30 Thursday Dec 2021
Tags
blogging, country life, creativity, inspiration, intention, life
Some of you wondered if you’d missed an entire subject on the blog; clearly you haven’t, I just suddenly didn’t write much about my antics for several years.
Continue reading03 Monday Sep 2018
Posted in Garden, Painting, Pigment, Plant Dyeing, Show-and-tell
Tags
closetohome, colour, crafts, DIY, mordant, nature, plants, primitivepaints, scruffyartsupplies
SURVEY at the bottom of this post, please cast your vote! If you are using Firefox on a desktoip computer, you may not see the polls if you have tracking protection enabled under security settings. Click the shield icon in front of the URL and choose disable protection for this site. (if you wish obviously)
Now that I have a small first collection of pigments to play with before new plants can be tested next summer (I do have some old dried things I can try too), there are multiple ways to use them. They need some kind of binder, although I suppose you could just soak them in water. Alcohol? But even watercolours have binders added to add intensity to the colour as well as make it stick to your paper.
30 Thursday Aug 2018
Rainy grey day today, a reminder that soon, soon, I’ll want to stay indoors for days on end, playing rotisserie in front of the wood stove, rushing through and not around the outside of the barn to get to my studio upstairs. Thinking in muted tones and drinking buckets of tea, layering up in wool sweaters and socks.
Only a week ago I was in the hammock on a beautiful warm, quiet day with that certain something in the air that is no longer summer – not the least an unusual gathering of birdies doing acrobatics over the garden. It took me a long while to realize that I had brought my phone for a change and that it does in fact make videos (because forget taking a still photo of the little speedsters).
13 Monday Aug 2018
Posted in Garden, Plant Dyeing, Show-and-tell
Tags
close to home, colour, country life, crafts, DIY, dyeing, mordant, nature, plants
During an investigation into using dry pigments and beeswax for painting rather than oilpaints, which I’m not enjoying, I’d been reading about making lake pigments and thought it would be fun to give it a try. These are pigments from plants as opposed to rock/earth/metal based colours, and since I already had some remedies as well as dried plant materials for dyeing wool, it wasn’t too much trouble to give it a try.
23 Monday Jul 2018
Posted in Chit Chat, Garden, Plant Dyeing, Show-and-tell, Thoughts
Tags
close to home, country life, creativity, inner conviction, inspiration, intention, life, seasons, summer, weather
It hasn’t rained here in 3 months and has been unusually hot too, so most blooming things are over and done with if they have even survived. I’m glad I didn’t make a dye garden this year, as the cost of watering would have been massive.
02 Monday Jul 2018
Posted in Chit Chat, Farm Life, Garden, Shop, Show-and-tell
Tags
blogging, country life, crafts, creativity, exercise, fatigue, garden, gardening, health, intention, life, summer, weather, weight loss
While I’m cooking up that promised weaving post, I’m going to drag you through a bit of a general status update of life at the cottage.
08 Sunday Oct 2017
Tags
Clearing the view through inner courtyard. Some day I may even renovate the rest of it.
03 Thursday Aug 2017
Posted in Books & reading, Chit Chat, Garden, Painting, Weaving, Yarn and Fiber
12 Friday May 2017
Posted in Chit Chat, Garden, Photography
Despite cold winds and rain, nature persists in getting on with spring. Last weekend was fabulous which also meant catching up on some outdoors jobs before the next storm, but I managed an ultra short “blind” photo session (as in “I can’t see a bloody thing on the display in this light”) to remind me that sweater and woodstove days will eventually be over.
Today I noticed the rape seed fields are blooming, which means I’ll be scanning the skyline soon for a very longterm project that I’ve pondered for a while but finally begun to organize at least. Too windy and chilly today however and not enough sun. Hopefully it’s still happening when my back has recovered from last weekend!
How is spring coming along in your part of the world? (or autumn, if that’s the case)
27 Thursday Oct 2016
Posted in Garden, Photography
– garden views for you today. I try to get my butt outside every time the weather lets up, even just for a short spell. And every year in October I just go nuts clicking at leaves, once I start I can’t seem to stop, 100’s of images and nothing to do with them! These are just the raw snaps, I hope to dive deeper into work on them later. Too many varied projects going on right now, so next task will be getting all my ducks in a row.
Colour Cottage 