Tis the season to be dyeing

Have begun dyeing with the shrooms and still experimenting constantly...top photo left to right are...homespun dyed with aurantiacum, two pinks frm ochrolechia laevigata, tree barnacles, and two paxillus astrotomentosus......loving th combination, looks like a lap blanket weaving in my future....the lower photo, phaeolus, two carrot top, one hypomyces lactifluorum alum mordant, one iron mordant carrot top, two more hypomyces one iron  mordant, one alum mordant.

Love those parrot tops, they are such a fresh greenish yellow.....all f these colours are so interweavable

as i prep for lap blanket weaving with shroom and natural dyes.

As the leaves turn....

Now is gathering and collecting time, and I have been a busy one doing both, and drying and now the rains have started and mushrooms are wakening....so blessed to be on this part of the planet....have been experimenting more with contact printing on shroom dyed silks..how luscious does that sound.

The results are very autumnal and the choices and directions this could go are endless....so little time so many dreams.... Want to be able to live long enough to use all my art supplies, of course, that is endless also, as I seem to be still getting new ones, like the wee shibori tool I recently ordered....and then there is the indigo pot still beckoning...and my partner in crime who defines, gathers, and studies along with me  

Life is good!!! And here are the latest goodness scarves

Tooooo long but hopefully worth the wait...

ONew felt piece, working on barnacles, and making   a series of pieces from the ocean....this is the largest one so far.....shibori felt in natural colours, whites, greys, blacks

Next two new hats nuno felting, sold one and have made a few more, see hats in my future....have two more on the workbench for winter shows...

Ferns came out lovely...the sori print was clear, and the mimosa was a special find...new experiments are always fun and have have some lovely prints from them, found a sweet gum tree  and that has lovely leaves and stems, now to play more ....

Bowing at the alter of mother nature

Have been busy like crazy..spring springs forth and all the creative juices kick into overtime...so much fun to be had, so little time in the day, but am managing to squeeze in planting seeds, eco printing dyeing and weaving...five rugs off the loom and life is overly abundant....tulips are blooming tomatoes are getting their true leaves and I am falling in love with cedar weaving again...happy spring

Into pot

Well I am back into the dyeing pots am trying to work through a lot of dried shrooms and lichens ..the two below are omphalotus olivascens which I tried to get a purple but ended up with lovely silvers, and the paxillus atromentosus which gave me lovely greenish brassy colour. all the colours  I loved butnot necessarily   what I was expecting.. Will try the omphalotus again with ph lower and simmering and see if purple will show itself....I love the mystery of the shroom dyeing and very seldom am disappointed with whatever I get, and the lovely thing about natural dyeing is they all go so beautifully with each other 

and I also am. Weaving some rugs again, out of 100 percent wool, the weft being four plyed  homespun...they are thick and lush and am keeping one for myself for a change...

finished this mushroom dyed blanket which was the end of twenty blankets, it was hard to cut off the end of the dummy warp, but I had to to make room for the rugs...lol

spring has definitely sprung here on the west coast of Canada and I find myself looking for mushrooms already. The Rufus hummers have returned and seedlings are coming up naturally in the garden...what a wonderful if not worrisome mild winter.

More Forest Floor

The 

hThis is the "Forest Floor" rock  I am working on these days, trying to capture the look of a branch with moss almost covering it, in this case an arbutus branch embedded in french knots appearing like moss....well the closest I can get to moss 

And this time, left some rock exposed and did an edge of turkey tails, trametes versicolor, which was a challenge and fun, although too large perhaps....and a small western amythest purple lacaria....this rock is not completed but it's the largest one yet...I keep adding more to the collection asI study more mosses etc... 

Need more rocks with more texture and leave more exposed...that is my next one...

the top and bottom picture , because I can't figure out how to place them properly on this blog, are of my new blanket I just took off the loom. Not complete or fulled yet, but will post when done....this is of mushroom dyed warp, dyed with hydnellum arantiacum with many different modifiers to give a variation of shades...love all of them and pleased how it turned out with just a white warp, because I have a 48 inch loom and this is a queen size blanket, it is a double weave....made for a queen!

And I still have more room on my dummy warp for another blanket......guess i will be dyeing more warp this week..I collected these hydnellum a few years ago and have lots dried and frozen to play with, they give me subtle colours because I think my ratio of wool to mushrooms was too low, will up that and see if I can get some stronger colours for the next one, although I do love the lightnss of this one...

Rocky forest floor

These are my latest obsession.....wet felted natural dyed fleece on a rock with my feeble attempt at imiitating the forest floor with embroidery stitching...so much pleasure!!!!! I was feeling under the weather and this was a warm and fuzzy haven of colour, texture and learning new stitches thatI thought might look like moss, lichen and sporophyyles...loved making the little cladonia and playing with new ideas....learned so many new stitches and felt is so wonderful and forgiving to stitch into....see more of these in my future...weather has been mild and January short days are here...always thinking I will get so many projects done in the spring...