update

to all of you who read here and especially those who have left comments in the previous posts..thank you so much, your words of support give me courage and strength, they mean the world to me

we keep on getting austerity measures that are harshe and harsher, taxes piled upon taxes, and it doesn't look as if they are getting any results..

the computer is very uncooperative in the heat, it closes after loading sites and pictures, it gets overheated or just fed up..

I will visit individually, but I wanted to say a collective thank you

the japancloth is travelling with me to spain to be stitched down, and it will be presented to the Embassy in December

in between travelling:

I've made a feather for jude's feather project




I wanted it to be special, so I made the "cloth" first-pomegranate dyed crochet yarn, with a few extra strands of indigo added as an after thought
catching the shadows. It;ll go in the post on Tuesday
I learnt how to twine rags into string, and she got a head of hair, made from the mnemonic device I used while composing the tale I'm telling
and a face, and a name..meet ANNA the raglady
making a book of fabrics .. the Odyssey, part b, of course
abit like a vertical quilt- stacked layerson to the next voyage then.. see you soon!

in and out

madder+sumac leaves+a pinch of alum, next is madder+rusty nails, pomegranate rinds all on dmc cotton yarn in solar pots, simmered a short while and left for a week
a seam apocalypse
madder +iron on the brownish, the other is cochineal. I'll let them cure awhile
I'm in and out, telling stories here and there

the needle is dancing in and out learning new dance moves

things are jumping in and out of pots

(its good when I'm away because I can't poke them)

blogger is in and out, making it difficult to answer comments and see other blogs

thank you so much for your comments.

sea and sky

we went to the sea today, there was no one swimming, too cold. End of June, in Greece! I stitched some, and took photos. Telemaco went in the water, I put a jacket on..

all colours (on the cloths and threads) are from plants, with some help from rusty nails and little bacteria, except for the heart- I haven't gotten round to dyeing threads with madder yet

artificial light in the top two pictures, the beach scenes are from the cellphone

red and blue on the same day

this ones roots are safe from me
red trails-or are they rivers?
put in dry, long soaks in the vat, washed many times...yes, the smell does go away. 2 dips. you can see the top of Helen Melvins "The Colour of Sea and sky" which has been a great help in the indigo venture, along with J. Liles "The Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing"
my bundles warming up on the corner of the veranda
eucalyptus leaves shadows. I like this. I wish I left them longer
more prints on the bundle with the madder root. they were not left long enough to develop. they will probably get an ironwater treatment. and I don't know what gave the green...I'll turn into a meticulous notetaker yet
the madder in a jar with water. it is fermenting visibly after 24hrs
anthemis tinctoria, the green is overdyed with poppy iceflower,underneath all pomegranate rind warp yarn
bark soaking for the next round
while peeking into a bundle, impatient as always, I got a surprise.

red

deep lovely red

the bundle was hastily unbundled, and it was true..the orange root of madder gave me a deep red

I;ve been bundling up pieces of my pomegranate cloth, with leaves and metals

I simmered them in eucalyptus bark dyebath with more rusty nails, they are a very satisfactory black colour, now they are stewing in the very hot sun

there are coins in there as well, and some of the bundle cores are copper pipes, people just throw them out.

I have never been given red from madderroot before, and I am very excited

this madder was collected on May 1 in Varnavas, next village up, and it grows in very different conditions than it does here, in Grammatiko. I found it near a path in the forest where there is a lot of water, and the soil was moist, at places saturated with water. these were young roots, I didn't have a digging tool with me, so I just dug in a little bit and pulled out some intensely orange coloured roots, thin ones

I believe the preparation of the cloth has been very important. They have been scoured with caustic soda and lots of olive oil soap, which may have acted as the rancid oil of old.

it has been premordanted in succesive dips of wood ash lye and soya milk, and then dyed in pomegranate rind soup, cold

1st note to prospective dyer: Prepare, prepare, prepare. it is certainly worth it

a few remarks

my water is hard. very hard.

soya milk is fantastic. it is worth getting good quality beans.

sit on your hands. let those bundles age.

as long as possible.

