Spring Dye Baths

We have been having some wonderful Spring days this past week. I have managed to tidy up my garden. I have a had a slow cooker gently simmering away on the patio for 3 whole days and have so many plans for more dye baths and dye pot experiments.


This is a picture of my St Johns Wort dye bath which was taken a couple of days ago. It looks very different now but I am going to keep it going for as long as the weather permits. I cocked it up a bit. I misread the instructions, mistaking the part that said soak the St Johns Wort (entire plant) in alcohol for soaking the wool in alcohol. When I realised I began topping the water level up with the alcohol/water solution each morning and i can now see that the red is drawing to the bark. I think had i have soaked the St John's Wort in alcohol overnight, then boiled the plant pieces to extract the colour I would have had a speedier, more successful result, however, St Johns Wort is noxious and I only have a tiny kitchen so using the slow cooker in the garden was the only sensible option available to me. There are gradual changes happening so I think it is worth persevering with.

India Flint writes in her book that she only uses the flowers of St Johns Wort, where Pioneer Thinking website says to use the whole plant so it will be interesting to try both methods, I will have to wait to try a flower bath. India also writes that a deep red can be achieved but if alum is added to the brew then the dye will turn green. I am keen to give this a try too.


Here are two colours achieved using onion skins for the dye. I did not pre-soak the fool in any fixatives. The pale yellow to the left is dyed without a mordant. The orange shade to the right is using the same ingredients for the dye bath with the addition of a chrome plated tin added to the bottom of the pan. Its really interesting for me to see just how much difference a flattened piece of metal can make to the colour.

Here you can see some excess water from the onion skin dye pot being stored in a recycled bottle, and also in a glass jar to solar dye a piece of silk. My next plan is to save up more onion skins then solar dye a bundle. In the jug, you can see Lilac twigs soaking in a solution of alcohol and water.

I did two dye pots yesterday, Lilac twigs, and half a butternut squash.

The wool to the left is from the butternut squash seeds and husks and the wool to the right is from the Lilac twigs. For both dye pots, I prepared the wool in vinegar prior to dyeing and used chrome in dye pot. This picture does not really show how pretty these shades are. I am very pleased with them.

I am now saving up spent daffodils to use in a dye pot and am eagerly awaiting the lilac blooms which are said to give a green dye. We usually have blooms on our lilac tree by now but we are only just starting to see the leaves appear.

Until then you can read my guest blogger post at Luchair, and I am still taking submissions for the May Day edition of The Festival of The Trees.

I wish you all a wonderful week x

Eco Dyes and Egg Decorations

This week end I have really been doing the Easter thing for my little girl. We hid chocolate all around the house for her to find. We then went on an Easter Egg hunt at the Botanical Gardens, did face painting and made an Easter Bonnet.

When we returned, my little girl helped me wrap eggs in flowers, herbs and onion skins to Dye Latvian style as explained by India Flint in her book Eco Colour.

An egg about to be wrapped in skins, petals, leaves and silk

My egg bundles simmering away

Dyed hard boiled eggs rubbed with a little butter

I have also done a lot of natural dyeing this weekend. I brought a huge bag of seaweed back with me from Wales. I have been boiling and simmering wool in seaweed dye for 2 full days. The smell is not for the faint hearted :)

The first of the three pictures shows some merino after simmering for around 10 hours and then being left to rest in the excess dye solution overnight. The third picture shows the other half of the wool batch after a further 10 hours simmering. It is difficult to see in these pictures but the second batch is slightly darker by maybe 2-3 shades.

The iodine in the seaweed has produced a very nice pale amber colour.

I did not use any mordant as was unsure which one to use.

I think I will have to make some felt with this wool and experiment with starch. Traditionally, starch and iodine combined will produce a blue black colour but I don't know if this principle will still apply after the iodine has been through the dye pot process. I will have fun finding out though :)

We have had wonderful sunshine today. It has been very energising.

I hope you have all had a good week end xJ

Blue

Felt Hat

Calling all Artists!

Merino wool dyed in turmeric powder

Needle flt painting made entirely from naturally coloured wool or wool dyed with plants and vegetables

Needle felted tree using Naturally coloured wool or wool dyed with plants and berries

Blue Faced Leicester wool needle felted into beads (no dyes used)

This post is inspired by the the Blog 'Natural Dye Inks'. When I work with wool, the pieces that give me the greatest satisfaction are those that are the most environmentally friendly. I love to see felt that has been made from natural wool tones or coloured with eco-dyes. The blogs that I get most excited about seeing newposts from on my blog roll are the ones that teach me how to make environmentally friendly dyes myself such as Mama Ladka, Growing Tyffu, Riihivilla, Dying with Natural Dyes , India Flint and others.

Now that I have started painting too, I often wish that I knew where to buy or how to make environmentally friendly paints. I was delighted to see a new post on Natural Dye Inks today, and then saddened to see that there have only been two posts this year.

Eco Art is so uplifting and rewarding that I'd love to see projects like 'Natural Dye Inks' thrive.

