Tag: green

Still got the blues

PiaPå dansk

My first woad results this year. Next year I’ll focus more on these rather than doing many plants, I just hope it keeps spreading in my abandoned vegetable garden. I was glad to find that there’s plenty of colour in them even this late in the summer, old leaves with holes in them and all. I saved half my “potion” in what I hope is an airtight bucket for dyeing more later. I wanted the option to experiment more and besides, I ran out of Spectralite.

Left to right: woad x 2, tagetes orange, tagetes yellow, reeds, weld, birch (multiple dips)woad4

Silk:
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Farvevaid, Isatis tinctoriadanish

Det lykkedes at få noget ud af mine vaidplanter selvom bladene var gamle og ormædte. Den ene grydefuld har jeg sat på hold for at se om den duer senere, det skulle være muligt at gemme i en ilttæt beholder.

Det blev mest til overfarvning af forskellige gule, og så glemte jeg endda nogen af dem jeg havde planlagt. Tagetes orange fed, tagetes gult fed, tagrør, vau og birk dyppet 3 gange.

Motley crew

PiaPå dansk

I’ve been modifying and dyeing a few skeins here and there which I can’t be bothered posting separately.

Lady’s mantle with iron. Since the two hanks I did earlier were so similar, I thought I might as well modify one, I can’t remember why I didn’t do so immediately, but here it is.
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Watercolour solution, cold dyed. Tagetes and coreopsis. What I did after I was done testing was pop a hank of yarn into each jar with more iron, and it was so strong that they took up a dark colour instantly! No heat, just left them in there for a bit. Some rinsed out, but they’re still a lot different from my other yarns.
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Another batch of reeds, this time only alum mordanted, no CoT, and from the freezer to see if that ruined the plants. Complete succes, so having an abundance of this shade I overdyed some with woad.
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Blandet landhandeldanish

Lidt blandede fed, fra toppen er det Løvefod puttet i jernblanding, coreopsis og tagetes akvarelfarve tilsat jern og et forsøg med frosne tagrør og derefter vaid. Helt nederst alle dagens modeller linet op til fotosession.

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Today’s models lined up for photoshoot

Got the blues?

PiaPå dansk

Harvested all my japanese indigo (Polygonum tinctorum), it was rather limp and old I think, took a bit to get the vats looking properly. But here’s the result, with various overdyed yellows as well. Both wool, silk and some of my failed cotton skeins, more about those later…

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Today is the last good weather for a while they say, so I really should get started on the woad!

Japansk indigodanish

Som før nævnt er jeg lidt sent ude med at få brugt mine blå planter pga alle de andre eksperimenter jeg har lavet i sommer.

Men nu fik jeg da høstet al min indigo og det lykkedes også til sidst at få lidt farve ud af den, selvom det ikke opførte sig helt som det plejer. Der er både uld, silke og et par af mine håbløse bomuldsfed, som jeg fortæller om en anden dag.

Random rants (with yarn)

PiaChit Chat

Still feeling a bit slow and tired here, I know it keeps cycling round like this, I just never cease to be baffled over it anyway. 😉 But I’ve managed to dye a little random hank of yarn now and again, all of which I’ll tell you about later, but for now I’ll just show them.

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I’ve never actually tested whether uninterrupted quiet, a stressfree environment etc. would break the cycle if it went on long enough, life keeps interfering. I’m working hard on avoiding the guilt trips that others try to send me on, but there are still “duties” as well as “things that just need to get done”.

