bee creative

more from the garden

Yesterday's weather was eventful.

The windstorm replenished my supply of Douglas fir cones.

These are soaking right now.  I'm going to follow the suggestions I have for dyeing with branches to see if that will create more color.

And then today was a glorious day for gardening! 

After picking up branches and cleaning up things that blew out of place, I remembered to check on the walnuts I had stashed away so that the squirrels couldn't steal them. 

Surprise, I had ink! 

The walnuts had been composting and there was enough moisture that some of the liquid in the the husks precipitated and gathered in the bottom of the container.  I was able to collect about an ounce of ink, as easy as that!

There are lot of little birds in the garden right now.  I especially love the Kinglet that has been visiting. 

Bird ornaments have always been a favorite of mine. 

I decided I really wanted some, despite the cats, after reading a few of the passages in The Children of Green Knowe.  Birds are an important part of the story.  They fly in and out of the windows of the house and have trees to roost in the children's bedrooms. 

Hopefully these origami birds will work.  I think the trick is to not have things that dangle.

Time will tell...

 

gift from the garden

Ink experiments:  The rose hip ink was successful but the douglas fir was not...at least not yet. 

I love that it is from my garden. 

That rose hips offer so much...color, food, health. 

That the rose provides shelter for the little birds.

That I can think of these things as I use this ink. 

The brownish-pink is the rose hip ink dried. 

This morning I finished reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's new book, The Serviceberry.  So much in such a small book!  It is a book that holds hope, a practical hope, something I think so many of us need.  It's making me think of "home economics" again.  What we mean by that, or could mean by that. 

I also finished The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston.  This is a children's book I was unfamiliar with and it is delightful (there is a magical garden).  Here's one of my favorite passages,

"He tossed his notes up, like a juggler tossing balls, with careless pleasure.  He could feel the building round him alive and trembling with sound.  'I call, I call, I call (he sang) Gabriel! Gabriel! Gabriel!'  He stopped to listen. It was as if the notes went up like rocket stars, hovered a second and burst into sparklets. The shivered echo multiplied itself by thousands.  One would have thought ever stone in the building stirred and murmured."

There is another passage that I loved, more about that later...

 

 

quiet...mostly

Playing with pigments again. 

Two new inks are steeping...Douglas Fir cones and rose hips. 

delights

I was at the bookstore to pick up a copy of The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer (haven't started yet) and Jackie Morris' book The Unwinding and Other Dreams caught my eye.  I love her illustrations... this one is perfect for winter reading and dreaming. 

Other delights...

a walk in the sunshine on lunch break,

a sliver of moon and stars in the night sky,

the perfect orange, just sweet enough but with a little tang. 

following up

Did the baby vat work?

Yes it did.

The silk worked the best but the cotton picked up color as well. The darkest of the strips is four dips.  It's still a little wet so some of that darkness might not stay.  Still...home grown indigo used to dye cotton!  As much as I love silk, it just isn't very practical for me so I am very excited by these results. 

I roughly followed the directions from Maiwa for making a fruit vat. For the fruit I used the core and peelings from one pear and about a cup of water. 

To recap, the vat is a mixture of the fruit water, a tablespoon or so of the indigo pigment and the water the indigo leaves were fermented in that had calx added to it.  Like everything else I do it isn't very exact and I only did one measurement...the PH was around 11. 

I am also still enjoying playing with the transparent papers for the Carla Sonheim/Aris Moore class.  This is a photocopy of a couple of the pages layered. It looks like I am needing to refill one of the ink cartridges but I love the way this copied as well as the little bird I drew. 

Glad that I have more time to play this weekend...

 

 

z...the end but not

My go-to "z" word is probably not one that many others would think of. 

It's zither.

I am not sure that I will ever learn how to play anything on it but fairly frequently I open the case and pluck the strings and that is a very lovely thing for me.  It's enough to bring memories of my grandfather sitting and tuning one of his zithers, of him playing for us. 

 

Z is also about zero waste. 

Very few things are, but I try. 

(This is also something I think about with regards to my grandfather.  One of the things he did regularly was use his single use yogurt containers for seed starting.) 

I've been interested in bog coats for awhile and have finally given it a try after seeing another example come up in my Instagram feed.  My first attempt is going to need some adjusting...the sleeves are way too big.

And...

On Monday I found an article on NPR discussing a new documentary on Leonardo da Vinci that I really want to see.  I loved that they describe him as not seeing boundaries between disciplines; that he explored what he was curious about. 

And...

Something to think about, from Ken Burns one of the makers of the documentary, 

"This is why documentary, to me, is so much more fruitful than making stuff up. And so I have to wait and give some distance. And so I think that what you have to do is exhale a little bit, and we cannot look away. We have to dedicate ourselves to telling complicated stories. And when you do that, then you've got the tools. I mean, there's no greater teacher than the history you don't know, and that allows you to meet a moment with a little bit more courage and a little bit more purpose and determination."

I am going to come back to this. 

words, wonder, and wool

I am still reading In Kiltumper.    This morning I found another passage that I need to keep track of.  The passage refers to plants that self seed and come up in unexpected places.  

"These surprises are small reminders that you are part of a living, changing space, and also, that you are not in control of everything, a good thing for me to remember.  Another, that you can't imagine what will lift your heart tomorrow.  But somewhere, today, it is already starting to happen."

The book has also taken me down a bit of a rabbit hole. On Niall Williams' website I found a podcast called Shelfmarks that featured the book.  I am now working my way through the series. It's a mixture of poetry and natural history. 

And...today the indigo that I grew this year (started by my mother),  is lifting my heart. 

I made the pigment on the right with indigo that has been fermented and with calx added.  The one on the left was done with fresh leaves and as a lake pigment.  The lake pigment won't work as a dye (I am pretty sure) but the one made today can be used that way.  I have a copy of John Marshall's book Singing the Blues.  It's been very helpful (for the fermented pigment, no information about lake pigments).

I still have a tiny bit of fresh indigo and might dye part of this wool a third time. I want to use this for a lap quilt and am thinking that some applique on top might be nice.

 

season and storm

This is the season the blueberries plants turn red...this one more so than the others.

It is also the earliest to set fruit.

And this is the season that the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, blooms.

I've never been quick enough to harvest the leaves in the spring to try making tea with it. 

I do have leaves from the pruning that I did in the summer to soak for a dye bath.  Tea leaves are high in tannins, good for dyeing. 

Today I found this moth on the side of the house. 

Something to wonder about. 

We are having the first storm of the season. 

High winds and rain; making me think about shelter and places to rest.

 

space, sun and stars

The space we occupy, the space we move in, space as in outside of Earth's atmosphere.

This weekend I found an interview with Ada Limón which was wonderful and that I need to go back and listen to again. 

She has written a poem called, "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa" that has been engraved on a spacecraft heading for the moon Europa.  I was going to wait to post about this (so that I could stitch some stars) but then checking the news, realized that the Europa Clipper was launched today.

It couldn't wait to be shared.

From the poem: "We are creatures of constant awe,  curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom, at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow."

Since I didn't get to stitching, I gathered a few star shaped blossoms to share.

And the sun, there shining through, a star...

Thinking about constant awe. 

sunrise

Plus one more r...robe.  The one that I started a long time ago for one of Jude's classes.  I have been wearing it but am also ready to do a few more things with it. 

More layers of wool, pockets, and a button or two. 

Not the picture I wanted to post, Typepad seems to prefer landscape oriented photos right now.

Yesterday's sunrise.  It's been a beautiful couple of days. 

Out on the porch I found my indigo pigment ready to wash.  It's so beautiful...

Satisfying.