Whew! what a summer

Waiting for these fungi, and eager to dye with more shrooms.Rain for the first day after summer, and the summer folk are all leaving our island, and so the rains comes first and then hopefully some quiet walks in the woods, and some mushroom dyeing.
The summer has passed by so quickly, only really two months of summer this year, and now it definitely feels like fall. The fall faire is the next event and hopefully it will be a beautiful fall day.
Not much dyeing going on right now, as the wells are low this time of year, and the garden is taking the extra water. Much garlic has been harvested, and tomatoes still coming.
I have been obsessed with wet felting, and continue to work on a series of scarves...I will post the pics soon. For now not much to report. The rain is soothing.

OMG I got Orchil

Well yesterday was full of surprizes....just as I was cleaning up the natural dye room, and emptying some fairly gross mushroom vats etc...I was just about to throw out a jar when I noticed it was fuschia coloured...Oh the joy, yes, I finally got some orchil and it was not even stirred at all..Of course, I am always trying different lichens to see if they give orchil, but to no avail, so I had basically become very slovenly about labeling etc...and wouldn't you know it, the one I didn't label was the jar of orchil...so ecstatic!!!!!!!!! it was a jar I had put lichen and ammonia in and then left for many months...not touched. and it was so lovely...so I sort of remembered where I got it and returned there yesterday to experiment again...
in the meantime, I had carrot tops on the go...thus the first picture, which is silk/merino, with alum and COT , dyed then put in an after dip of iron, and ammonia...so now I have some lovely tri coloured natural dyed skeins....also dyed with some other fungus, which came out a lovely grey brown, which is not usually a colour I would call lovely, but it truly is...I will post more pics of the finished product today...but the dye room is kicking up again and I apparently am on a roll...of oourse having l9 days vacation in the middle of summer certainly helps. So off to open somemore of those mysterious yet smelly jars. lol

flying by

what no pictures!!

Yes, no pics today but tomorrow when everything is drying as I have been mordanting and dyeing wool as I am home sick from work. Too sick to work, not sick enough for the bed, so spent one day doing mordanting in Alum and COT, and today some dye baths. Did some mushroom dyeing and the pale hues are amazing. My water is somewhat alkaline naturally so it brought the pinks out of the sanguinea shrooms, and then part way through the cooking I took some dye bath water, one skein of 50/50 silk merino, out and added a "glug" of vinegar, definitely brought out the orange hues, and the one in the alkaline natural water from my well, was pinkish...love the subtle differences. And then did a logwood/logwood grey bath for some deep purples that will be light and wash fast as the logwood grey has some iron in it which I am thinking, will fast up the logwood. Then did pomegranate and turmeric, my mentors idea, and got a lovely golden color, which the pomegranate will make the turmeric fast of light and wash....so have been busy today dyeing and fun to get into it again. Am using up some of my bought natural dyes, before I dive into the collected natural materials, which I personally find, way more rewarding, especially when I collect them in my garden or the woods around here... I also did an osage and iron bath, cooking for 20 minutes in osage, before lifting and adding iron...oh I will get my camera out as these are too nice to not show you....

Where did spring go...

Everything is moving way too fast, much work in the garden, many things to plant, although it is a cool spring and I am holding up on things waiting for the heat. We have lots of hummers and things are definitely springing forth, thus the picture of the salmonberry shoot, the color of the thorns against the stock is very inspiring..and the Hornby Blues Festival is about to begin and an art show is always the opening...thus the Hornby Blues Rocks...literally that is . I made a series of musical blue felted rocks for the show and have a few more to finish. Lots of fun to make but hard on the wrists, i.e. rocks are heavy.
I am awaiting new base yarn, and will be ready to do my sanguinea mushrooms that I have dried and have been saving for such a time as this. I was actually hoarding them but am hopeful of more next fall, so the time has come. I also have a lovely
wold plant in flower in the garden, and ready to plant more seedlings for dyeing..maybe have my own seed. The weld is abundant this year and I still have my dried weld from last year that I haven't used yet. Perhaps time for a natural dye workshop, as my supplies are getting out of hand. I hope to write more often as my dyeing proceeds this spring, but time has a funny way of slipping by...

old dye manuscripts found

Bethany( with these hands.squarespace.com) sent me this info re old dyeing manuscripts found in India...they say the pages are yellow and brittle, but the colours from the natural dyeing is still very bright...such good news, and here is the site http://maiwahandprints.blogspot.com/2010/03/15-volumes-of-natural-dye-books.html Perhaps we can reap even more info re natural dyeing...

