bee creative

season of abundance

Went to the farmer's market yesterday.  So many choices now.  I'm also starting to harvest more and more from my garden too.  Today it was the first of the potatoes.  It was so hard to choose what to make for dinner tonight.  It ended up being a bread salad with the first of the local tomatoes. 

There is also an abundance of things to choose from for dyeing.  I'm trying some lady's mantle and marigold.  I have them soaking in water right now.  I'm also soaking some cotton in alum dissolved in water.  It should grow some mold eventually.... 

I did find a little time to play with fabric too.

I've been playing with this off and on all day.  It started with "What if I draw some daisies on white fabric with a marker?  What if I fill the circles with fabric?"  And then it went to "What if I put fabric in the petals?"  Didn't like that.  I kept thinking of possible ways that I could embellish.  "What if I cut the daisies out and stitch them to another background?  What if I fill in the petals with fabric paint?  With french knots or some other kind of stitching?  What if I add stems?  What if I stitch the background? "  I'd look at it and then walk away and do something else for awhile.  Then I'd come back and look at it and then walk away again. 

I keep coming back to the idea that I liked the simplicity of the flowers on a white background.  I sewed a strip of squares to edge the white and then sewed it down to some flannel to give it some weight.  I'm still thinking about doing some very simple stitching in the background, but I think simple is right here.  It's probably going to end up as a pillow for the porch.  The brownish fabric in the strips is some of the fabric I dyed with the hazelnut leaves. 

what if I drew on my moldy fabric?

The scan I did shows the doodling with micron pen better.  I'll probably do more. 

The photo that I took with the fabric taped to a window shows where the mold stained the fabric better. 

I had been thinking about drawing a leaf around one of the patterns the mold had left, but the floral print that Jude at Spirit Cloth was working with inspired me to create a flower of sorts.

Made me think about the intersection of working towards being sustainable (dyeing with plants) and using art supplies (ink pens don't strike me as very sustainable).  I've been limiting purchases over the last couple years a lot and have been trying to use up things I have, but I have splurged on the occasional art/craft supplies (fabric prepped for printing for example).   What is worth the splurge?  What materials do we do with out or only use when we can clean out a stash? 

sour cherries, apple dye, and the latest socks

Picked tonight:  about two pints of raspberries and a little over a quart of sour cherries.  Making sour cherry preserves tomorrow!  I have more sour cherries that should be ripe in a couple days.  I'll probably dry them.

From the dye pot: the latest experiment is apple leaves.  The wool is green, but it was very hard to photograph.  It's very light, but definitely green. 

Pair number I don't remember right now.  Maybe fourteen?  Maybe fifteen?  The yarn was a gift.  I can't say how much I appreciated that package....

Quinoa and the herb pot

I was very happy with the quinoa salad.  I used parsley from my garden, peppers and carrots from the farmer's market, an olive oil and apple cider vinegar dressing, and, of course, the quinoa.  Quinoa is a very quick cooking grain, which is handy.  I put some of the cooked quinoa in the freezer to see how that will work.  I like to freeze small amounts of things so that I can pull them out during the week for something quick and easy and to have some variety. 

Although the salad tasted good yesterday, it was better today. 

The herb pot I have on my deck.  It contains:  parsley, cutting celery, thyme, sage, regular chives, and garlic chives. Other herbs I grow for eating/cooking:   oregano (growing like a weed in the garden), a large rosemary, a tiny bay tree (my large one died last winter), more sage and parsley, lovage, mints, lemon balm and some basil.  I just recently got some lemon verbena too.

I not only dipped into my herb pot for the quinoa but also for my risotto.  Instead of using a chicken broth, I made an herb broth by simmering some cutting celery, thyme, sage, rosemary, a bay leaf, and a bit of green garlic.  It worked beautifully.   I also added lots of those vegetables from the farmer's market to my risotto.  One of my favorite foods....

sacrifice?

I've been thinking a lot about the power of words and one word in particular:  sacrifice.  Sacrifice may be defined as giving up something, a loss, a forfeit, or as relinquishing, but in the letting go there is something else gained.  Rather like a sacrifice hit in baseball. 

The question is, can we live with the choices we’ve made?  As we live with them do the results stop being a sacrifice?

"Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.  O when may it suffice?"  William Butler Yeats

This is one of my favorite bus stops.  What if it isn't a sacrifice really, what if it's a choice?

"I think there is a choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live.  But there is no sacrifice.   There is a choice and the rest falls away.  Second choice does not exist.  Beware those who talk of sacrifice." Muriel Rukeyser

chick capers and the farmer's market

"Me? Nope, it was the other one.  I would never dream of climbing through the hole that Briar dug and going off to explore the hedge."

Yep, I had an escapee today.  I was pulling weeds in the front when I heard a ruckus in the back.  Sure enough, Briar had one of the chickens cornered in the hedge.  She came right when called luckily.  I was able to round up the chook within 10 minutes.  She was cruising along under the shrubs having a fine old time.  Thirty minutes after she was put back in the run, she was checking for escape hatches again.  (Oh those tasty greens!)  I was digging in the sheet metal that my parents had brought me to keep Briar from digging around the run and wedging stones in.  Briar is after the chicken food.  She will eat anything that doesn't move.  That would be the lab in her.  Tomorrow I'll have to give the chooks a run in their mobile pen.  And finish pulling weeds.  Well, pull some more weeds. 

Goodies from today's farmer's market.  I'm making risotto and quinuoa salad tomorrow. 

Here's Hazel, the other want-a-be an escapee.  She prowls around the doors just waiting for her chance. 

making full use of the garden

When I was around ten I discovered a couple books my mother had that captured my imagination.  This one of them: 

I loved the idea of making things from the garden.  It's probably when I realized that gardening could be something more than fruits and vegetables to eat and flowers to enjoy.

I'm thinking about all the ways that I can put my garden to use now:

Flowers that cheer, flowers to dye with, flowers that may help with pests in the garden.  Flowers to decorate with.   Some flowers, such as pansies and roses, can be eaten.  Flowers that feed the bees, the butterflies and the birds. 

Plants for eating, for medicinal purposes, for lotions and potions and for their scents.  Plants as a liquid fertilizer or plants that will compost and create a cycle that gives back to other plants.  I have plants that I could make baskets with too.  Dandelions and other greens to feed the chick-chooks (what I'm now calling the chickens).  If I grew flax I'd have a plant that cloth could be made with. 

An intersection between beauty and usefulness?  Maybe the enduring beauty of a garden is in what it creates, not just in how it appears... 

 

mold as a dye?

I had some cotton scraps that I was soaking in some alum (for a mordant, to make the dye stay) that I forgot about and it grew some mold.  Instead of tossing it out, I decided to toss it into the last of the dye I had made with the hazelnut leaves and let it soak for awhile.  One of the books on natural dyeing  I've been reading  had suggested that mold in the dye wasn't the end of the world, so I thought maybe mold on the fabric wasn't the end of the world either.

I love how there are little tiny dots.  I'm not sure if I feel comfortable using this fabric.  Maybe if I boiled it?  Maybe I'll use the fabric as prayer flags and then it won't matter. 

I'm also wondering, what if the materials used to dye fabric were seasonal?  Just like eating what is in season? 

Picked the first handful of raspberries today:

a story stone?

where to next?

What kind of adventures are around the block?

Or on the way to work:  "Excuse me, but you're interrupting my snack."

And even in the garden.  A candidate for a Dr. Seuss garden, the voodoo lily.