nemo ignorat

Blues

Yesterday, the revitalised indigo vat had its big day, first time this spring. A friend visited and needed some bed sheets dyed as table cloths for her market stands. While we waited for the large cloths to oxidise, took the opportunity and dyed some of my prepared fabrics. Unfortunately it got cloudy when I took the pictures, so the colours look duller than they are.

shibori and katazome scarves

 

itajime shibori on silk and linen

 

this one looks especially nice I think. crepe de chine

my friends' bed table cloths. she told me they got even darker after resting

 

unbleached linen and indigo is a rather nice combo

 

katazome on sheer silk

Katazome students

Yesterday two students visited me for a short dye day in inidgo. They wanted a peek into katazome dyeing and so I showed them how to prepare the paste, apply it through stencils and dye. It all takes some while and we had only a few hours so we concentrated on two projects. From my stash one of them got inspired to try some itajime shibori as well. Luckily it was warm and sunny and the paste dried in a jiffy. 

paisley stencil with some freehand tsutsugaki

snowflakes stencil with some ornament

some etudes in itajime shibori ... it reminded us all of an x ray

Mother went from bad to worse and back to bad again. But she is stable now and she still has her iron constitution. Nursing her at home was no longer an option and we got lucky and found a place in a very nearby nursing home some 3 weeks ago now. It's only at the end of the street about half a mile away so I can go and visit her at any time. Her memory of the last 30 years is almost completely gone and I'm sure if I wouldn't visit her so often, she would forget me as she forgets my brothers. (She remembers there were other kids but she doesn't remember anything about them.) But they were able to mobilize her a bit again, so she can have some meals in the common rooms, meet other people and take part in some activities like singing or even crafting. If she has to or wants to stay in bed the whole day, she is much better cared for than I could. They have the resources and the people to help with changing her position, getting her out of bed (without heaving her 80 kg all alone from bed to commode) and doing all the little things. The nursing bed alone is incredible technology. 

It was a hard decision and I'm still not absolutely content with it. But the care she gets in the nursing home is way better. 

It was shocking to see her going from ok and celebrating her 90th one day to being pain riddled and not being able to move or be moved to loosing her mind, her personality and everything that made her her in just two weeks. We got the pain under control. And since she doesn't even remember all her surgeries any more she doesn't have any pain either. The mind is a wonderful and a scary thing. And it's scary to see it going. Not scary for my mother. She knows somehow that she lost memories but it doesn't really bother her. I am scared. I'm scared of the prospect that this can happen to anyone anytime. 

And I'm thinking a lot.

And since you can work and think at the same time, I began working on some long neglected projects. Like our garden. Germany is a country with a high density population, so neighbours are those people who live only a few metres away from you. And some don't like it when leaves and twigs grow over the fence onto their property. Most ignore it or cut them just away but some are more rigid and meticulous and no excuses. 

But I had to accept that there were too many too rambling plants in my garden. And since every careful and controlled weeding would not lead to any success, I accepted the necessity of a more tabula rasa approach. 

And now my poor garden looks like this:

garden wasteland

I'm going to save our offended neighbour from being forced to look at our (insert expletives here) garden any longer by adding a little, very much law conforming, privacy fence on our common border. After errecting the provacy fence, the wasteland will be rebuild with some native shrubs and a new elder tree (the old one had to be killed thanks to the neighbour) and I found a little wild plum (Zibarte, a very old native subspecies of Prunus domestica) which will find a new place as far away from any border as possible. I will need to regrow some kind of larger tree as a substitute for the Sawara cypress which I might will have to cut down sometime in the future. Hopefully, it won't come to this since it is populated with many birds and insects but I want to make sure that there is a substitute ready should it come to it.

And I still have a small cornelian cherry (Cornus mas, another very old native shrub species) in a container which will be able to root her feet into real ground now. The wasteland will regrow. 

New Online Class in Dyeing and Printing with Natural Dyes

I set up my new Online Class for this year.

You can find it here.

