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.

New Year, New Day

 "Living in the past is depression, living in the future is anxiety."

Unknown

We have hit the gray and sometimes bleak part of winter here, so I decided to spend the week making a little sunshine. In the summer I pick Tansy flowers from along the river and hang them to dry for just such an occasion.

I put the dried flower heads in a pot of water to soak overnight, then simmered them for about 45 minutes to make the dye. The scent is lovely, like yarrow, sharp and calming at the same time.

This is right at the beginning, such a beautiful soft color! I simmered them for about an hour and then let them sit until evening before removing them from the dye bath.

The fabric in the background silk crepe de chine, the one swooshing across the middle is silk dupioni. These were scrappy type pieces of fabric that I had treated with alum last summer (I have no idea what I intended to do with them then) and they did have a bit of iron contamination as there are some spots here and there. No worries, I will either find something to do with them, or maybe, give them a bath in the iron pot and turn them olive green at a later date. Right now they are hanging in my studio so I can enjoy the color, which is about the color of the winter sun here when we get to see it.

At the moment, I am doing my best to live in the moment. Having too many expectations for the coming year could make it seem worse than it actually is. Looking back on the debacle of 2020, I can see where I did that to myself at times. I was just reading an article about people who are starting up whole new businesses during the pandemic, and I know several personally that started up businesses during the Great Recession that are still in business. While I have no interest in reinventing the wheel at this point, I am looking deeply (as I was right before the pandemic started) into the business side of my art, while still practicing art, no matter what type it is. I bought myself a little Christmas present, Shelley Rhodes book Sketchbook Explorations, and although I have never really kept sketchbooks decided it would be an interesting idea to mess around with while waiting for the snow to melt and spring to return. Only two days into it and I have had a bunch of thoughts about the art, that may or may not lead to other business ideas. But without the art, there is no business, so the thing to do is keep making more art and when the time is right (whenever in the world that might end up being) the business ideas tend to synthesize themselves.

If you can't seem to get into the "Happy New Year" mood, that may actually be a good thing for now. It may be your soul protecting you from either overthinking the past or the future; and thus causing you pain of one sort or another. About the only thing you have control over is today, so the things to do today are those that make tomorrow a better place, no matter what happens. 

Cheers, take care of yourself and stay safe.

Spring Colors

We are having a pretty typical late winter for Eastern Washington. The sky is overcast most of the time; like a layer of dryer lint covering everything. While the temperature isn't bad, it could be worse, it really takes a blast of sunlight to get me moving. Yesterday was such a day. The sun showed itself, and it inspired me to get on with doing spring colors. These are tansy flowers I dried and saved from last summer. I vaguely remembered that you don't necessarily need to use a mordant with them, but decided I had better review different methods. In Harvesting the Color by Rebecca Burgess, she soaks the flowers over night, then simmers for an hour and adds the fibers that were pretreated with alum. Jenny Dean in Wild Color gives color swatches for un-mordanted fibers, alum mordant alone, and then with an iron adjunct. Since I have several pieces of silk pretreated with alum I am making a big batch of dye so I could dye some yellow, but then take the other half and put it in my iron pot and dye some green. Since these are dried blossoms I thought the idea of soaking them over night was a good one. While I was making sunshine it dawned on me to make blue sky too-so some of my fabric went into a black bean dye. As soon I strain off the tansy dye into other pots I will make up a spiral eucalyptus dye that gives a soft peach, the color of the neighbor's roses that will bloom in a few months. If I can't have spring outdoors, I can make it in my dye pots!

So....How Poisonous is Too Poisonous?

Well, you would think that one would be easy to answer, wouldn't you?

First off, the obvious ones, poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans and T. rybegii) and poison oak (Toxicodendron pubescens and T. diversilobum). At first I thought about searching the web over for copyright free images, but decided against it. Both plants have an eastern and western version in the United States and since they are wild plants they are greatly affected by their growing conditions. So  trying to identify them from a picture of an ideal specimen could lead to tragedy.  The poison in both plants is so long lasting it survives even in the dead fall leaves and in the smoke if it is burned. So, needless to say (you would think) you should not make steam prints or dye with it. For a mind blowing story about people who decided to try it out anyway,  check out India Flint's blog post  about such things-YIKES! I have discovered here in Eastern Washington poison ivy seems to like to grow at the feet of Oregon Grape, why I wouldn't know, but it does. So, if I am picking up windfall leaves, I avoid raking anything out from under an Oregon Grape as Oregon Grape leaves don't work anyway and who knows what else might be lurking around under there. Last summer in Northern California I finally saw poison oak for the first time and it also likes to grow up, in and around other plants.

Fact is, every area of the country has poisonous plants both wild and in our gardens. It is really important that you know what they are. Knowing the scientific names helps, check out the ones above-"toxic" should give you a clue! Any name ending in Tinctoria or Tinctorium indicates a dye plant, but not necessarily that it is harmless.