keep notes on process. I may want to try to do it again

it feels like a gift from the land

the technique of bundling up plant matter is from India Flints " eco colour", a book which has led me to many a joyous dyeing experience. I am grateful to india for publishing this book. It s place is by my bed, and even just reading it gives me much enjoyment.

and the blue

yayyy again! I am dancing with joy

my urine vat is getting there! smelly, ammoniacal, ph over 9, sitting in the sun all day long, it has not been lazy at all. the indigo is reducing, it is dyeing strips of cotton , and yesterday it was washfast

I am so excited that my mind is running around itself trying to decide what to do first

:-))))))))))))

inorganic pigments(preview), some onion skins, alkanet, landscape and plants

onion skins, cotton
and linen.
photo by my dear friend and coleague Mats Rehnman who popped over from Sweden for world storytelling day

another of Mats;s photos. this is Rhamnous, an ancient port. Yes, it was named after the persian berry producing bush which is still prolific in the area. I think I've mentioned before that I think I live in dyeland....
straining pomegranate dyebath. I;ve been dyeing metres and metres of thick cotton for my current project
which is a painted storycloth, an illustrated storytelling par. this is on of the plans I've made, on paper
moon rising
I am using inorganic pigments with soymilk as binder and sizing. this is linen. It is absolutely beautiful when painted on.
this is an alkanet dyebath, a linen dress, I extracted the colour with alcohol
this is what I do with the remnants of mixed colours
in the red is genista tinctoria, in the blue.....what else indigofera. still waiting
violets.
new leaves on rosebush in the early sunlight

and me with a part of the storycloth. this is the baba yaga place. The cloth is one of my milky pre mordanted cloths from last year, it is perfect for painting on, no wicking. I had two of these cloths, one soaked in yogurt, one in kefir, diluted with water. both are stiff and smell a little cheesy. This is what I've been up to, the weather is warming up, the flowers are in a wild dancing mood, giving their all before the heat sets in. paradise.

pomegranate, a

preparing, yesterday

everything out, on the table

skeining thin crochet yarn

waiting for inspiration. sometimes even just looking at these books does it... india flints eco colour and J. Liles, with very different approach, alchemy in the meeting of opposites
I decided to start with an ash water soak, and think about protein later. at the same time, I was trying to decide which kind of tannin yellow I want to dye an old sheet with stains, for a storytelling project. The sheet went into the lye bath, Rumex roots gathered last year....too much work to grind them, and they would need soaking. I could gather schinus tops and kermes acorns...too brownish, too lazy

and I remembered that I had a bag of pomegranates, drying, from last year
suddenly a flurry of activity! I dug out those pomefranates, they were dry but springy, not hard, with the seeds still in them. I poured warm water over them, it immediately turned dark red...beautiful. there is some gauze soaking in that first juice, to be solar dyed

when the rinds were softer, I chopped them up. I took the sheet out of the ashwater after a couple of hours and I hung it out to dry.

later, I put it in the dyepot after adding more water to the very dark pomegranate juice. it immediately took up colour (the greenish tinge I think is from the fluorescent light)

I decided not to boil it, just simmered very gently for a couple of hours. I didn't mind it not being dyed evenly so I left all the rinds and seeds in the pot, where the sheet was really jammed in. a kind of bundle. I turned off the heat and left it there all night
this is what came out of that pot, golden in the first light of day. It is a cheating picture, of course, this is straight out of the pot, still wet, unrinsed, in the lovely early morning light. the colour is so beautiful, I had to share.
it will get browner as it dries, and I've seen some tannic yellows get darker with time. I'll show you what happens.
this is all very exciting, the bath still looks strong, I will try for some greys and blacks with rusty metalthis is the acropolis in dust from Africa. The south wind is the reason winter bypassed us this year. we'll see

I sowed Isatis tinctoria, woad,yesterday, seeds, in the old vegetable plot. It rained lightly in the evening- how's that for a good omen?

oh, yes- i did check the ph of all the liquids (new set of ph papers)

the ashwater: 9-10

pomegranate liquid 5-6

dyebath: 7, with unrinsed but dried ash soaked sheet in it

today the dyebath is a definite 6

I'll let it stand with the rinds and seeds in it to see what happens.