Blog entry
Greens
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!
August
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.
June 16
Portulaca
It's very hot with temperatures in the 90's and high humidity.. Outdoors really smells like summer.. The scent is both sharp and sweet. It reminds me of summers past.
The heat makes it hard for me to work on anything besides spinning hemp fiber into yarn. and dyeing it with indigo.
I've also kept up dyeing the silk thread.
Silk threads dyed with indigo, coreopsis flowers,walnut hulls and madder
March sunlight
The sun is so beautiful and srtong in March. I'm always amazed at the way the March sun shows the tiniest details. Sunrise in the plant room is a quiet joy.
I've been working with osage orange sawdust and silk thread. Here the sink is soaking in rinse water.
Here it is hanging to dry in the plant room.
The yellow color seems to deepen in the air.
Spring green
Snowdrops
Daffodils
Silk, indigo and weld
December Silks
December has been filled with beauty and busy-ness. Happily, I've been able to squeeze in some of my favorite projects, including the dyeing of more silk threads.
After soaking in alum
Indigo
Indigo and weld
Cochineal, madder and indigo
Baby pastels (indgo, madder, weld, walnut)
More madder and cochineal
Coreopsis flowers, weld and madder
Walnut hulls
Cochineal and madder
Walnut, cochineal and madder
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Cochineal and snow
Pansy Dye
Since May, I've been picking pansy flowers and saving them in the freezer. At first I kept individual colors in their own bags - purples and blues together, yellows and oranges in their own bags, etc..Lately, I've just been stuffing them all together so now I have to separate them.
A few fresh blue pansies for the brew
There are mostly purples and blues in this jar, but since I wasn't very careful. there are a few bits and pieces of pinks and yellow flowers
Yellows and oranges
June morning
June morning
It's so fine to step outside barefoot,without a sweater, and get started right away. On most mornings,this means just wandering around in wonder and amazement.for awhile.
The backyard is not big, but the cherry tree doesn't seem to mind.
The blackbirds and squirrels .are ready to pounce!
A clothesline fiull of projects
Silk organza after soaking overnight in alum water
Another piece of organza dyed with indigo
Vintage linen napkins
May color reminders
To celebrate the beautiful rich shades of the May garden, I've started a little purple, pink and indigo dyeing project.Yesterday I mordanted some silk scarves and wool with alum. After soaking overnight, they were ready to drink up the colors. I'm using madder, lac and indigo.
Pansies
This is my favorite weather for gardening and dyeing - fresh and damp without harsh sunlight.
Pink, purple,and indigo in layers of wet color
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