Surprise!

Apologies for the lack of updates lately. It's been hectic here, but I have good news! I found a part-time job and I've stumbled upon an amazing new dye!

Take a gander at this:

Oh yes. That stunning pink, purple, and turquoise is from beans! I noticed the water my beans were soaking in was becoming coloured, so I tossed in a few pieces of unmordanted cheesecloth and silk. Some samples were later treated with dish soap, others, with vinegar. I wrapped a sample around my favourite rusty anchor and the colours shifted to grey purples.

Ah, lovely. I'm not sure how colourfast beans are as a dye, but I can't wait to test it! This method uses no heat and the beans are safe to boil and eat since I'm not using a mordant.  

OS

Last Friday I started weaving a bit of overshot. Love the structure and challenge, hated the string of Friday tour groups.  

The warp and plain weave weft are dyed with rose hips, and the pattern weft is natural Harrisville wool. 

I also took a trip out to Gemini Fibres, a charming fibre arts shop packed to the gunwales with books and spinning wheels and soft things, to (in theory) window shop, but... my strict budgeting regimen goes out the window when I see hand-turned wooden earrings and silk carrier rods. I managed to walk out only 9$ poorer. 

You'll eventually see photos of what those junky little silk bits are being turned into. Right now content yourself with knowing that it'll be neat. 

Reflections

I certainly can't claim to speak for all weavers, but I do believe that some of us find meditation in weaving and a perhaps even a type of spirituality in the repetitious processes. 


During my first two years, maybe three, of college, the deep concentration and stillness of weaving came close to the awe of looking up at a night sky free from light pollution, or the brilliant life in the vast spruce forests of my childhood. Weaving, spinning, felting, sewing and dyeing became my mental anchors when other aspects of my life were in chaos. Over these few years my hands have learned new skills and I've stretched into the territory of fine art, but my practice always returns to the deceptively simple manipulation of fibre. 


There is balance in weaving. A balance between physical effort and acute focus, a constant rechecking of position and pattern and tension and beat. It is outrageously complex and completely mesmerizing. There are epiphanies. There are heartbreaks. All the while you are allowing the thread to speak to you, and you, in a quiet trance, listen and respond with your whole body. You are a part of the loom and your essence is in the cloth. 

You May Address Me As "Colour Wizard"

Will you look at that? The Bird of Paradise is blooming in the solarium, right in front of my loom! 

With such lush and beautiful plants growing on the other side of the glass, I don't think the winter blues will hit as hard this year. 

Today's been a wonderful and productive dye day. I realized this afternoon that all of this play is developing the palette for the entire residency project! I feel good about mucking around in the kitchen and taking my time. 

The quest for colour continues on hand in hand with plant dye education. One sweet lady took me out to the back yard last week to collect maple (acer saccharum) leaves "to make red dye". Sometimes it's easier (and kinder) to show people why their assumptions don't work rather than shoot down their good intentions, so I dashed around the yard like an idiot, bundled up the leaves in some tannin-mordanted muslin, and steamed the hell out of it. 

Ta Da! Not red, but still interesting. The black marks on the right are from where the bundle rested on a bent wire for steaming.

I haven't used the steam technique extensively until now, and it's very exciting. I dyed this plain weave cotton scarf with a mix of peony (Paeonia sp.), rose (Rosa sp.), pin cherry (Prunus pensylvanica), and purple laceleaf Japanese maple (Acer palmatum dis. atrop) leaves and a quick tannin mordant and I wrapped it around a rusty anchor for a post-mordant. I thought it was quite hideous at first. It wasn't until I pressed it and stood back to get a good look did I start to notice the depth, subtle colour shifts, and all those good things you hope for in a one-off dye experiment. 

Magic! Weird, weird plant magic!

I've been saving leaves from the Japanese maple in my front yard (acer palmatum var. atropurpureum) and fallen flowers from a Bougainvillea (sp.) living in the solarium for some sort of wacky experiment. This morning I hammered some into tannin-mordanted muslin a la India Flint. 

