Harvest

 "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."

Robert Lewis Stevenson

This fall's harvest, in part anyway. Tansy flowers at the back, safflower petals in the jar, horse chestnuts, acorns, and black walnuts.

I spared you the picture of the leaves being pressed and dried in a mountain of newspapers and cardboard weighted down by giant art books (see, the history of art does have practical uses) as well as the sleeping bag sized ziploc of avocado pits in the freezer. While not much into whole cloth dyeing these days it does pay to have some dyestuffs on hand to overdye with. The acorns are for tannin solution should the need arise and the horse chestnuts will supposedly make a laundry soap with a "blueing" effect-if you know what blueing was. Anyway, I thought it would be a fun experiment provided I can find the bookmark on my computer for the recipe. As I remember it is dependant on pH to a certain extent. The safflower petals are another experiment for the winter. While not known for being a completely permanent color (even though the ancient Egyptians used it as a dye) if done following exact directions it will impart pink to silk. We will see if I get it right. To my understanding even if I don't I will end up with a really lovely orange/yellow. Avocado pits also make a pink as well.

Over the last few years I have had a hard time making plans for the future. Can't imagine why, what with the Plague and all. I tend towards depression and anxiety anyway and wasn't doing all that well in 2019 to begin with. But, in the last few months I have decided to stick to my plan when I can't decide what to do. Pick the option that will offer the most options down the road. So, for instance, when on the fence about whether to do a particular art fair or not, go ahead and apply anyway. Burning $35-40 on an application isn't the end of the world and if accepted, I can decide at that point whether to accept and pay the booth fee later. If I hadn't applied, I definitely wouldn't be in the show.

That's kind of why I have been scurrying around like a squirrel this fall. As I said above, my emphasis is really on eco printing, not whole cloth dyeing. But having the dyestuff to work with does give me other options if an eco print doesn't "come out well", overdyeing can sometimes give you something so much better anyway. The other stuff just keeps me entertained! Last year the snow was so early that the leaves didn't change  color, they just turned brown and crumbly on the trees and then hung on all winter. Strangest looking thing. So this year I made sure to get out and pick up some of my favorites for winter time eco printing.

Even though this is harvesting, it is a way to plant seeds of ideas for the future.

Gray Fall Days

 "The color of truth is gray."

Andre Gide

I went walking the other day before the rain got going, to look for sticks for a project. I love this old tree, it is down near the river bank. At some point it split in two and both halves, the one still vertical as well as that laying on the ground continued to grow. The one on the ground seems to have finally given in. Sad as that is, I am always intrigued with the weathering of the exposed wood. 

Happy Equinox

 "We must get back into relation: vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the universe... We must once more practice the ritual of dawn and noon and sunset, the ritual of kindling fire and pouring water, the ritual of the first breath and the last."

D.H. Lawrence

Virginia Creeper 

If the pandemic has done anything for me it has made me slow down and appreciate the seasons. Eco printing does that anyway, you work with what nature is giving you at the moment. In the past, fall has always been a sort of rush before the first frost puts a stop to things, but this year it has been a relief. Although some plants I would normally work with at this time of year were toasted by the alarming summer heat, there are still plenty of survivors. Some may not give the same result as they do when not stressed, but they are still hanging on, just like a lot of us. 

I will be participating in the Little Spokane River Artist Studio Tour this weekend at Clay Fox Pottery Studio, click HERE to get a map, I hope to see you there!

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. 

Early Winter

"Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats."

Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

One of my favorite winter scenes, red hawthorn berries and white snow.

The cactus are safely ensconced in the sunroom for winter.

Here is our house cat, very displeased with the snow.

The damage from an early snow, the leaves were still on the trees, making the weight from the snow more than the trees could bear. Our patio furniture is under there somewhere. Now it is so cold that to try to brush away the snow could do more damage, so we wait for warmer temperatures and hope there is no wind in the meantime.

 I have been passing the time at the sewing machine, you can see the results of that in my Etsy shop under needle cases, I  hope to get some other things done for my Square shop and Pottery Place Plus as well. Then I hope to get back to winter time eco printing activities and more blog posts.

I hope you are safe and warm and wish you peace in trying times.

Passing Seasons

"Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.

Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.

Fall passes and one remembers one's reverence.

Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance."

Yoko Ono

The very early frost this year made for some really interesting color and pattern.

Eco Printing on Gourds

"Inspiration exists, but it must find us working."