The class will run from June 15th to July 20th 2016. I'll be teaching dyeing and printing with natural dyes on natural fiber, preferably cotton and linen. The class will begin with some basics on dyeing with natural dyes especially on plant fiber but I would like to concentrate on printing and katazome  (japanese stencil technique with indigo).

The class will be taught in a closed wordpress blog. I will provide written informations, audio files and videos of certain dye techniques.

You will get initial information some time before the class to prepare for it.

Who said natural dyes have to be dull

One thing I always hear when I talk to uninitiated people about natural dyeing is: yeah, but the colours are always so bland and dull and they all look warm and autumny.

True, most colours I get from plants that grow outside my door or the ones I get directly from my kitchen, are warm and in an autumn range. But then there are the others.

 

They were made as demonstration pieces for my current workshop on painting and printing with natural dyes. All natural dyes on linen fabric. Not dull at all, eh? ;o)

and a bit more pastel

Still not sure, what I'm going to do with them. They are way too colourful for my taste to put them in a quilt (as I originally planned to do), so I think more in the direction of wall art. Frame them and find a nice place in the house for them.

The nice thing about these sample pieces from my classes is that I am pushed beyond my usual comfort zone boundaries. But still ... nah, not exactly "me".

More "me" is a pair of trousers I refurbished. Wonderful trousers out of a great and durable but white denim. Work pants all over - just in white. And since white is nice because when in doubt you can just boil it, it still isn't quite the right colour for someone like me. So, after 2 years of wear and tear (or better wear and dirt) I decided to give them a colour that didn't show so much. And to add some interest, they got some ornaments a shade darker.

The shade is a touch too inconspicuous to make it visible on a picture of the whole leg or tousers. But it still adds a bit of interest to it. And since I won't stop washing my jeans because of it, I'm sure the ornament will be more visible over time. It's printed on with iron acetate and dyed with onion skin.

January colours and the online class

I'm still working on my book. I'm working intensely, and seeing the finishing line at the horizon, writing becomes more an obsession. To be honest, I want it finished. Rather sooner than later. I feel the need to work with my hands again but don't have the quietness of mind that allows me to do it. So my creative work is mostly in my head right now.

One idea I had was to collect the colours of my surroundings over the months. And so I will begin with the colours of January (shortly before it melts into February)

No snow. No whites. Browns and a surprising amount of green.

It's so wet. Moss is growing everywhere. Usually, where I live is a rather dry place. Get a humindity of 50% and people will begin to whine how humid it is. But we had mostly rain for the past 2 months. The forest paths are muddy and the meadows are swampy. Luckily the forest ground still soaks it up. And the moss grows.

And then there are the ivy berries. Huge clusters. Must be the rain.

Feeding the black birds and the starlings.

And sometimes you can find some yellow remnant of a puff-ball fungus standing eerie looking in between the dry leaves. Already algae are growing on it.

I uploaded the informations of my online class into my new English shop The Elfin Dip.

The class will take place in a closed wordpress blog between April 15th and June 20th 2015. I will explore the possibilities of immersion dyeing, printing and painting with natural dyes on cotton and linen fabrics and yarns (with a side dish of silk fabrics). As online classes go, I will provide you with the necessary informations in pictures (still and moving) and in written and spoken word. And you will have the opportunity to experiment at home, ask me questions, and show your works. Or just silently participate, watching and lurking. Just as you wish. Though I'd prefer some non-silent participants, it makes my teachings so much easier.

No prior knowledge of natural dyeing is necessary.

some mending

while it will take some more time to mend the Bobic shaped hole in my heart, I could begin with some trousers.

My (naturally) favourite jeans was honorably worn out  and needed some mending. A lot of mending. Really a lot of mending. It felt good to get my old jeans back to work again.

There is still some more work to do, but I'm on it.

The main reason for all this radio silence is my ongoing indigo online workshop. Since soming back from Japan with so many ideas, I expanded the programme which takes some more time than usual. We're now at katazome dyeing ;o)

Resist paste drying.

from this katagami