And of course taking every 3-4 weeks out of the calendar for migraine, nausea, severe pains and my thinking patterns completely distorted. Oh, dear perimenopause how we do not love you. And then the catching up of everything afterwards. One of the reasons I managed to get a lot done this summer is the one time I had a whopping 6 week break, yay! I’m still waiting for the progesterone cream and agnus castus drops to really really kick in noticably enough for me to continue. I’m thinking of looking into some kind of detox of “heavy metals” (no, I don’t mean Def Leppard) and such, but I know that won’t necessarily make me feel better in the short run…

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So during the meanwhile, my brain feels as chirpy as ever, throwing a multitude of project suggestions my way daily, happily rattling on about yarn and paints and studio designing and on and on and on. It’s been a while since I updated my idea book, I better get up to speed and organize it, perhaps try the bullet journal system? (I already do/did something similar, but not that organized – and now of course I’ve already made up some additions/improvements for it…) I’m very happy that this IS HAPPENING to me, that my appetite for creating doesn’t go away almost ever, no matter how bad I feel. All I have to do is decide on a project waiting, pick it up and go. What’s missing in this equation of course is the physical drive to match the internal.

I’m also determined to learn to do one thing at a time, even if it means finishing some of the tedious practical tasks that go before or after the creating. I feel it’s essential to not getting sucked into the stress vortex again. Every time I feel well I can sense myself picking up speed automatically, it’s like a fast horse, if you just let it go, you may pass the point of control where no brakes apply, so you need to keep contact on the bit, rein in just a little bit regularly to remind it that someone is on top or you’ll crash. I’ve tried it – both metaphorically and with an actual horse, so I’m not making this up. 😉

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It’s funny though how the monkey mind works. When I was in the shower earlier, I thought this post was going to be sligtly different, but dressing, letting the horses out to grass, walking the dog (ah, another sunny warm day after 3 rainystormy ones!) and back here something else comes out of my keyboard. G says I ought to have a taperecorder taped to my arm 24/7. But then, when do I actually listen to it to cull out the useful bits? No, I guess important stuff will float by again sometime. Or not. Perhaps it will flow to someone more prepared in the moment, LOL.

I’ve been pondering the subject of thought patterns as habits and how much that influences us. I may go more into detail at a later date, but it’s been an interesting journey. Not just reprogramming and weeding out of thought forms but also reliving briefly things long forgotten, react to them perhaps for the first time ever and then letting go. I don’t get to choose them, they just emerge and I try to go with the flow rather than fight them, which is also relatively new to me. “Ok, so today I’m bawling my eyes out over something that happened when I was 7, and it feels like I’m going to feel this forever but I know that I’ll probably not.”

Changing thought habits is a really tough job, and I’m not working on it all the time. It’s one of those things that run in a spiral, you go on and on and nothing much appears to happen, until suddenly you find that you’ve circled around and actually ended up at the same spot, but a step higher. And looking down on the previous contact point you see an amazing difference. Pretty cool is what I think. It’s when we believe we should be able to make instant transitions once we make a logical decision, that everything seems to lock up. It’s also one of the best ways to become exhausted!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw]

And now my headache says to give it a break. I guess I’m either cycling round again or my new meditation cd is doing some weird sh*t. Only time will tell. I guess I’ll go sweep the floor and sort the dog nest rumpled sofa covers. Naps don’t help with this thing unfortunately. I may have one anyway, I tend to forget when I’m busy.

Whaddaya know, I wrote all this on Tuesday and then got interrupted by, tada! a gallstone attack, before I could take proper pix. I’ve been having a bit of pain all summer (or longer? I don’t recall) like a belt under my ribs but I didn’t think it was anything serious. Going in for a scan this morning, that means no coffee, no breakfast!

When and whether anybody is going to do something about it remains to be seen…

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Tansy take 2

PiaPå dansk

Last year I only did a few skeins – and this year the situation is the same, only I did it differently.

I did two with iron in the dyebath (mordanted with alum and one not) and one with leaves only.

Then I read that the best colour is from the leaves before the plants bloom. Well obviously that’s too late, so I guess I’ll have to do a teensy test in 2014 as well.

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Grøn med Rejnfandanish

Sidste år blev det til gul med blomsterne, i år forsøgte jeg mig med bladene samt med jernvitriol. Sidstnævnte både på alunbejdset uld og ubejdset. Bagefter læste jeg så, at planten rent faktisk giver bedst farve før den blomstrer, men så har jeg jo noget at prøve igen til næste år.