Definitely into the blue realm today, after making a vat of indigo with a new method, thanks to the teachings of Barbara Shapiro, who was so generous with her teachings, (she does workshops) and is a wonderful artist and weaver, here are the results of my cold vat of indigo, no chemicals and can safely be poured on your garden once the ph is neutralized...how cool is that!! major cool...
and it is looking good...this is the silk boucle, which sucked up the blue, I have done four consecutive dips and this is the colour wet, it will fade somewhat in colour once it is dry but I am in love with the new method of dyeing with indigo, and see much more in my future. I will now attempt to overdye some of my weld, etc, yellow natural dyed wools and see how that works, and also some silk material that I would love to felt with if dyed in indigo. The skeins are dripping as I write, and will dry overnight before I rinse them and do a vinegar rinse to bring the ph back to form for the wool...I am sooooo excited by this, and dh did a video of me doing it and you can see the yarns going from green to blue as they oxidize...oh let the magic continue...we love natural dyeing and you cannot have too much alchemy in your world as far as I am concerned....and this is definitely alchemy!
back to the indigo and there will be more.
Here is where I have been this summer, or at least part of the summer, felt jewellery, and felted vests and nuno shawls and now harvest and stopping to eat peaches and dry them....the markets are almost over and I have a few orders to fill and now back to work for three days a week.The pictures are of a few of the neckpieces I sold this summer, and the top piece was inspired by work of several artists, and hopefully I did something original with the piece...I have several pieces of these lichen/sea anenomes and they are turning into the neckpieces and look great..I made several before I knew what I was going to do with it...I just loved the process and now it is paying off with new ideas, so I was thrilled...I showed them at a local gallery and they were much commented on and that was before I made them into jewellery. the other two were pieces made earlier, the shibori indigo beads which has a definitely japanese flavour to it, in my mind, and the multi coloured fun piece was quickly sold.....it was a wonderful summer, not hot, rainy enough to keep the garden happy and fruitful, and enough people at the market enjoying my work to keep me satisfied, not to mention selling work which allowed me to buy more supplies...like some lovely silk, and some fine merino rovings...so I am busy dyeing and doing some eco printing and then felting into it, and some gathering of dyeing supplies. Fall is an amazingly busy time, and it sneaks up on me every year. I love the fall and I hope we get a long indian summer and then lots of rain for the mushrooms, that would be perfect. I have been doing indigo dyeing and mordanting like crazy and even did a cochinel dye bath, and it is still giving me colour. Have done some ragweed, and some oregon grape dyeing as well and will have photos shortly. People really appreciated the felting at the galleries, and you can see that it is more generally recognized, and so the felting world is definitely expanding. I can see people are really seeing the felt work and appreciating it. Also the natural dyeing, although I don't exclusively do that, I mostly do it with a dash of synthetic every once in awhile...and this week the synthetics were in teal and deep rusty ochre, and I really like this combo....so back to the workbench and more fun and obsession...hope everyone is enjoying their end of summer and looking forward to a long and fruitful fall.