Pablo Picasso

Eco printing with walnut leaves on a gourd. I was messing around with eco printing on porcelain and then decided to see what would happen to a gourd, since I have a lot of them. I never had figured out exactly what I wanted to do with them-maybe this was the idea that was supposed to come along.

I soaked the gourds, the plant material, and the wrapping all in iron water and used leaves that usually work well with iron, kind of stacking the odds in my favor. Getting a gourd to actually soak is kind of trick-they want to bob around. As long as they don't have any cracks or holes they do not get mushy.

Trying to figure out how to keep the leaves attached until I could wrap the blanket around it. This worked pretty well.

Wrapped up and getting ready to steam. Needless to say the lid wouldn't go on the pan, so I made it a foil tent and steamed it for an hour. Since we have now officially run out of summer here (13 degrees last week-yikes!) gourds will have to wait until next year. I am getting some things together with the porcelain, pictures soon!

The holidays are coming! As promised I did put some scarves in the Etsy shop, along with many new buttons, pendants, and papers so be sure to check that out.

Fall Days

"To most human beings wind is an irritation. To most trees, wind is a song."

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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. 

The Color Red

I came across a writing prompt that said to pick a color and watch for it all day, then write about it. Since this is the season of commerce (places you can catch up with me are at the end of this post) and not much in the way of creating in the studio goes on, writing will have to do. I have to make something every day or I get crabby.

A woman was standing in my booth one time and ask me what was the hardest color to obtain. Since I don't really think about what I do in those terms, it kind of took me by surprise, but after a quick glance around I said "Well, if you take a look there isn't much in the way of red, in fact, no red at all." At that point I explained that while there were several options in natural dyes to obtain red, not many of them grow around here. For the most part I limit myself to what is available in the area, I figure I have already used up my carbon allotment by working on imported silk and then I also avoid dealing with the question of how a given dye stuff was harvested and shipped. Madder root, a traditional dye plant, is considered hardy to zone 5 so in the right position in the yard it would probably grow here, but it is a pretty big commitment. If it gets going it has to be in a raised bed as it can be invasive and it takes at least two years for the acid in the roots to be strong enough to make the dye, three to four years is better. Since actual whole cloth dyeing is not really my thing, it seems like a lot of work. We have its obnoxious little relative here, Lady's Bedstraw, that to my understanding will make some sort of a pink. Considering how invasive this naturally occurring plant is in the garden, you would think I would be all over it. Trying to find its roots however, is pretty challenging. They are very fine and you end up plowing up an entire garden plot just to finally get enough to work with. I decided it was just better to rip the plants off the top and dry them for a tea that is supposed to ward off kidney stones, a malady I hope I never get again, so I am willing to do about anything.  

Here is the red I saw in the last couple of days. Eastern Washington has entered the gray time of year. The sky is very often gray with fog, and unless there is snow, the ground gets gray and muddy as well. It gets dark early, Google informs me that sunset will be at 4:21 PM today. Red pops out.

Hawthorn leaf in a pile of cherry leaves

Hawthorn berries that will be picked off by the birds all winter

Mountain cranberries, also bird food.

As I was walking across the yard I thought I saw a bright red piece of fabric stuck in the border garden. It was this little rose bush putting out its last effort for the year! I was so surprised as we have had some really cold nights already, I guess it just had one more thing to say.

Anyway, you can catch up with me in at the following shows, and of course my work is always at Pottery Place Plus, 203 N Washington, Spokane, WA

Tonight I will have jewelry and scarves at The Inland Empire Gardeners' monthly meeting at Centerplace 2426 N Discovery Place, Spokane Valley WA. The market runs from 6-7 PM, meeting starts at 7:00

The Spokane Women's Club 5th Annual Artisans and Crafters Show, 1428 W 9th Ave. Spokane, Wa This Saturday 10-6 and Sunday 10-4

Custer's Christmas Arts and Crafts Show

Spokane Fair and Expo Center 404 N Havana St, Spokane Valley, WA

November 16th-18th Friday 10-8; Saturday 9-6; Sunday 10-4

Urban Art Cooperative's Holiday Market

3209 N Monroe, Spokane, WA

November 30th-December 2nd

Friday preview 6-9; Saturday 10-6; Sunday 10-4

Demons and (Possible) Evil Doers

No, this isn't about politics. Since I have noticed Instagram posts going by about plant collection I thought I would talk about plants that look like other plants and for those out collecting to confuse them will come to no good end.

