instagram

Impossible Things

"Things are only impossible if you stop to think about them."

Lindsay Eagar

Trying out carrier blankets, used to add mordants and dyes to eco prints, I haven't a clue as to what I am doing, but once I figure out it you will be the first to know! I see the beginnings of minty green, so it won't be all bad whatever happens.

This is a Japanese Butterbur, a friend gave it to me and I finally found something it will print on! It has beautiful big leaves, looks sort of like a rhubarb, and it turned into a challenge. Here it is on paper with copper as the mordant. This was an experiment in rolling paper for steaming, I think I will try it again but pressed next time. I finally have a pot big enough to do fairly good sized sheets of paper. It is an old turkey fryer pot; it is very, very tall!

Happy New Year!

More Eco Printing with Poinsettias

After the post on December 22nd I decided I didn't really need to do any more experiments on fabric until I have a better idea of how long the color from poinsettias will last. So, rather than waste the plant, I decided to do some prints on paper. Since people keep looking to me for instruction on paper I thought this would be a good way to show you what I do with paper, but there are several ways to do it. Remember to click on the pictures of the finished paper to see the differences in color and detail of each mordant.

I use small pans I got at the dollar store (approximately 9"x 13" and about three inches deep) to soak the paper in. It should soak about 30 minutes. You can soak it in a mordant solution one day, let it dry and re-wet it on another day and eco print, but it is perfectly ok to just soak it and eco print on it in the same day. No wait time is really necessary. I use 140lb watercolor paper, but any heavy duty paper will work. Remember, this is not archival, you are taking a perfectly good piece of acid free paper and adding all kinds of things that will cause its eventual demise.

The pan on the left is water with a quarter cup of vinegar in it. The paper has been pretreated with steel wool. The center pan is water with about a half cup of copper liquor and plain paper. The third pan is water with about a tablespoon of alum in it.  The boards are what we will use for a press and you need string or rubber bands to hold the whole thing together.

Since your hands will be in and out of the mordant and, as we discussed the other day, poinsettias are kind of gnarly wear gloves both to build the blocks and open them up. Start by laying down a board with one piece of paper on it. Place the leaves (I used both the green leaves off the plant and the red "petals") with the veined side of the leaf against the paper. This is especially important if you are using paper treated with rust as unlike fabric, the rust is pretty much on only one side of the paper. Use paper with one mordant at a time, meaning work you way through one pan at a time in each set of boards. The eco print police won't come and arrest you for mixing different mordants in a block, but in the beginning you want to learn what the results are with each individual mordant. After that if you want to see what mixing the various mordanted papers is like-go for it. This is a very wet process and you will get different results when the different mordants drizzle through the layers of paper and affect each other.

You can see the green leaf peeking out below.

When you get done with the papers in one pan, put the the other board on top and rubber band the block. I did use colored rubber bands on the block with copper liquor paper in it just to make sure I could tell it apart from the one treated with alum. The colors from either can be so bright that sometimes it is hard to tell them apart after the fact. If you are wondering about the names on the boards, I thought eco printing on paper to 20 elementary school students and it was the only way I could get each kid's block back to them after they all went in the steam pot. If you take a class from me you can either be "Kate A" for the day or write you own name on the block. I use one inch boards as they don't warp as fast in all the steam, but after a while they will. I have used cardboard, but needless to say that is a one shot deal. The bigger boards do take up more room in the pot however.

Into the steam pot they go! In this case a tamale pan. It is built for this as the strainer the tamales would normally set on is low enough in the pot that the blocks fit right in and still be able to get the lid on tight. It also holds just about 30 minutes worth of water, but set a timer so you don't let it boil dry. Remember, pans for dyeing should be dedicated to that only, no use for food after this. While the point of natural dyeing is to be safer, there are just somethings in this world we should not ingest.

Remember that wet paper is pretty delicate. I discovered a bamboo skewer is a great way to nudge one sheet of paper off the next one down and pick up stubborn leaves. Less damaging than your fingernail.

Here they all are laid out to dry. The top row is the copper mordant, the middle the rust, and the bottom the alum.

Up close with the copper. The green leaves tended to be beige and the red had all kinds of color coming out of them.

Up close with the rust. Note that the prints are more diffuse and that in several places the rust turned black where interacted with the plant material. The bottom two show the difference between the top of the leaf and the underside, the underside of the leaf being the darker more solid one on the left. Again, the green leaves tended towards beiges and browns.

Up close with the alum. All the leaves tended to put out some sort of green or yellow, but a lot of the red ones put out purple splotches. Very zingy.

After the paper dries out it will be somewhat warped. I have had pretty good luck ironing it out when it is really "bubbly" but I also use it as is most of the time. If you can't think of anything to do with it for awhile, you can set it under a heavy book. It can be used for journaling and scrapbooks, but remember it is not archival so it is best if it is not placed in a scrapbook where it will press up against photographs, especially vintage ones.

The poor thing looks like somebody went after it with a weedwacker!