Blog

A lot of honey bees have been visiting the garden lately. They love the Impatiens balfourii.

 An interestings thing is that they always arrive in the late afternoon and hang around until a little after sunset.

 The really interesting thing is that they don;t go inside the flowers like other bees. They grasp the tail end of the flower and seem to drink nectar from this part.

In the moments between visitors, phone calls and household chores, I sorted, washed, and ironed  some odds and ends of indigo dyed linen fabric.

These are some of the leftovers from experiments and bits of fabrics I dyed and put away thinking I might use them in the future. They add up quickly.

 Yellow and indigo moon.

None of these are "perfect", but they're still pretty good.

Id like to be able to mimic these patterns!

Mom's piano

Sometimes the thing our life misses

Helps more than the thing that it gets.

- Alice  Cary

But I still long for a piano.

Though all around us there seems to be plenty of rain falling, it's been dry and really hot here for a long time. Yesterday afternoon we enjoyed refreshing cool showers. For once, I didn't have to spend hours dragging the hose around!

Impatiens balfouri

The flowers are drippy and rejoicing

The Japanese indigo seems to have grown overnight.

 They even look great as they melt away

Hibiscus

Today there are happy new flowers to take the place of the rain-soaked ones.

 I often receive customer requests for more green silks. This is always a welcome excuse to experiment with shades of yellow and indigo

 Sometimes the yellow comes from coreopsis flowers. Even the red ones give yellow dye.

Reaching naturally dyed green is intersting and challenging

It's so rewarding to see the different, (un-repeatable) shades!

Today I tried making a felted wool scarf.  I've had a box of wool fleece waiting for a really long time.  After watching a you-tube video in which 2 ladies used a wool base for their scarves, I cut a strip of wool fabric as a foundation to start with.

Then I layered on a bit of roving. As it turns out, not enough, and not the right color.

Next the unwashed, uncombed dark brown locks and wool. The tips are sun bleached orange and yellow.

 It took hours to cover the whole piece with the dark wool

Summer is ripening

 Phlox has a sweet, somehow sad fragrance

To commemorate the end of July, I made a small harvest of Japanese Indigo leaves yesterday. . I dyed some silk organza.

I had a chance to do some fresh-leaf indigo dyeing yesterday. Sadly, my camera is misbehaving and I couldn't take pictures of the whole process. 

I don't know any other way to get these colors without fresh indigo leaves

It's a real summer treat!

Selenicereus grandiflorus

After several years, the selenicereus plant has bloomed!.

The buds are quite interesting.  They start out as a fuzzy white spot on the stem, then grow to look like a rabbits' foot.

 The flower bud pushes through the fuzz and elongates. To the immature mind, this can be a great source of silly laughter...:)

A little more dignified...

Some white showing through

Almost ready

Like fireworks! 

 So far, July has been packed with projects and flowers

 Indigo and cochineal shibori scarves

Hand-spun silk yarn dyed with  woad

More Naturally dyed embroidery silks

Inspiration!