Let's talk about Virginia Creeper and our buddy Poison Ivy. Both are listed in The North American Guide to Common Poisonous Plants and Mushrooms. A book, by the way, if read from cover to cover might inspire some to never leave the house again! It includes plants like tomato, potato, onions, garlic, and most of the peppers, not to mention things like tobacco and marijuana. They do point out that if one only consumes what is the generally accept edible part of the plant and only in normal food quantities there should be no problem. In other words, if you were thinking about using tomato or potato leaves on a salad-DON'T-they are poisonous nightshades! They have nothing good to say about tobacco or marijuana at all,  which to some might seem kind of judgemental, but I digress. So, it is important to do some study from reliable sources to know what you should never touch in any way and what is ok to do and under what circumstances.

Starting with poison ivy, the reason it is so poisonous is that it contains a combination of urushiols in every single part of it from root to tip. These chemicals, also found in poison oak and poison sumac (not to be confused with Staghorn or Bald Sumac which are trees), are a severe allergen to most all humans. The severity of the reaction is like a lot of allergies, it can be severe at one time in life, fade away and can come roaring back later on. Even the dried leaves or stems clinging to burning firewood can cause those that inhale it to go into anaphylaxis and touching the dried foliage in leaf litter can lead to a nasty blistering rash.  It is even possible to spread the urushiols around in the washing machine, giving your blistering rash to everybody else in the house! So, needless to say, this would not be a plant one would want to dye or eco print with-EVER!!!

Here is an ideal shot of poison ivy up close. The problem with pictures like this is that "ideal" is not how nature grows. The amount of rain, sunlight or soil conditions can make plants in the same area look very different from one another. There is also a western version (pictured here) and an eastern one. When green, I think they look like wilted philodendron vines and it can be really hard to see the "leaves of three" that you are supposed to let be, so it is important to become familiar with what plants look like throughout the year. 

This is Virginia Creeper, also a native plant. As you can see the leaf shape is very different from poison ivy. It has five leaflets and in this case, it is much lighter in color. Once again, this varies from plant to plant quite a bit. This well watered marauder is trying to take over the corner of my yard, with less water it would be more the same color as the poison ivy pictured above, it may have lost leaflets throughout the year, so might appear to have "leaves of three" as the old saying goes.

So, if you spend a lot of time on social media pages about botanical printing or searching for such things on Pinterest, you may have noticed that people talk about using Virginia Creeper. But wait, it's listed as a poisonous plant-right? Well, yes. There is an apparently verified death of child from eating the berries (just because birds eat berries doesn't mean we should) and in the process of trying to figure out what the chemical compounds are in the berries (apparently they still don't know), they have managed to send some lab animals to their great reward. So if you wear gloves, wash your hands and keep it out of your mouth it puts it on par with many other dye plants, a lot of which can be somewhat gnarly. My personal experience with it is that with pre applied rust to silk it can make a really nice print, but getting the uncooperative little leaf to lay flat is a rather frustrating experience. I have never tried to make a dye with it. While I have come across some lovely shots of simmering pots full of color, the sites that I go to for solid info say it isn't a very substantive dye and from what I can see you have to use some of the more wicked mordants to get anything at all. Since I put a limit on what mordants I use, Virginia Creeper dye will probably never be in my future. 

This is a stand of poison ivy growing over by the Spokane River. 

This mass of uninvited Virginia Creeper is in my yard. I waited a few days for it to get to the really maroon shade so you could see just how easy it would to be confuse the two at a distance. Oh! And did I mention they twine around each other out in the wild? They like the same growing conditions and so if you are going to experiment with Virginia Creeper make sure there isn't something else lurking in there with it.

Taking a Walk

"Home is everything you can walk to."

Jerry Spinelli

Just Be

"Clarice scrawled, 'A question from when I was a little girl that I can answer only now: are rocks made, or are they born? Answer: rocks are."

Benjamin Moser, Why this World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector 

Spokane lies in the path of an ancient flood plain. Most rocks in the river are ovid gray stones, worn smooth by centuries of water tumbling them around and about. I love it when I come across rocks that are different from all the rest. Pushed here by the forces of ice and water they tell tales of faraway places.

Green and black, hiding in a place where fairies must live.

A loaf of bread! It looks like you should be able to slice into it. So much so that I had to poke at it to make sure it was a rock.

Swirls and eddies, a liquid as a solid.

So, is it Noxious, Poisonous, or Simply Obnoxious?

Since I am waiting for some samples using barriers to be done, I thought it might be a good time (or as good a time as any) to start a series of short articles about poisonous plants. What is too poisonous to use? What defines poisonous or noxious? This comes up because of some rather odd conversations I have had recently and a plant list I pulled off the internet (it was pretty confusing, even to a plant geek like me).