If you have any tips such as where to purchase, how to make or which websites to visit and books to buy on paints, inks, coloured pencils, pastels or any other environmentally friendly art material please post a comment sharing your knowledge, or better still hop over to Natural Dye Inks and lend them your support.

Thank you x

Parys Mountain - Copper Mines

Parys Mountain is probably my favourite mountain of all time. The colours are magnificently autumnal. Its strange that I should love this mountain so much, after all, it is a mountain that has been raped and pillaged by mankind, excavated like a hard boiled egg leaving only the outer shell. This mountain has been mined since the Bronze Age 3500 years ago.

Parys mountain once offered a wealth of copper, sulphates, welsh gold, silver and tin. There were acidic pools in her cavities that the miners would throw cast iron into to the pools and the chemical erosion would turn the metal into copper. The copper was used to line the bottom of the English fleets giving the fleets an advantage over the armada's.

New industry on the Island - Sustainable energy...

I was amazed by the nature surrounding this harsh environment, gorse, hawthorn, fern, heather, yarrow, herb bay willow. I loved that the natural growth here mimics the colours of the mountain. The literature on this mountain tells that :-

This extreme, harsh, acidic setting has resulted in a unique environment supporting unusual forms of life. Special bacteria derive their energy from the oxidation of sulphides, and rich flora of special lichens can be found coating rock surfaces, whilst heather survives over most of the mountain. Bats, including the rare lesser horse-shoe bat, have colonised the mine workings, and amongst the birds to be soaring with the jackdaws over the opencasts are the red-legged/billed choughs.

This picture doesn't pick it up, but from here i could see the Ilse of Mann. A friend once told me that the Isle of Mann was very similar to New Zealand. I have not been to either but would love to visit both.

The mountain is no longer mined. A new shaft was built in the late 1980's but the price of metals dropped so mining ceased. It is expected that when the price of metals are more favourable the mountain will be mined again. I'm hoping the rare wildlife flora and lichens will prevent that from happening.

The mountain range you see in the distance is Snowdonia.

Spectacular colours. I'd love to capture the beauty of this mountain by felt painting using only natural coloured wools or wool dyed with natural plant, bark and berry dyes.

The locals often dug their own mines off the beaten tracks and hid the entrances with foliage. Some of the shafts were 20ft deep or more so you wouldn't want to stumble into them!

Part of this mountain is owned by Australian companies. The rest of the mountain is owned by various investors and is sought after.

I am dedicating this post to Tammie Lee of Spirithelpers. I have always admired her mountain and lake photographs and the gentle sentiments that accompany them :)

I have taken almost 100 pictures of Parys Mountain. If you are interested in seeing more I am happy to email a few.

Autumn Song - Lady Beech

Like Fall, like deciduous doubloons, I watched scarf, blouse, skirt slip quietly from shoulder and limb. Not like rain, not all at once like lightning, but like autumn, like those weeks on stage, the preening of leaf, proud in the blush of sugary death. And I knew, in that moment, I was dead to all I had known before, her breath fluttering the pages of my knowledge to the wind of her southern educated lips.

Written by Tree George at Decadent Tranquility.

Beginnings

A larger project. Coming along nicely. This is the final laying out before wet felting. There is still much to do.

When thinking about wet felting and poetry it crossed my mind that this passage from 'The Stolen Child' sums the craft up quite well. When we are creative it is easy to lose ourselves in the task at hand and the mind magically lets go of all that has no connection with the object of our creations.

To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
William Butler Yeats

My daughter is fed up of her room. She has decided that the teenage girl in the house next door is actually a monster. I think this has something to do with 45 minutes of hair drying on the other side of the wall each morning.

To console my daughter that no monster exists and that her room is a good and happy room, we have agreed to make a felt picture together. A bright sunny flower. I think I might test out my felt needles on this piece.

Chromotherapy

"The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts."

Marcus Aurelius - (Roman emperor, best known for his Meditations on Stoic philosophy, AD 121-180)

The Gathering of Natures Wisdom

To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour. William Blake

This piece is inspired by and therefore dedicated to the lovely Assayya of 'Gathering of Natures Wisdom'. My mind often wanders to wildflower meadows, saplings and the canopies of ancient magical trees with secrets untold. These places bestow me with natures gifts of beauty, wilderness, healing, inspiration and so much more.

After the stillbirth of my daughter I found peace in such places. They symbolised the resting place of my dearly missed daughter. The past few days however, since the missed-miscarraige of my 3rd pregnancy I had started to despair of such images, feeling almost resentful of their existence.

Assayya's posts reminded me of the healing powers and bountiful gifts of natures basket and snapped me out of my misdirected anger. Assayya reminded me of all that I love and hold dear about the very nature of nature. That is a more precious gift than anyone could knowingly give. I would like to thank you Assayya for your wonderful posts and sharing your magical insights.

Please visit Assayya at Gathering of Natures Wisdom for visual treats and a herbalist education. The blog is written in dutch but there is a google translator function on the top right hand corner that works quite well.