For the Birds

=How could we possibly create anything that even comes close to mother nature...this wee nest was in our nesting box where the chickadees had been last spring, and dh took this fabulous pic, with bits of moss lining the whole outside, followed by cat hair which we supply on the brush around our deck and then lots of wool, silk, merino fibre that we cut up and leave on the bushes and there is even some red wool...how sweet is that?

spring has sprung

And the herring are moving here, and the eagles etc...it is all springing forth. It has been awhile since my last post and the above is what I have been obsessed with. Felting rocks and beads...the rocks are embedded into the felt and the beaded one is starting to get ready to become a necklace, the small beads are felted then shibori dyed which is quite fun, they are cut little bundles and were tied with elastics, I felted white balls then elastic wrapped and put in indigo dye...the rocks have been embedded using wet felt which was a process I have been trying to work out for awhile, and I do believe I have it down now, famous last words but it took a bit of experimenting which is always a challenge for me to just experiment and not expect good results.
the blog world is giving me problems lately as it won't post pics as I am writing this and the pic just appears as symbols...so here's hoping this will work....

Trouble in Paradise

Having trouble writing and doing photos in the same post, but below are three new felting moments...I use the term lightly as "moments" they are not...for example the felting of rocks is not quick, but it does feel very therapeutic. I don't really understand that but the warmth of the wool combined with the heaviness of the rock just seems so appealing when handled...I can take them or leave them by sight, but by touch they are something very special...who would have guessed. The next photo is of a hat in process, which is in Cl/pelsull fibre, felted like a hot damn, used Beth Beede's "hat over a ball" technique which is soooooo simple and easy, and is exceptionally quick.. still figuring out where to go with the embellishing but think that hats are in my future yet again. The third piece is a vessel, and I might not make these again, but it was fun. But do I or anyone really need a wool vessel? maybe perhaps, but....
so felting is still getting me off, and I have many ideas yet to manifest. Have dyed a little wool, but nothing stunning as of yet..except for some honey tussah silk which I dyed with acid dyes and well, need I say more, the colours are absolutely breathtaking, even if I do say so myself.
So here on the west coast of Canada, it continues to be mild, and wet, and rather windy...but oh so doable compared to ice and snow. I am so into grey and rain at least until spring. so back to the felting table (which is the kitchen counter at this moment> oh for a big table...

Felting Fever continues

Coming of the light

I drink a toast to the coming of the light, to rising with a glorious sunrise, and to all the seasonal celebrations, happiness, peace, and light to you all...

Felting Fever

Here are some of the latest of my felting, felted flowers, and felted bead bracelet and felted bangles...I am really enjoying the felting process again, after many year hiatus, now it has returned, and so much fun...although it is work...
Today after days of rain the semi sanguinea shrooms are finally showing up big time. I have several drying trays full and this is the biggest pick this year. It seems very late but I believe it is because they need quite a wet season before they come to the surface, and we have finally hit their wet ratio, and it is touch and go as they don't like the frost, so we have a small window of picking them before the frost. Other years I have picked much earlier but it has been wetter earlier in those years also. I am always trying to figure out what secrets there are to knowing when they will arrive, but it is really just guessing at this point.
Two Xmas fairs, back to back, in the next few weeks, and that is keeping me busy, although I still want to make some new felt works, and do more shroom dyeing. So far it has been a terrible year for lobsters, which I love to dye with, but hopefully they still have a chance to show up, I am ever hopeful.

feeling a little Peckii ish....

Just back from a mushroom forage on Vancouver Island North, and found lots of goodies..

have many pots of the stove, semi sanguinea, although a bit disappointed in the quantity, have cooked them up, added a little washing soda and have some sweet colors brewing as I write...the above photos, well, the hydnellum peckii were abundant, so I am ever hopeful for blues, but so far silvery grey, there were two types at least the one in the right phot0 top left. actually bleeding from the teeth, and these were the most abundant, and the teeth were beige brown, with light ring around the outside edge, the ones on the right of the right photo , looked very similar except the teeth were orange...and the ones on the bottom were tiny and I have gathered them before here on the island...now the mystery one for me is the photo on the left....it is toothed, with white, teeth, large stipe thick, and smooth dark almost black cap....what the ???? is it...some type of smooth sarcodon, I don't know , but I did gather it, and now am researching to find out what I can, so if anyone knows this shroom please let me know, and if it is a dyer, that would be wonderful, and if it dyes other than beige, that would be more wonderful...I have sent the photos to Dorothy Beebee, shroomer extraordinaire, and so hopefully I will find some more info about it. It was wonderful to be in a new woods, after 20 km on a logging road, and then hiking where it was all new territory, and there were so many mushrooms everywhere. We are surrounded by chanterelles, and boletus of every variety, and the wonder of it is that they were not all bug eaten, and that there was hardly any deer scat, which was very noticable... here on our small island, I guess there just isn`t enough for the deer and bugs to eat so the shrooms we gather here are often sampled by both...

