bee creative

january blue

Field note: the last two mornings it's been 25 to 28 F.  The next few nights we are supposed to dip below freezing as well. 

Out in the garden I stopped to check the indigo.  Every time I think it's done, it's started growing more leaves.  This is probably it though.

I picked as much as I could and made a small fresh vat to see if there would be any color... 

January blue.

Imagine!

Some of my other indigo batches were used to dye yarn for this sweater.

I think this is year three of working on it?

(It's category is "percentages, a working title.")

I am trying to stick with this project, it's so close to wearable.

It's a soothing project for right now too. 

90% local yarn (including the dye for the green, indigo and marigold), 10% yarn from a small business located in the area where I was born. 

100% a sweater made up of meaningful and sustainable materials...

100% love. 

 

day one, looking and making

Just after sunrise I went outside to look around the garden.

There are things blooming...just little blossoms here and there. 

Later I went down to walk along the bay. 

It was busy but still there are ways to find quiet spaces.

Look close.

Look into the distance.

After I came home, I finished my first project with the quilt I am cutting up.

It's filled with buckwheat hulls.

Once upon a time I had a plan to make a lot of pillows and ordered a really big bag of hulls.  Instead I made a few small pillows and then one really big pillow. 

I've opened that big pillow up and and am breaking it down to make smaller pillows. 

There will probably be quite a few when I am done. 

good enough

Time to get back to "good enough."

I need a few more squares to fill in some gaps.

Another look at the earth pigments: The one from the beach (right) and from the lake (left) are actually pretty different now that they are dry.

And...the hellebores are blooming; tattered but more than good enough.

field notes

Last night I almost posted these images and the title "quietly;" along with just a few words like ...look at what's blooming in the garden still and here's another pigment.

I decided to wait though, there was something more that I just wasn't finding the words for. This is some of it..

Yesterday Grace wrote about "field notes." 

It's an idea I've loved for a long time, the idea of gathering observations and documenting what is seen/experienced in the environment.  As a way of documenting, I love that there is an intent of curiosity and of noticing with field notes.

(I am thinking a lot about the aspect of research versus participant though...something to consider later.)

I believe that we take care of the things we notice (loved Nancy's noticing); that we take care of the things we feel a part of.

And that brings me to Christmas...

This year I am really aware of how it is a holiday of care giving.   

Last week while picking one of my brothers up so he could get his car, I gathered a bit of clay from the bank of the road he lives on. 

I will give him a few pigment dots tomorrow, but want to make him something more.

It won't be done as a gift for Christmas this year. 

He won't mind.

P.S.  It is interesting to me how close in color it is to what I collected at the beach.  He lives about 10 miles inland on a lake.

colors and textures

On today's walk the log and the grass growing in the water caught my eye.

And the coot, what a fun word that is!

I played a bit with the pigment made from the little clump of clay that I found about a month ago on the beach.

I could mull it to make it smoother but I love the texture as it is so won't. 

solstice ink

This batch definitely has some color. 

A soft brown.

The house smells like the woods.

Golden soup for a gray day.

Carrots + golden beets + onion + a sprinkle of thyme and a drizzle of lemon oil.

And a grilled cheese sandwich made with the sharpest of cheddar.

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...

 

at the start of December

It was a glorious day for a walk.  I took a little different route today.

There was also some gardening.  At some point a bird gifted me with a holly tree. I will probably cut it back as it isn't in the best place. But that can wait until after the birds have had a chance to eat the berries that set this year. 

 

This weekend's sewing project, remaking a dress into a tunic. 

It will get more use this way...an important consideration. 

The pattern is kzstevens' one yard minimalist top.  It's a super useful pattern for reusing fabric. :)

color play

It's been stormy, but not as stormy as other places. 

One day last week I heard someone call out "rainbow" and went outside to take a peek.

And then it rained again...hard.

This weekend I processed what is probably the last of the indigo.

(I may have said that before...but there was more! No hard frost yet.)

The leaves were fermented and then calx added.  There is a step where the liquid needs to be aerated; the hand blender works beautifully.

  This (Caitlin ffrench) is where I learned about processing the indigo this way. 

There are two layers of pigment here.  The top is where the foam settled and the blue sitting on the bottom of the pot is the remainder of the pigment. 

And this is a sample of the pigment:

I've set aside some of the pigment and calx water to see if I can make a baby indigo vat. 

Until later...

things we share (value)

Tuesday night I stood outside for a moment after coming home. 

The evening was clear and crisp. 

There was a sliver of moon and a flock of geese. 

I could hear the geese first and then there they were, in formation. 

Light from something was reflecting off their wings so I could see them as they went, a shadow moving across the sky. 

It's not the first year I've watched this...it is another season passing.

Earth pigment.

I am about half way through reading In Kiltumper by Niall Williams and Christine Breen. I love this passage that I found...

"Being in rural west Clare, and living the quiet way we do, some days meeting no other person, it is a garden seen by few.  So, it is not grown and cared for with the goal of display.  It is simply the natural extension of our living here, and as close as we get to having a relationship with the earth, not the one with a capital E, not the grand vast ungraspable wholeness of the thing that the steel turbines are said to be saving, but the portion of mud, clay and stone that live with us."

This passage resonates with me so much.  I don't think too much about what others think of my garden; it is about love, nurturing and healing. It is a place to rest and a place to grow; it is about place.  

I am thinking that the geese that have been flying over know more of the earth "with a capital E" than I do. They fly all the way from Russia each year for the winter. 

Today I am going to work in the garden some.  Wendell Berry has come up in my reading of In Kiltumper.  I suppose because of that a fragment of his poetry came to mind, "Having once put his hand into the ground, seeding there what he hopes will outlast him, a man has made his marriage with his place..."  From "The Current."