And the experiment turned out MARVELOUSLY! To the left is a garlic chive seed head, centre is the maple, and on the right are delicate Bougainvillea bracts. 

I tried steam setting the Bougainvillea with a few other things in a pot, and the colour diffused. It looks more like a dreamy watercolour rendition of the flower, so perhaps a quick steam set with an iron would work better. 


In any case, it's all very exciting! Tomorrow I'm going to plaster the town with posters for my story collection event, and if this rain ever lets up, I'll go out and collect plant matter for the eventual production of big dyebaths. 

Walking on Four Legs

Happy Thanksgiving! I feel energized and content after a weekend with my extended family, so I've started job hunting in earnest today. I really, really want a job at Starbucks or another coffee shop. Less stress than a waitress gig and you still get tips! Keep your fingers crossed for me. 


The big thing on my mind lately has been identity. How do I define myself as an artist, as a woman, in a new town, in a stranger's home, away from friends, without school? 


During the weekend I talked with my family and I listened to their stories. Speech is so powerful, and I'm beginning to believe that being able to speak (up, out, or quietly yourself) can only propel your growth forward. What I heard this weekend were stories of healing, of growth, understanding, happiness, and strife. In turn, I felt safe enough to speak frankly about the changes I've been experiencing and it FELT AWESOME to be surrounded by people who connected with those words and emotions.  


I am thankful for this wacky family, for the chance to discover myself in this strange town, for dry humour, for wine and women. 

And here is a gorgeous green room courtesy of the internet. 

Surprising Results

While my noggin is taking a beating from this fierce head cold, I figured you should look at some things I've done! 

Above: pre-mordanting some wools and silk in an alum and tartar solution (note: the dye kitchen doesn't have a proper scale, so I had to eyeball the amounts), and in the pot on the right, a rose-hip dye extraction. This was from that demo...

I banged off a scarf in record time! All of these cotton scarves are blank canvases for dye experiments. If they turn out well, I'll sell 'em.

Below: dye experiments! Gorgeous, fascinating dye experiments! These two were coloured by horse chestnut hulls. The top photo, though out of focus, shows the samples after an iron post-mordant. LOOK AT THAT BLUE! 

And without iron, you get lovely champagne and nude tones. It's incredible that the colour shifted so drastically AND only on the cotton and silk! The cotton was pre-mordanted with milk and an ammonia solution. I am also testing cotton with a tannin solution, so we'll have to wait and see how effective it is. 

These next two photos show the rose hip bath. Similar nudes and champagnes, but wait till you see the results of the iron post-mordant...

TADA! BLUE! Logwood blue on cotton and silk! Amazing!

And here are all of those little samples lined up in my book. The colour's a bit off in the photo, but you get the idea. The horse chestnut blues are far more yellow than the purple blues from the rose hips. 

I need to spend some time in the BAC driveway collecting walnuts and horse chestnuts before they get carted off by squirrels or shredded by lawnmowers. 

Semi-Conscious

rain driving Allosaurus cinnamon hugs light-up suits fashion dancing Nuit Blanche train rides I love you bike rave truck metal heart art art art frozen fingers cold core




Need I say more? Word soup is about the only thing my sick brain can produce right now. It's actually my tonsils that are afflicted, but the chills and general malaise that accompanies a sore throat are a body-wide phenomenon. Where are you, nyquil martini recipe...


Aside from feeling sick, I have two overwhelming concerns (three, if you count my lack of warm clothing and the onset of winter). I have yet to land a job. Cash is a finite resource and I need a job very soon if I am to survive and repay loans. 


The second thing I worry about is... well, it's October, and this weaving project needs to GET GOING. Laying in bed for hours has given me some time to reflect upon my actions and goals, and I think I've spent the first month of this residency unwinding from summer and school and all of that jazz. I've been setting my own pace and trying to figure out how to live in this new territory.  


And that train of thought just ceased to exist. I'm going back to bed to sleep for another 12 hours.