So, let's figure out what we are talking about first. When you search the word noxious for a dictionary definition here is what you get:

"Noxious: harmful, poisonous, or very unpleasant."

The definition of the phrase "noxious weed" is a bit different and I think it is important to know the difference; not only for the purposes of what is ok to eco print with, but more importantly, what not to plant in your garden. It is estimated that half of any list for any given area are plants that started out as intentional plantings. I found this definition on the Skamania County Washington Weed Board site and it seemed to be the most succinct:

"'Noxious weed' is the traditional legal term for an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems, or fish and wildlife habitat. The term includes all nonnative grasses, flowering plants, shrubs and trees. It also includes aquatic plants that invade wetlands, lakes, rivers and shorelines. Noxious weeds cause damage that has considerable environmental and economic costs."   

Note that it does not say that all noxious weeds are poisonous, although some are, if not to humans, then to livestock and possibly wild animals. By the same token, many native, naturally occurring plants are poisonous, so they are unlikely to make it on to a noxious weed list. For your own safety it is important to know what they look like and where you are most likely to come across them. Poison ivy comes to mind, it is poisonous to almost everyone and the rash you get is truly obnoxious; but unless a given environment is really out of balance, it rarely appears on a noxious weed list. You will be happy to know that this is one we sent other places, in the 1800's it actually got drug back to Europe as a garden plant where it escaped into the environment.

Invasive thistles qualify as noxious in every sense of the word; they are harmful and unpleasant as well as being invasive. But, believe it or not, most true thistles are edible at least when young. You have to wonder how hungry somebody had to be in order to try it out.

Corvallis, Oregon

I am sorry to announce I will not be attending the Corvallis Oregon show due to my husband's health. I was so looking forward to it and I wish the show organizers and participating artists a wonderful weekend.

What a Week

This week has been very disconcerting. When I feel this way I look to nature to remind me of the bigger picture. I have taken a very long walk each day. I see the river rising as it should at this time of the year, the leaves changing and falling, and, thanks to the incredible amount of rain, the mushrooms rising. My husband has brought home something new almost every day to identify. There was even an article in our local paper about the diversity of fruiting fungi this fall, some not seen for the last ten years.  

                                                                                                                                                        Watching the ducks paddling around in swirling water that I would be afraid to swim in due to its force, is comforting as well as inspiring. They are completely at home no matter the tempest around them. Or, maybe to my untrained eye, they know when to dodge the churning water coming from below that I can't see from where I stand. I wish I had the same knowledge about my own world. To know how to swim into the whitewater while avoiding the deadly whirlpools would be empowering.

While my sunroom would hardly be considered a nature area, it is soothing to see my Christmas cactus doing what they normally do at this time of year. The days shorten and they bloom. With all the gray days in October, they are a bit ahead of schedule.  They have adjusted to what is going on around them. 

                                                                                                                                                         Outside is another story. Our temperatures this fall have been abnormally warm. We did have a light frost in September, so the hollyhocks and other perennials died back. The annuals died off and it looked like fall was on the way to winter. Then we had copious amounts of rain and highs in the sixties with nighttime lows in the high forties for all of October and now for the first two weeks of November. Today it is a beautiful spring day. We started out with rain and now it is sunny and breezy. Trouble is, it is not spring. The snapdragons and even some petunias have reseeded and sent up seedlings, the perennials are coming back from the roots. They don't know it yet, but all will get a rude awakening later in the week when it is supposed to freeze at night. 

                                                                                                                                                                  I feel like the outdoor plants. I had been going along thinking I had at least a notion of what was going on, and now-I don't know what to think or where to turn. Society was not what I thought it was. I went to bed one night and woke up to a very harsh reality. It would be easier to live in some sheltered, hothouse world where there was plenty of time to make decisions and adjust. Truth is, life is not that way. I stay grounded by enveloping myself in a world that remains constant by continuously changing, the real world, the natural world. The plants will freeze, go dormant and be back in the spring and their lives will go on. While I can't go dormant entirely (wish that I could) I do need to rest, pull back and conserve my energy for whatever life delivers next.

