Wednesday, April 29, 2009

happy hunting




madder!



it is rubia peregrina(I think), there's tons of it around, there even is an area called "rizari" -Greek for madder -not very far away from here, near marathon



yes I am happy



it likes growing under other plants, or maybe it is because the sheep can't reach it in there.



the problem is that the roots are all tangled with the other plants' roots



it likes climbing up and getting tangled in the others branches



so it is a very together plant



luckily for me you can easily tell which are its roots from the colour



dark reddish brown on the harder, woody parts and yellowish on the newer softer parts.







there are also some spongy bits which are soaking separately


it took me a very long time to cut them up into small bits


the first water of the roots is orange-brown, I have kept it in a jar


the roots have been soaking for two days now and there was hardly any colour in the water until I started warming them up, no higher than 50 c


now it is brown


all light coloured parts are pink!


I'm improvising, since I won't have any mordanted wool for a few days


they are in 2 jars, the woody roots. one has part of a pillowcase (cotton) soaking in it since last night along with some oak bark. this has gone pinky-dirty-light brown


i'm tinkering, waiting and seeing


and sitting on my hands so I don't tinker too much, also I will wait for the heat to arrive before I gather more roots




Today I went alkanet gathering, from a different place than before



luckily for me Golden Helping Hands Greenfingers were there to help because there were lots

I am letting them dry so that I can knock off most of the earth before washing them tomorrow.

it was a good hunting day

1 comment:

india flint said...

did you know that madder roots can be bundled in unmordanted cloth [wool felt is perfect for this] and cooked to make an exquisite print?
paste this link to see pix of some work we did in Aoteroa last winter...

http://prophet-of-bloom.blogspot.com/2008/08/breaking-silence.html

scroll down a bit to see the madder pix

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