 If you are the type of person that breaks out into hives just riding the lawn mower, this may not be the hobby for you. Many plants that do make color also have active ingredients that can give them medicinal properties, so anything that can help you can hurt you. Tansy, for instance makes yellow and green dye. It has been used as a medicinal tea but should only be used under the supervision of a trained herbalist as if consumed in large quantities it can cause convulsions and psychotic effects and is poisonous to grazing livestock and can poison the milk production from those animals. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid, used both as a mordant and a cleaning agent, but is lethal to consume. Things like oleander, foxglove, hemlock and anemones are so poisonous they, like poison ivy and oak, should be avoided altogether. It is possible that what one person has a bad reaction to, another will not. A friend of mine was clearing scotch broom (also a known dye plant) from her yard and suffered anaphylaxis, making it to the emergency room just in time. She told me this after I had a bunch boiling away in a bundle; no harm seemed to come to me from it, however I think I will be more careful in the future-especially since the result from the steamed leaves was underwhelming.

The best advice I can offer is that if you are not an expert at plant identification it might be advisable to go on guided nature walks or take classes if possible. Park services, county extension services, garden clubs and other outdoor activities groups offer such things and they can be really informative as well as fun. Having a local park ranger point out what poison ivy looks like in your area is much more memorable than a picture. That being said having an actual guide book for your area along on a collecting trip can help you avoid danger. There are also weed apps for phones, but if you are out far enough, there may be no signal in order to be able to use it.  That, and not everything that is dangerous is considered a "weed". Old school is best in some cases. 

Using common sense when processing plants is invaluable. Wearing gloves while working with things you are unfamiliar with, keeping a dedicated set of tools for dyeing and doing all your cooking outside are good for a start. Remember that in some cases, nobody ever thought anybody would be cooking a particular plant to begin with, so no one knows what might be in the fumes, just make the assumption there might be something poisonous in the vapor and don't breath it in. The mordants you use can have issues as well, sometimes more so than the plants; wearing gloves can protect you from a lot of strife. Even things that are food stuffs can be problematic, my "roommate for life" has requested that I never cook cabbage for over an hour in the house ever again-he was coughing his brains out. After having to deal with cabbage scented sheets, curtains, rugs and blankets, it is a request I have no trouble complying with!

The long and short of it is, don't get a false sense of security from the words "natural" and "organic" there are plenty of naturally occurring dangerous organic substances in the world, it is up to us to use common sense in order to avoid trouble.

Cleaning out the Freezer Part 2

Ok, don't get excited, it won't stay that color, but I just had to take a picture of it. I used smaller pieces of silk jacquard for this as I like the play of the eco print on the finely textured fabric. The leaves I am using are maple leaves collected and pressed in the fall along with dried tansy and frozen iris petals. You may wish to wear gloves for this part as the iris petals do a fine job of turning your cuticles blue.

This is the other sample I did, again the dried and pressed maple but this time I added onion skins and frozen marigolds Both of the above samples were pre-mordanted with rusted objects.

Steam for an hour and allow to set until almost dry.

The top picture is the sample with the iris, as you can see the color is more muted, but still a lovely shade of blue. The second is the sample with marigold and onion skin. The green flecks in the second one are the marigold, which, like a lot of flowers that make yellow, make green when exposed to iron or rust. The onion skins vary from a gold tone to green to black depending on how much contact they had with the rust.

New Listings on Etsy

I got some stuff crossed off my list today and it feels good! Jet tub-cleaned! Floor-swept! Etsy listings-pictures taken and listed! Yeah! I put up some of my infinity scarves done in natural vat dyes. Tea, black beans, tansy (in both its yellow and green versions, thank you very much) and eucalyptus (in brown AND peach!) all went up for adoption today. I also added in some more of my ceramics work, chunky big raku beads suspended from distressed silk dupioni. AND I put it on Facebook AND I am now mentioning it here! Next I am going to Pin it as well.

Who is this strange marketer sitting at my desk and what did she do with the real me?

If you actually end up going to Etsy through the mini at the right hand side of this blog, please forgive any typos you may find there, after all this activity (or lack there of) my brain and my butt are both numb. I will go double check it tomorrow, right now it is time for a walk. When I get back maybe it will acceptably late enough in the day for a glass of wine!

Tansy and Ladybugs

Today was a good day. I intended to go out and harvest tansy, set it up to dry and get down to some sewing. When I was out harvesting I decided it was too nice a day to spend inside. After days of oppressive heat followed by days of smoke filled sky, the lure of bright blue sky, real white clouds and silly little bugs was too much to resist. So after bringing the tansy home I went back out to get Douglas maple along the river and the last of the St. John's Wort. I headed over to the mall to grab some purple plum leaves. I set all this to steam on silk scarves, now to wait and see what I get!