Lake pigments continued

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.

Advertisements

Plant pigment

Tags

close to home, colour, crafts, DIY, garden, mordant, nature, plants, primitivepaints, scruffyartsupplies, summer

Five years ago I did a brief test of concentrated plant dye baths to see what they were like as watercolours. I didn’t add anything to it as I recall and I’m not sure where my sample is now!

More on local art supplies

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.

My failed nettle-along

Tags

crafts, fiber, fiber prep, nature, nettle-along, nettles, plants, yarn

The lack of interest last year allowed me to slack off on the subject, and the nettles I gathered are in fact still on the rafters in bundles. I partially blame blogging as a difficult forum for debates and sharing, as well as my lack of expertise obviously.

As luck would have it, I’m now off the hook – Motherowl invited me to a Facebook group a little while ago, created by Allan Brown who has considerably more experience in the matter as well as a lovely video describing his process. In a very short time thousands of people have enrolled from all over the world, quite a few Danes too! So the interest is clearly there and I look forward to learning more. (even though I detest FB)

Oak leaf dyeing

Tags

autumn, plants, wool, yarn

I’m about a month later than last time, but the leaves are still green, acorns have mostly fallen off or will in the strong wind which is now dominating our days.

Oak leaves are a bit pesky to harvest, they don’t let go if you rip at them, the tiny side twigs however are easily torn off. So you need to grab individual leaves and pull backwards to leave them undamaged, a test in patience. There are already buds at the base of each leaf, the tree surely doesn’t mind that I grab the old ones just weeks before they fall anyway.

Well, did she make it then?

Tags

autumn, CFS, colourways, determination, drive, fatigue, health, intention, life, longread, nature, plants, relax

I left you last Monday saying I wasn’t quite up to speed in the sleepiness department. Spent the afternoon trying peppy music (I usually prefer spending the day in silence) and preppy activities such as winding yarns for dyeing, and cutting up an old fiber board for taping papers onto while painting. Thank goodness for power tools, brrrrm, zoom, done.

Then I was extra careful not to vaccuum up any of my good pens with the saw dust, but proceeded to do just that of course, getting it stuck somewhere inside the machinery. That extrication process took longer than all the rest, but such happenings are just part of any normal day around here. Gets your pulse up.

Nettle harvest

Tags

country life, crafts, mad science, nature, nettle-along, nettles, plants, ramie, video, weaving

Welcome to the next installment in our nettle-along.

This is what I managed to harvest in July, and it’s time for the next batch. I saved some of the leaves instead of feeding them to the horses, because while I don’t have time for a separate study of how to use the stalks for paper making, I do want to try to make paper and thought, why not add the dry leaves to my mixed materials bin? I’m drying my stalks inside because of the wet weather, I don’t know it that’s really necessary, but I didn’t want them to mold.

Holiday at home

Tags

country life, green, nature, plants, summer, wildlife

Came upon this beauty grazing my pasture, as I was wading through a patch of tall grass and weeds. No cropping!

---

At the cottage, holiday does not mean catching a plane to roast at the pool of some southern European hotel, it means prodding the big guy to do some maintenance on the wreck we call home. As a result, I also have to do some things of course, as well as assisting with comments etc, so nothing much is going on in the studio at all because of my aforementioned handicap when it comes to moving between brain halves.

Nettles in July

Tags

crafts, nature, nettle-along, nettles, plants

Welcome to the next installment in our nettle-along. This is mostly just a reminder, as I haven’t had the time or head for more research yet. Anyone else find interesting information they’d like to share?

MotherOwl beat me to it and wrote a nettle post yesterday.

I’m going to harvest my next batch one of these days if it will stop raining at odd times.

Nettle-along project page

Tags

crafts, nature, nettle-along, plants

I’ve only added a few things to the Page due to health issues, next post will appear in a couple of weeks.

I’m beginning to suspect that the info about saving stalks for a year is incorrect. Looking through an old booklet suggests that “people of old” processed their nettles in the fall. I’ll try to write a summary and translate it because there is a lot of interesting information in there, including a few chuckles:

In Swedish from Carl von Linné 1749: “Nätslor voro här plåckade till grönkål, såsom det allmänt sker i Sverige om vårtiden, så længe denna nätsla är späd och ännu ej en fingers lång… Somliga lägga till denna sin nätsle-kål bladen av ängelöken eller körfvel, at kålen må få en angenämare smak; andra bruka plåcka bladerna af sqvaller-kål … och åtskilliga andra växter, utan åtskillnad, hvarigenom ofta händer, at folket, som äta kålen blifva vimmerkantiga.”