where we went is supposedly two weeks ahead of mushroom growing than we are, so I am looking forward to more shrooms here, although the frost is approaching. There is a definite lack of lobster mushrooms this year and I wonder if they go in cycles, as I found none on our trip either...so I have three pots cooking, one with peckii, one with sanguinea, and one with chanterelle soup, they all look delicious to me...lol

Because I FELT like it

The return of the felt, after a 15 year hiatus, has come back with a vengence...I am loving felting again and thankfully I hadn't sold all my felting wools, or washboard or mats, as I had continued to make boas over the years, but now I want to make everything...I love being obsessed with fibery goodies...and even though my back is l5 years older it seems to be able to handle this new work....here are are photos...

These need to be clicked on for a better view, but these are two partial boas, with long long wensleydale locks from England, and they are narrow with locks on either end...and some silks embedded in the main black scarf...The brown one is natural locks and one side is covered in the locks and it is felted with half breed and merino base with silk gauze embedded in between the layers to keep it from stretching out...I always put the silk in to stabilize the length....The top two are a wrap that looks quite elegant on, but doesn't really photograph well, do to well, the photographer, that would be me, and because I don't have an extra body here at the moment...but you get the picture....

and the rocks, well just couldn't resist, living on an island with an incredible amount of rocks, some just called to have felt coats put on them, so there they are, snug in their felts....they are so handleable....I always thought painting rocks was sacrilege, but apparently I don't think felting over them is the same thing...so there we have felted rocks....and olives,well it was a natural evolution from rocks apparently lol....

and last but not least the Vessel.....well thanks to nicole clasheen, an irish felter who is so generous of spirit she guided me through her technique, we have the vessel. The "all day vessel" as I like to call it, as it practically took me all day to get it stiff enough to stand on its own, but it is beautiful to behold, and I haven't even embellished it yet, so I am thrilled....next I am on to some nuno felting...with the help of nicole, and elizabeth of StudioFelter, in Australia, so my felting return is being fostered internationally...so so lucky...and of course there has been the usually natural dyeing.

More Polypores are soaking as we speak, and I have the bottom half of the fridge filled with premordanted fibre ready to dye at any moment. Have been going out a few hours daily, and the rains have finally shown up here, and we have even eater some white chanterelles, and saw my first Lobster mushroom just yesterday, so we are slow here compared to other places at this time of the year but it is an island, which is virtually a rock, so the rains take awhile to penetrate and get the mycelium running... so I have much to look forward too. Felting with mushroom dyed organic merino is the next venture, just after doing two xmas shows....so life is good, dh is semi retired and loving mushrooming and mossing and the sky is clear today...so back to felting...

Woad at last

Finally a success story with the woad plants, and this was their second picking....I started with three quarters of a gallon jar packed with leaves and poured boiling water over them ...then followed the recipe it Rita Buchanan's book which seemed clear and simple....famous last words...then after soaking the leaves for an hour, I squeezed them out and saved them. At this point the water did not look hopeful , very pale, and distant memories, or "second cuttings being inferior" kept surfacing....but perseverence furthers, and I kept going...added 1 tablespoon of ammonia, being out of washing soda, and then began to pour it back and forth between two buckets, as soon as I added the ammonia, things began to darken and look up, and the pouring resulted in bluish green foam, now things were really looking up...so then added the 1 Tablespoon of thiox, and let it be in 100-120 degreen fahrenheit water bath, for l hour, and the above results happened, it turned this light yellow, actually a bit more yellow than the photo, I had added one fifty gram skein of 50/50 silk merino, and l skein of brushed mohair....then left them for 20 minutes. The upper right is after one dip, and then let air for 20 minutes and back in for twenty which are the ones on the left....

so there we have it ...well almost, as in the meantime, I had boiled the left over leaves of woad, and added one skein of mohair to the bath, and got a lovely pale rose, so then I just added more to the bath, and put the leaves in a nylon bag with the next ones, so see if I can get even more rosy a color...I am almost more fond of the pinks than the blue...personal preference, but so fun to be getting blue from the garden, and from a second cutting...yippppeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG ess

