this one's for you, Ma

one of the things I love to do in New York is get up earlyish and totter across to the Chelsea Flower Market

it's a visual delight and the fragrances are intoxicating - i wish this could be a scratch-and-sniff post

and then the contents of the gutters had me wishing for a dyepot

on indigo and roses

before y'all get too excited that i'm straying from my windfall path...i'm not using indigo for commercial purposes, just for the luxury of overdyeing my clothes after mending so that the mends will blend in better.

and because i love blue.

it's organically grown and i paid a fair price for it so the grower wasn't exploited.

indigo vats are like people. they need to rest in between working, are not keen on being cold and they get bored eating the same stuff all the time.

it's cold here in the deep deep southern winter so from time to time (when i want to dye) i warm my vat with twigs using this very simple heater. 



although indigo can be boiled when in its blue form, overheating when it has been reduced can destroy the colour. so the heating is something i pay careful attention to

feeding my vat some honey (that had come to the unwelcome attention of some ants) made the indigo flower go bright blue. 

it worked hard yesterday so in the evening (feeding the donkey after work as the indigo master, Michel Garcia suggests) i gave it a treat. boiled bananas strained through an old sleeve. the button at the cuff is handy for attaching the bag to a "dripping stick".

the squeezed contents might look absolutely disgusting but there are people in my family who really enjoy them

more please! it's hard to get a clear pic when Kowhai is wriggling with delight. She loves pignanas especially when they have been boiled to mush

i worked a lot with indigo during my residency in Portland last year. one of the happy side effects of overdyeing ecoprints with indigo is of course that the leaf prints of (particularly) deciduous species are enhanced by the alkali that is a necessary component of every indigo vat. that said, some yellows (such as coreopsis) are quite likely to turn red. and eucalyptus can become quite sulky. you can use almost any alkali to develop ecoprints (ash water, seawater, fermented urine) but you'll find that the prints seem to blur if you haven't bundled tightly enough, as the alkali will develop ALL of the colourant that has bonded with the cloth (not just the bits you can easily see)

i also found to my delight that Persicaria tinctoria literally grows before your eyes. a bag of fresh indigo in the refrigerator had roots from most of the nodes within 48 hours. 

which offers the opportunity for selective propagation if you're into that kind of thing. or just wanting to grow a lot of indigo from a limited seed source. 

speaking of propagating, a few months ago i had to rescue a rose (Francis Dubreuil*) that had been trashed by one of the goats and used a method i had learned from a copy of French Vogue (yes, I was surprised to find it there myself) that someone had left in the pocket of an airplane seat back in 1976

the method is ridiculously simple and works every time.

fill a pot with good quality potting mix (does not necessarily have to be cutting mix, you actually want it to retain a bit of moisture). trim your cuttings in the usual way (i like to have a bit of firm growth, nip back anything that's too soft at the tip and trim the leaves from three sets of nodes at the business end)

poke them into the pot (if the cuttings are firm enough i don't even use a dibbing stick), give it a good water and when the pot finishes dripping put it into a plastic bag (yes, i know some of your will fall into shock at the mention of a plastic bag from this quarter) and tie the top up

then ignore it all until the plants inside are begging to get out

thinking now that a row of really big pickle jars will make very fine miniature greenhouses for this method. just as long as the openings are big enough to admit pots and to allow for easy retrieval of the plants once they grow

* Francis Dubreuil was a tailor from Lyon who became a rose breeder later in life. Among his abundant output was also Perle d'Or, a completely adorable rose that has so far survived our goats (touching woods as i type). He was also father to Claudia Meilland who married Antoine Meilland (who bred the Peace rose which in France was named Madame A.Meilland...but the Peace rose story is a long one and you can find it here).

heel Toto, we're not going to be in Kansas much longer

i had a bunch of fabulous students

who made beautiful work

and survived my soup-cooking

[i had a stern talking to because apparently their insurance

does not cover witches cooking soup after hours]

heh heh.

we made books, dyed and stitched cloth 

cackled uncontrollably when we discovered the

Haigh's chocolate frogs

had [after the warmth of New York] fused 'in flagrante delicto'

[best not to post an image in case of blushes] 