Oops

This would fall under the category of what not to do. Lesson One: Don't try to prep scarves for a class while doing nine other things. Last week I was putting scarves through the iron pot in order to prep them for my last class of the year. The cauldron I use for this is my son's Dutch oven from Boy Scout days. It holds about a gallon of water with a splash of vinegar and three scarves comfortably. I bring the water to a boil, put in the scarves let it simmer for about 15 minutes. Then I turn off the heat and let it set until it is cool. To get ten scarves done takes about a day, and since three fit at once, you can probably see where I am going with this. After 3 batches, there was one lonely little scarf left. It was time to start dinner and as I was putting the last one in I thought to myself "Remember to set the timer on your phone, or you will forget this poor little loner and boil the pot dry." Somewhere between thinking that and deciding to go get a squash out of the root cellar, the timer never got set. When I remembered this was halfway through dinner. You can imagine what came out of my mouth. My husband is used to this sort of thing and went on about finishing his meal. I, on the other hand, went flying across the yard to the studio stove. Amazingly enough the pot had not boiled completely dry, but was very close. The water that was left in the bottom was very, very rusty. The poor scarf had not actually burned yet, but for all practical purposes, might as well have. Needless to say I needed a re-do on a scarf for the class, which I had the sense to leave until the morning. I pulled the now extremely rusty scarf out and hung it up in the studio. I figured after being heated to that extent and exposed to that much rust it was probably useless. While some metal exposure is useful as a mordant, too much heat and too much metal exposure is not good for any fiber. It makes silk stiff and brittle. But, being the fugal soul I am I decided to go ahead and steam some leaves in the thing and see what happened. I used maple and filbert leaves, which you can see from the picture made wonderful black prints. I can't sell this one since I can't stand behind it from a quality standpoint, I am just going to keep it and look at it for now. Even though it feels pretty good now, in fairly short order it could develop brittle spots that would basically crack, making holes in it. I would only wear it if I were wearing a turtle neck, or use it as a belt or something as too much metal exposure is not good for us either. After enjoying the beautiful rich blacks and deep greens for a bit, I may decide to cut it up and do other things with it, we will see. 

To use rusted water as a mordant in the right way, you would take some rusty objects and put them in a quart jar of water with a splash of vinegar. Put the lid on it and let it set until the water looks rusty. To mordant the fabric put about half that rusted water in a gallon of water in a neutral pot, bring to a boil, put the fabric in and simmer for about 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and let it cool. Take a look in there every once in awhile and pull it out when you think it is "rusty enough". Proceed with eco printing and you should get similar black prints without degrading the fabric quite as much as I did.

Set the timer. ALWAYS set the timer.

For Your Reading Pleasure

I have featured work and project designs in both Jewelry Affaire and Haute Handbags this fall, check it out!

Fall Harvest

We usually think about harvesting in terms of food, but fall is a good time of year to gather dye stuffs and wild crafting supplies as well. While out on my bike ride today it hit home that the trees are starting to change color for real and I should probably spend a bit of time each day collecting. Here is today's haul:

A lot of leaves that work when green will also work when red and some that won't work green will work when they turn. The best way to find out what does what and when it does it is to experiment. This collection includes vine maple, golden currant leaves and one mystery leaf from a scruffy little tree that grows out by the river. It is one of the first things to turn red here, has some sort of berry on it-and I have no idea what it is. I refer to it as "misc." on the tags. The acorns do make a dye, but also make a tannin for working with cotton. Which I think I should do more of.

Since the two things I have plenty of are cardboard and newsprint, I use a rather humble flower press to press and preserve the leaves. I cut up the cardboard about 12"x12", which is the size of our newspaper folded in half. The ideal time to collect the leaves is when they are red and still somewhat leathery. They press well this way and last forever. Collecting on a dry day will make life easier also, if the leaves are wet you will need to keep changing out the newspaper until they dry or they mold.  I top the stack of paper and leaves with another piece of cardboard and plop a book on top of that. They sit for several weeks and then I store them in shirt boxes (my husband hasn't worn a dress shirt in years-where do all those boxes come from?). 

The other items are for ideas I have had over the summer that I will now have time to work on. I have decided (sort of) that while I find whole cloth natural dyes intriguing, what people really want to buy are the eco prints so I don't intend to do much with whole cloth dyes (we will see how long that idea lasts). I brought home some elderberries (which will make a dye to my understanding) to experiment with making ink or watercolor from them. I have no idea where that will lead, but it sounded fun. I scooped up some pine cones that I may do something with at Christmas, or I may just put them in a basket and look at them-not sure. 

Remember to be responsible when collecting. If picking seeds or berries only take 10% and leave the rest for our furry friends. Don't cut branches or dig stuff up unless it is part of a landscape task anyway. When in public parks it is ideal to just pick stuff up off the ground. And don't wear wool shoes when collecting, unless you just want to plant Hound's Tongue all over your yard when you get home!