Since I’ve been doing a bit with the garden this year, I’ve decided to document it to remember, especially the dye flowers.
This time I’ve edited a teeny bit, unlike my last garden photo session. And I had a “helper” who thought it was a great service that I’d lie down on the lawn to relax together.
I found out that my new to me little pocket camera actually does quite good macros. I can’t see a thing on the display outdoors though, so I’ve developed a new (to me) style of taking pictures. I simply wave it around, try to point it in the general direction of something and click. Play with over- and underexposures in the sun etc. The macro lens I have for my SLR is a 90 mm and gives a completely different perspective compared to the wide angle of a tiny camera.
For starters I’ve been doing garden walks since so many things are in bloom right now, but I’ll continue to explore this method time and again just to get out of my regular groove. How about deliberate out of focus for instance? The columbines are going now, so I promise next time it will be something else…
The photos are unprocessed apart from resizing – exposure and colour are all from fiddling with camera settings. No crops. Some have been more deliberately composed, most are randomly aimed at the target.
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Soon the plant dyeing season will be upon us, so it’s time to find yarns and get them mordanted (I always do this ahead of time and then just keep the labelled skeins on hand). This year I’ll be working with more natural mordants such as sea water, tannins, soy and rhubarb leaves.
I’m looking for cheap silk yarns and/or fabrics that I can cut into swatches to add to my sample library. As well as cotton.
I’m also going to help myself to some structure by creating a section for it here on the blog with an easy access plant list of which I’ve done and how, update my tags and some other stuff I’ve been thinking about, hoping that it might prove useful for other people as well. I have a few science experiments in mind that might interest you…
I take requests for topics! Who knows, maybe my library contains items I haven’t even thought about mentioning yet. But please be patient, I won’t be finishing this off in a day or two. In fact I’m feeling a bout of blog fatigue coming on, so we’ll see how it goes!
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Det er ved at være tid til plantefarvning lige om snart – mon der kommer nye vaidplanter? SÃ¥ det er nu man skal i gang med at samle garn, fÃ¥ det bejset osv. sÃ¥ det er klar hvis man lige skulle fÃ¥ lyst til at smide noget i gryden! I Ã¥r har jeg tænkt mig at lege med naturlige bejser som havvand, rabarberblade, garvesyre og soyamælk i stedet for eller sammen med metalbejserne.
SÃ¥ jeg er pÃ¥ jagt efter bomuld og silke, som garn eller stofrester jeg kan bruge til at lave prøver med. Gerne billigt…
For at hjælpe mig selv til at holde struktur på tingene, og måske være en hjælp til andre, går jeg i gang med at udvide plantefarvningssektionen her på bloggen med lister, opskrifter, links, tips og andet. Jeg tager også imod forslag til emner, måske ved jeg noget, som jeg bare ikke har tænkt på at skrive om endnu?
Og jeg vil gøre mit bedste for at også opdatere det hele på dansk. Det kommer nok lidt i bidder hen ad vejen, så kig forbi i ny og næ.
Dry flowers apparently aren’t my thing, they look very dull and broken, some leaves might be useful. I don’t know if I went overboard squishing them real hard with clamps on the books?
I do still plan to try some garden printing, when time allows. There must be stuff out there that I can use even late in the season! Maybe I can do it on pieces of cloth that I plan to plant dye, if I use acrylics, they shouldn’t wash off no matter what I put the material through afterwards, at least that’s the deal when I get it on my clothes…. (does anyone paint and manage to look pretty throughout?) I wish I had some more fluid paints than the ones I have, guess I’ll have to invest in Golden acrylics next time.
In the meantime I saw those posts on plant dyeing on paper, which I just had to give a go although late in the season. Next summer and flowers and new dyebed (which hubby at the moment has decided to till for me as a first prep! Yay him!)
First session went quite well although I had no idea how to “steam” the paper, nor how to best keep the sandwiches tight and not floating apart. So I’ll be getting some alder leaves and some coreopsis from the freezer, and hey! How about all those dry homegrown weld and Dyer’s chamomile I collected!? Any Woad leaves left out there I wonder?
Time to get a bit scientific about it. Two pair of sheets soaked in vinegar, two in aluminium acetate. Alder leaves, more yellow birch leaves and Liquidambar styraciflua. Another sandwich, same mordants, strawberry leaves green and yellow, sage, celandine. In between the 2 sets, a layer of frozen coreopsis tinctoria and blue columbine flowers.
Then there’s the consideration of temps. Will a too high temp give dull prints? How low can you go and still get steam? I started with 150 C because 100 didn’t seem to get steamy. 120 doesn’t seem to quite work either, no visible steam anyway.
I’m showing both front and back of some sheets, since they could be used either way.
Unfortunately at some point in the drying process, I lost track of which 4 sheets were aluminium soaked instead of vinegar, AND forgot in which way they were different. I could identify them by which first sheet has the grate imprint from the oven, but after a 3 day break I also forgot which batch was on the bottom. DUH. Scatterbrain.
I’m happy enough with these results that I’m going to keep playing with paper and plants. Test which seasons give the best results and see if I can find any info on it. Some also say use “dead” leaves collected from the ground, some even use older leaves and soak them first. Hmmmm – I wonder about the above pressed flowers and stuff now?!
A short search gave me:
Cassandra Tondro on eco printing with a recipe (backwards) for paper steaming
The natural surface – great forum
Threadborne list of plants to use
Next challenge: If I order a new batch of water colour paper, can I resist getting pens and inks and other lovely supplies while I’m at it?! Now that I’m getting a micro painting studio and all….
I’ve been deadheading Dyer’s Chamomile all summer and drying the flowers – 430 g I have, which is about 1/4 of the original weight. Yes, I did dry 100 g separately, so I could weigh them after!
Today I while checking my apples I saw there were flowers again. So I picked another batch, probably the last. As well as a new batch of weld. I should have enough to play with this winter! I’ve dried all the weld from this summer, as I haven’t had time to play with it.
I also found, deep in the grass of my failed vegetable garden, some of the madder I planted last year. I think I’ll try to dig them up and relocate, but I don’t think I have the patience to wait 3-4 years for dyestuff. I can buy it not that expensively by the kilo, all dried and ready.
Other dry stuff to play with hiding in my drawer is black hollyhock, bark from Rhamnus frangula (Alder Buckthorn?), sumac bark, Cochineal and 100 g of Rathania root (Krameria triandra) and lots of onion peels.
Now all that waits is to see if I get any elderberries to experiment with. Since the privet lost its berries before they even grew (lots of flowers on it in spring). But right now they’re only just going from green to black, so I’ll have to watch out. I hope to be able to make some juice for hot winter drinks as well.
Otherwise I didn’t do much today apart from boiling a skein of sock yarn, that I needed to know how soft it is after dye and wash. Sigh. I just can’t hear the friggin pot simmer even when I’m in the same room. It’s all y’all’s fault ya know. If I didn’t sit here writing at you, I wouldn’t ruin a fortune in wool…. 😉
