blue seas blue skies blue daze

from Mukilteo i took the ferry to Whidbey Island

and discovered

to my great delight

that our studio space was positioned in a most romantic place

Camp Casey

on the coast, by the Salish Sea

with a forest behind

and remarkable fortifications to explore

the buildings were spare and beautiful, white walls, wooden floors

and with a room above the studio that we could use for installations, poetry readings, the occasional dance...and a good space in which to practice my lovely Native American flute

the beach proved a marvellous studio space as well
and falling leaves from the forest behind coloured cloth as well as paper


and such beautiful stones


from Whidbey I came to Vancouver, which seems to be a city of stone stackers

at Maiwa East we worked on our aprons, wrote poetry, received the blessing of blue

and made string

some of the string found itself transformed

and all of it became blue in the course of time

eucalypts, as ever, seem to be incurably fascinating, and a student was very happy with her work (below)

especially when combined with local colour

in our class at Maiwa we had a songbird
here's one of the songs she sang for us (or rather, to the indigo vats)
unaccompanied and with the voice of an angel
and may i say
her version eclipsed the original, and the Sarah Mc Lachlan cover

i'll be on my way home soon
dreaming blue dreams way up in the sky

On the count of three

It's nearing 3am on the morning after the last of the Bower Bird Blues workshops and I'm lying wide awake listening to the pounding of the ocean and thinking of all the things I could have done better. 

Kubbi on the other hand is snoozing peacefully by my side. 

Scrolling back through my Batfone I'm surprised to find this is the only image I made of the newly established Botanical Studio at Beautiful Silks in Allansford 

Marion and Elephant have worked miracles to create a retreat and workshop centre dedicated to facilitating ecologically sustainable textile arts. 

During our three days together we were spiritually sustained by the beauty of the space and gardens and nourished by deliciousgood meals prepared by Marion - supplemented by various dulcet delectables from the kitchen of her good friend Brenda.   

Once again we were considering the blues (though my limited set of images doesn't really reflect that). There was stitching, stringmaking, writing and the beating of leaves. Complemented by much enthusiasm in the hammering and sawing of metals (under the direction of Roz Hawker) - sadly I don't seem to have any images of those pieces either. Ah well. 

Indigo leaves were beaten in as well as bundled. 

The surface of this dyebath was absolutely jewel-like. 

As were the bundles that emerged from it

Somehow in between all that we found time to design a simple dress for one of the participants to wear to her daughter's wedding - all she has to do now is dye it. 

I'll write up the instructions in the next post, meanwhile I'm hoping to drift into the arms of Morpheus for a while...if I can stop the churning of thoughts!

back country in Tasmania

 

it was a splendid week in Tasmania

i stayed with friends at Dodges Ferry while hanging the exhibition

and then another kind friend lent me a dear little house at Red Ochre Beach

so i had somewhere to retreat in monastic solitude
each evening for the duration of the workshop

i love the sea

and if i could somehow transport our farm to an edge

where a river meets a much bigger water

it would be absolutely perfect

on the other hand

i wouldn't want to go anywhere anymore

and would likely become a complete hermit

so it's probably

just as well

but now

i'd better load my blue things into the ute

and get a few hours of snooze in.

i have a crack of dawn departure for Allansford

and the last of the Bower Bird Blues classes

at Beautiful Silks Botanical Studio

guess who else is coming?

blue notes and life lessons

life lessons. 

learn to expect the unexpected. 

you'd think that by now i would have that firmly tattooed inside my left eyelid. 

I have to confess I was humbled by the indigo vat last week...which for the first time since 1991 (the year I first dabbled in the blues) decided to behave like a bit of princess and consequently was a little slow to reveal the magic. 

pale blue instead of brilliant blue.

With the wisdom of hindsight I should have put the freshly prepared vat to bed overnight wrapped in quilts and blankets but foolishly (possibly thinking hey, it's summer) left it out under the stars overnight. 

An extra 24 hours and a bit more warmth yielded truly lovely results, sadly too late for my forgiving students (and me) who had already dispersed with the four winds - but very happily for Judy (see blue hand below). It certainly reinforced the rules of indigo, which likes to be warm and wellfed, just like the rest of us. Didn't do a great deal for my self-esteem, but I'm sure the Dogs Above had their reasons. I sure hope they did. The inner bear took a bit of a pummelling.

At least all present were very happy with their metalwork (guided by Roz Hawker), received the magic of string (learned originally from Nalda Searles), loved the fabulous food (thank you Chloe Keylock), revelled in the gorgeous surroundings (thank you Michael and Judy Keylock) and enjoyed the dog therapy provided by the ever joyful Molly.

photo by Michael Keylock

I'm taking my lesson in the spirit of the wisdom below 

(thank you Michael for bringing it to my attention)

and have come home to more wise words from another Michael 

(image borrowed from the Michael Leunig appreciation page)

the teapot of constancy is filled with Lady Grey tea, 

the dog of sanity (who slept on my bed last night) is by my side. 

Admittedly the armchair of philosophy needs serious re-upholstering and the rug of constancy could do with a vacuum and possibly a good beating but the vase of tranquility is full of jasmine

and happily every day is a new beginning.

 

rhapsodies in blue

it was easy planning my clothes for this trip

all i had to do was throw anything blue into the suitcase

and then at the other end

take a daily lucky dip and wriggle into it

[too hot and steamy for boots]

packing the materials was another thing

handstitching indigo-dyed ecoprint bags

and stuffing them with selections from my cloth collection

was fun

[though i will say counting beads can be confusing for a bear]

and happily the baggage-mishandlers did not play football with my suitcase

because the blue-and-white teacups that were to stop the beads rolling off the tables all happily arrived intact.

Roz and i both brought fabrics from our homes and had a glorious time decorating the workroom on the afternoon before class

our wonderful host Tarla had grown all sorts of indigo-bearing plants

as well as madder [which is most useful in reducing an organic vat]

 you could almost think you were in Japan, with such fields

Tarla and her daughters prepared delicious food for us

with fresh ingredients sourced from the garden

where a Satin Bower Bird had busily gathered blues

from the surrounding district

 we looked at ways in which we could bring our blues together

sharing stories about the meaning of this beautiful colour

reading a little poetry

considering what the colour meant to us as individuals

 we stitched, experimented with fresh indigo

worked with the metals that Roz had brought

made string

and at the very end

overdyed the finished pieces in the gloriously rich vat

that Tarla had prepared earlier

thank you, all of you, for making it such a splendid three days

not yet saturated with the blues?

here are more stories

Roz's version

and

a few more links via our shared blue bower

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).