wool, silk, felt

merino extravganza. at last I found my battery-loader refiller plug. you see lots of eucalyptus, some madder, no reds yet but beautiful warm browns and pinkish oranges, the yellow and green are hypericum from the mountains of arkadia, smaller leaves and flowers than what I found here, but sort of perforatum. upper left are fleeces, unwashed, uncarded, just rinsed. the blue is from the incredibly smelly vat made from the first water when you rinse a fleece. top right are prefelts for experiments. the brown in the back is my woolen blanket, commercial. lower left is some purple basil- the purplish blue and the light green, and the orange is coreopsis, just a few flowers. there are quite a few nondescript tans there in the middle that are going back to be enriched, either before or after felting. acloser look at the basil and coreopsis. the basil is extremely sensitive to atmospheric conditions, it keeps on changing colour. I have not tried wetting it and soaping, maybe needlefelt on the inside of a bookcover would preserve it for a little while ;-)

madder in the middle, hypericum to the right, the yellowy in the middle is eucalyptus, a really beautiful colour. I'm really happy with these colours, all of them have survived felting, (except for the purple basil..)some were just thrown in pots and jars haphazardly, the deepest ones were made carefully. Carefully means with heat and time. some have began felting, but of course they were the ones that I kept squeezing to see how the colours are catching.

onion leaves bundled at prefelt stage, felted after. there will be more in the future. Next I'm going to try felting first and dyeing after. It does change the process, it means that you think more in terms of structure of the work, instead of painterly colouring.

Silks- bundled with plant matter. silk is so expensive- cant really experiment all I like. It is so beautiful, whatever you do to it.

eucalyptus bark and ironwater

fig leaves and various

and felt

its all experiments and samples, I really enjoy this.

so this is part of what I've done this summer, B. F. I also have lots of cotton and linen dyesperiments drying on the line. Going to make photos...