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/arts/design/23spiders.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&emc=eta1 Found this on another site and it is very amazing....hope you enjoy

Pining for Sarcodon

Well the pic on the left is my rather beige hawk wing, sarcodon, which apparently was not found under a Pine tree, which is why it is yet again, a lovely shade of beige...lol...apparently the sarcodons which there are a few types, often give this beige, unless they are the correct type which is found under Pine trees...as I did not pick these or know this, I was ever hopeful for blue, alas, my search continues....

now the one next to it, the orange beige in the same photo, is coreopsis flowers, soaked way tooo long, but lovely in spite of myself... the sweet buttons of shrooms on the top are the sulfur tufts hypholoma fascicular, which I will be returning to pick tomorrow...They are such a lovely clear yellow dye producing shroom...
and the other two photos, are the phaeolus schweinitzi, or dyer's polypore, or butt rot, and these are quite the array of colours...the brightest yellow was from young ones chopped and soaked and then brought up to heat and then let sit overnight, strained, then wetted wool added, then again brought up to heat and taken off and sat overnight...so gold, the brightest yellow yet, the duller one beside it, was from older specimens, and cooked too long I think..."they" always say that with yellow you can dull it by boiling, perhaps this is why it is dull or perhaps it is the fact it is older, its a "crap shoot" so I am guessing...

the wonderful greens are all from the same phaeolus, but with a titch of iron and cot added after they were cooked...like 1/4 tsp, ferrous, and 2 tsp of cot...insta greens which I love....this could be one of my favourite polypores but I am a novice so who knows what is awaiting for me out there...and if it rains I will be out there again.....I do love the lobsters and cortinarius...I have many bags of cortinarius dried from last year, but am saving them until I have this years stash...

so the rains are coming I hear...and we are waiting.

Hawks wings flying

Look what arrived at my house today, Sarcodon Imbricatus, (hawk's wing) noted for its blue wool dyeing capabilities...ever hopeful..after reading several articles and Leena's blog and Ravelry posts on the subject, it sounds like a veritable crap shoot, but Carole said she had luck with it as long as it is older, and cooked with high ph, right from the start, so I have them in the pot, and wool and silk is mordanting, and tomorrow the big test. Will it be green or blue, or greenish blue, I am definitely hoping for blues and I will post. Have been finding a lot of dyer's polypores, and am experimenting with that and getting some lovely greens etc...and sages and now am only picking the very young and will see what that gives....so I will post pics manana...the sun is out it is 25Celsius and life is sweet...if only shrooms would come out in the sun that would be a perfect world...

Black Eyed Susan , Return of the Butt Rot

Return of the Butt Rot, Phaeolus Sweinitizii, 2009.
This was my first venture into the woods in quite some time, as my foot has been f......! unfortunately, but today, managed a forage and voila, Butt Rot. It was a young, spongy, still vibrant butt rot, and so I chopped it up, put it into a pot of hot water, cooked it for several hours, strained, and added the above silk/wool, and kid mohair, both which were unmordanted. It turned a lovely yellow, but who needs more yellow, not I apparently, so I let it soak, not cooking the wool for several hours, then lifted the wool, added one quarter teaspoon of iron, with l tsp of cream of tartar, which is suppose to even out the iron results, and it turned a wonderful green almost immediately...Left it for an hour or so, then rinsed...I do have alkaline water at 8 and so this does influence my dyeing..I just use it anyway , and allow for that alkalinity, not being a purist it doesn't matter to me, and it is easier for me out of the tap...not that I am doing a research paper on this subject so 8 alkalinity is okay for my needs...so if using this recipe you might want to take this into account...or not....

]phaeolus schweinitzii....fresh picked and more to come as we found young ones budding forth at the base of other fir trees

Fall is falling

Waiting for the rains, and the mycelium to start running and gathering of mushrooms for dyeing...so far nothing to pick and dye with but this was some tussah silk I had dyed with sanguinea mushrooms last year and then I plyed it with some large loop mohair...so sweet. Not much on the dyeing front, as life is just starting to settle in after a mad summer of markets and wool sales and working. This was a great year for wool sales, and I had lots of admiration for the natural dyed yarns. Have done some woad dyeing lately and if I could find the damn files I would post some pics.... the woad was a success, although somewhat finicky, I did get some lovely blues. It was the first time I had dyed with woad from my own garden, and I did about l2 plants, I followed the instruction in Jenny
Dean's book on Natural Dyeing, and did try to do the after bath with the left over leaves but to no avail, and no color. I will post when I find the woad pics until then I can almost hear the mycelium awakening.