Category: Chit Chat

To those who wait

PiaBooks & reading

Finally, after placing several orders with Amazon (with extras each time to avoid shipping fee – doesn’t quite work as budget control if you keep doing it and only get the extras), I managed to get a copy of Brave Intuitive Painting by Flora S. Bowley. First printing got sold out in a huff, the second apparently exploded! But now it’s here. I hoped it would have some good exercises to get me past my sudden fear of blank canvases, if not, at least it’s really, really pretty. But it’s turning out to be amazingly accurate in timing as well as content. Cheers to synchronicity!

AND I got me some new to me Terry Pratchett books. There are no bad excuses for reading TP, and that’s a fact. I do try to save them for those days needing extra chocolate.

For relaxation I’ve been working my way through Walden by Henry D. Thoreau (not sure I’ll be able to finish it within library deadlines and everything else going on though) as well as James Redfield’s books of Insights, the latter are easy reads about a “difficult” (to some) subject. Very good introduction to the matter of spiritual evolution I think; ok, a bit shallow and naive as well, and the plot is somewhat over the top. But I’m very much in favour of saying things simply, instead of obscuring the facts with lots of words to appear clever and make your book fatter (That doesn’t apply to TP of course, the fatter his books, the better. Or just more of them). I’m also reading Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins, a birthday present from my dad who likes things complicated and sounding like a science report.

I mean, you can say:

“The phenomenological universe is the expression of the interaction of the endless attractor patterns of varying strengths. The unending complexities of life are the reflections of the endless reverberations of the augmentations and diminutions of these fields, compounded by their harmonics and other interactions.”

or:

“The universe is energy, all energies interact, and the result is life as we see it.”

42.

Little hedges

PiaChit Chat

For a few years one end of our property (and the neighbours’) have been flooded in winter due to clogged drains in the fields. Most have been fixed, but eventually most of our hedges way up in the garden died because they were standing with their feet in the water followed by two very frosty winters.
So this summer we’re working on a new drain all the way from the garden to the low end of the farm where the big new drain is running. No point in getting a new hedge if the garden is a swamp 6 months out of 12! But the garden is much too windy without one. A hedge that is.

It’ll probably be a couple of years (they say) before we see the actual effect, so in the mean time I’ve decided to make new hedges, using what we already have, spiraea and ribes. For the lilacs I’ll have to see if any of them have sent out shoots that I can dig up and nurse a bit in a pot. I think I’m a bit late in the season to use cuttings?

Now only remains to be seen if I can actually remember to nurse them all through the winter…. At least if we don’t get frost, I have a self-watering greenhouse!

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Temporary home while the digger recuperates

Eco friendly dyeing

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

At the moment when I plant dye I use the old recipes, the usual metal based mordants etc. to get some experience under my wings. But just because it’s done with plants, all these chemicals doesn’t also make it natural. “Wear a mask as you measure up the powder, gloves too”. In fact chrome, used in many recipes, is illegal here now for regular use, you can’t buy it. It can in fact alter your DNA!

So to go all the way, I’d like to switch to natural mordants when possible (meaning that of course I’d still like to get the range of colours I’ve been discovering), so I’ll be doing a bit of research on that. I know India Flint does it, her book Eco Colour is very inspiring. The other day a fellow blogger introduced me to another one written specifically about using Native American plants and methods rather than Continue reading “Eco friendly dyeing” →

DYI supplies

PiaChit Chat

As fascinated as I was by the garden printing technique the other day, I didn’t have any prepped canvases or cloth to try it on (and I still don’t, blame my to do list). But I wanted to do something, so off I went on a garden tour to find plants for drying and maybe using in collages. I obviously can’t show you the results yet, but here’s a glimpse of my findings. Various leaves, daisies and wild roses among other things.

I’ve also read of a technique using fresh flowers in paintings, encasing them in gel medium. I don’t think I have the right kind in stock though, and alas, no prepped backgrounds either, so maybe next year…..

Continue reading “DYI supplies” →