Looming over

Trying to post pics of the latest mushroom /lichen dyed natural fiber lap blankets, and having probs with my blog...hopefully they are resolved....so here are the latest blankets...

RIsing mycellium

LEt the fun begin...here is a cauliflower fungi one of three we found in our latest seach for dyer mushrooms, this isn't a dyer but tasty treat and hard to pass by even though we weren't looking for edibles.  fried up til crispy in olive oil and butter...yum

The dyers we found were, tapinell a atrtomentosus, (velvet pax)', these were  abundant and are supposedly able to give purples, but although i did get a lavender hued silver, I have yet to get a true lots of nice colours available in this one shroom...also found some hydnellus peccii,(bleeding tooth)  which i will process 

And some phaeolus schweinitizii (dyer's polypore) which made the yellow and the green mohair colours, the corals were made from my freshly dug up madder.....the season has begun and I am mordanting wool ready for the pots when the shrooms arrive.....love this season

'Time, time, time , see what becomes of me'

SPending days on the deck surrounded by nature and color and birds and silks flapping in the breeze...indigo dye bath happening and about to harvest some madder root, which is spreading all over the garden...and woad,not to mention all the food.....here are a few of the fresh from the pot scarves and I am in love with chestnut leaves, and bamboo, but do have some seeded  eucalyptus to work with also....the first is of the liquid amber leaves on the iron cotton cloth and have made hangings from this iron blanket, sometimes the blankets are the winner in the printing so it does pay to use nice blanket material..and for something completely different, some of my gourd carvings...then Two  more scarves which were alum mordanted, then dyed with carrot top, them laid leaves, a blanket and voila...they came out a very rich gold green which I love....my fav prints are mostly the latest I take out of the pot, they are very exciting to work on and my work isn't done yet.....

Seascape Stool and Flowers

JUst finished this 'seascape' stool for the chair auction to raise money for the Stephen Lewis Foundation 'Grandmothers for Grandmothers'..we have some incredibly hard working people, mostly women, who work year round to gather chairs and repair and paint them and pass them out to people who want to make one to contribute to the chair auction the end of July, here on Hornby...THey have had an auction every second year and this is my third project I have donated to....they are always  very inspiring to work on and to know you are raising money for some grandmothers in Africa makes it even more inspiring....The next piece is a large flower which was inspired  by Kristy Kun, although I Have done  something   totally different in the processing, I had been inspired by her flowers and it was fun to make, have four made and think i am done with the flowers for the moment..the next are three pieces where I have inlayed some eco printed silk pieces onto a base o f black chiffon and black merino....love how the silk is ruching  on these and have plans to make larger ones.  

the beat goes on...........

Return of the gourd

Ah, the return f the gourd, after a few years away this design has been in my head rattling around in my brain and finally manifested...long pine needles, waxed linen coiled onto a gourd which has been cut cleaned sanded, stained and drilled before starting the weaving..it was a bt of a slog gathering all the tools and putting it all to use again, but the hands have a cellular memory that just begins weaving like younever stopped...a little rusty but totally doable.  HAve finished twelve throws from mushroom dyed wool and mohair blends and this is a big switch from the soft comfort of wool to the prickly hard pine needles and gourds. But spring is here, and this makes it easy to prep the gourds outside, thus avoiding all the dust in the house, I plan to continue doing gourds until that creative highway moves me in a different road...for now  I am thrilled to be working with them again...

Throwing my life away

So these are the new mushroom dyed mohair throws that I had alluded to in previous blog..Now I have completed six of them and my goal was to make ten in twill and so I am thoroughly loving it...they are 40x75 and are so light and airy, and comforting..so I am very pleased...I have continued to dye more.  MoHair and mohair boucle as  to get more colours...the next batch will be indigo and mushroom dyed mohair.  The Picture on the beach is my son with a young  eagle who was needing medical attention and he was taken to the wildlife rescue on Vancouver Island....such a lovely photo...Spring has sprung, baby lambs in the field, crocii in the garden...life is sweet as the d ays get longer

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...

Conglomeration of pleasure

Busy busy, xmas markets and just plain fun...cat cave, too small but a treat to see finished, now either get a kitten or make a pod from it...ten layers of half breed, lvely firm tons of arm work....but love the texture...small hedgehogs, there I was finding myself making a hedgehog, I was surprised, but then made twelve more, too delightful...and finally teaching myself to needlefelt....mushrooms gnomes and mice...thanks to tutorial from sarafina....could become addictive...now on to the scond fir of the season...

Stoned again....sandstoned that is

A continuation of sandstone felts...this piece , except for the last photo, was a scarflette i finished today....loved the tones and the touch of blue was good....so much to learn and such fun learning ..especially with a new obsession..you can take all your past and apply to a new surface...the trick for me, is remembering it all, more notes , more detail designs and this blog helps as it is like a memory journal of what I have done, what has gone before;). When you do a lot of things that all entail a lot of processing the details get pretty thick and notes help keep things straight...so tomorrow I tryanother  technique, and feel a wall piece coming on which would almost be full circle from 25 years ago when i started felting, then I did a lot of wall pieces, quite large ones....it is always a shock to see them from time to time at friends places...i would like to take them and felt them all anew...lol not that they weren't solid but what I thought was well felted then is not how I see well felted now...;)