 

watched ducks watching people

and now it's time to sail away

sometimes i'm a bit of a SanFranpsycho

and

i like to be a New Orleanian

wherever

i

am

+

+

+

more green

i am on Madeline Island
midst fields of green but slightly nervous to tread in them
having already been attacked by the dreaded chiggers
not to mention ticks literally raining down on me
every time i am foolish enough to set foot under a tree.

there are big ones and little ones

those little ones at the bottom are particularly insidious.
apparently they like to attach themselves to gentleman's vegetables.
they are hard to spot and can give you Lyme disease.
i am very glad i am not a boy.

green abounds in our samples

 in the instruments we make
to apply proteins to our pages

and on a hill

though there is less of it on the other side

a little way down the road i find peony heaven

so far we have limited ourselves to using colour
literally gathered within 500 yards of the cauldrons

after class hours i play music amplified by a jug
which is a good deal cheaper than extra speakers
every bit as effective
and amusing to look at.

the Madeline Island School of Arts prides itself on its food [on the website at all events]
but does not provide evening meals.
for those of us without transport [such as yours truly]
this has meant a simple diet of corn chips-washed-down-by-gin for supper.

this evening i discovered a clean cauldron in my digs
and cooked soup [lentil+potato+squash+corn] for my students.
in the absence of herbs [none that i could find at all events]
i flavoured it with peanut butter, garlic, chili and maple syrup;
dressing it with a mix of yoghurt/green onion/lemon
which some of us also anointed with Tabasco.
it sounds vile but was actually delicious.
sadly the visuals did not match the flavour and so i shall spare you an image.

and now
i have to get back to my sewing. i have a Fall collection to construct
so every non-teaching [waking] moment has to be put to good use...

que?

opening the mail this morning i nearly choked on my porridge

when i read the unequivocal statement below

while the second sentence is true,

my response to the first was quite simply "bollox".

if you don't know what that means, good.

if you do, be assured that i have put a gold-coloured coin into the swear jar.

the reason green is traditionally considered to be a "difficult to achieve" colour is quite simply because of the way the plants have been processed.

most water supplies contain at least a little sodium

which tends to make everything yellow.

if you're lucky enough to live in Philadelphia

or Göttingen or other places where the water is rich in calcium; or if your water comes from a copper-rich bore/well then you'll be familiar with beautiful greens too

 or you could go play at Mount Tamborine

where the climate and soil and magic-in-the-air gave us lovely greens

there's an old Japanese dyeing family whose name sadly escapes me for now

but you could google them if you had half an hour to spare, Dr something-beginning-with-K

spoke at the UNESCO dye conference in Hyderabad in 2006

and i distinctly recall him showing slides of the 167 repeatable and named 

shades of green that his family could dye to order

[i'm pretty sure there must be either copper or calcium or both in their water]

their sample books go back over six or seven generations.

the samples above were dyed at Gore, New Zealand

and here's a link to the process we used at Warrnambool, Victoria

bundle-dyeing or ecoprinting [much the same thing]

is by far the best way to achieve greens

as the outside of the bundle acts as a filter

so what reaches the inside is relatively pure steam

without nasties that will dull the greens or change them to gold

and if you've pre-soaked your cloth

in a diluted copper+vinegar solution 

[NOT copper sulphate, it is toxic and corrosive]

success is guaranteed.

now that i've got that off my chest

i'll clear up the mess of spluttered porridge

and get back to the dyepot...

its contents have to be packed and on a plane on Tuesday.

a special 'botanical alchemy' event

those of my readers who have met me

will know that cooking is a passion of mine

alongside my more public pursuits

so when an email came out of the blue

enquiring whether i would like to give a class

at gorgeous Glenmore House in NSW

[on the edge of Sydney]

 famed for kitchen gardening and seasonal cooking days

and for fabulous lunches prepared by proprietor Mickey Robertson

i was delighted and said YES please

[especially as, serendipitously, i was planning to be in the region in any event

to meet with my publisher, on the way home from Queensland]

in this one-day retreat

we shall be dyeing soft wool travel wraps

with leaves from the property

and making a lovely Tsunobukuro bag in which to keep them

while Mickey cooks us a delicious lunch 

please click here for the link to the booking form 

and if you are wondering what's on the plate in the picture

it was today's breakfast

toasted spelt bread

piled with a mix of yoghurt, spring onion, basil, dill, danish fetta

garnished with tiny slices of fresh chili

and more dill.

yum.