Back from my adventure in Covelo: the katazome workshop with John Marshall. The road to Covelo, CA follows the Eel River, officially Wild and Scenic. A wonderful place to swim too!

Eel River, on the way in and out of Covelo, CA

Classes take place in John’s home/studio, a restored flour mill. The dates on the facade are 1888-1914-1999. The name of the gorgeous pink flowers escapes me.

The Mill

A few insights:  Yes, I have been making my rice paste too thick, and the raw paste too dry. Revelation: golf balls and dough-nuts are unnecessary. I really like this! Here, the raw paste is ready to steam.

Rice past resist ready to steam.

I have been working with freeze-dried indigo this summer, and it was great to observe the preparation of the vat and then the re-heating of the vat the next day. Here are pictures from our indigo experience.

Introducing the freeze-dried “instant” indigo to the vat:

Adding indigo to the vat of body temp water

Here are two ways of skimming the oxidized bubbles, “aibana” or indigo blossoms, from the top of the vat, which is necessary unless you want the dark spots of bloom on your work.

skimming method 1

skimming method 2

Using the 2nd method is great — you can then dry the bubbles and use them as indigo pigments along with the soymilk.

attaching cloth to frame

Ready to dip the cloth.  (That’s my Covelo house-mate Eva Pietzcker, an artist from Berlin who makes gorgeous woodblock prints in the Japanese tradition.) John has a rope and pulley system, used primarily for larger pieces of work which need the larger ceramic vat (which you can see behind John). These containers are from China and were originally designed to hold soy sauce.

ready to dip

In goes the cloth … count to three … pull it out and over the outside edge of the vat to drip. You want to avoid introducing oxygen. John’s rule of thumb: the rice paste resist can withstand three brief dips, then must hang to dry before further dunking. If you want it darker repeat that until you achieve the depth of color desired. Observe the paste — you want to stop before it starts to break down.

into the blue

See the lovely dark green which will turn blue as it oxidizes …

dark green turns to blue with oxidation

Afternoon break most days featured home-made shaved ice! John has a lovely Japanese cast-iron hand-crank machine with gears – the ice sits vice-grip-like in the machine on top of a flat blade. A hand crank turns the blade and the shaved ice falls into the bowl below. We tried it with powdered green Japanese tea and sugar syrup on top; and with home-made blackberry sauce! Yum! I was too absorbed in the experience to take a picture, but found this short video on YouTube that features a similar type of machine.

The hot dry air in Covelo is perfect for working outside, stretching fabric between uprights of the Wisteria arbor.

arbor and yard

placing shinshi

Oh, and I must not forget Nutmeg, the cat.

Nutmeg

Many fine experiences to reflect upon over the clouds of Colorado and beyond!

clouds above Colorado

This week I bought a piece of handmade Japanese Kozo, cut it up into 10 pieces and then made my own momigami, or “strong paper.” This is done by coating the sheets with konnyaku starch, which comes from the Devil’s Tongue root. It’s a powder you mix with water, brush on both sides of the paper and then crumple the paper into a loose ball.

kozo coated with konnyaku and scrunched

While the paper is still damp you crumple it more and work the surfaces together. The more you work with it, the more like cloth it becomes. Then spread each sheet out to dry flat on a table.

kozo wet with konnyaku starch

This treatment makes it receptive to dyes, and easy to stitch. I get my kozo and konnyaku from Wet Paint Art in St. Paul, and they get it from the Japanese Paper Place in Toronto. (Check my Resources Links.)

dry momigami

I wanted it flat (not perfectly) so I could mount my silk pieces to it, so I ironed it. I really like the wrinkled surface and the color of the kozo. And it’s a dream to hand stitch.

katazome dove on silk broadcloth, natural pigments, hand-stitched to momigami

This Saturday and Sunday I’ll be at Loring Park Art Festival.

My birch bark dye experiment didn’t result in pink. I got a rather pale, warm, gold-ish parchment color. (Birchment?) I like it. I’m sure there are so many variables with plant dyeing, not the least of which is my inexperience dyeing with raw plants. The age of the tree (old in this case), soil, mordants, dirt, temperature of the water, time, etc. The silk organza at the top of the photo took on the most color. The linen on the right took on the least. These will ultimately be over-dyed.

top-silk organza, right-old linen damask, left-silk broadcloth

I washed the paste out of my rabbit design yesterday . Here’s a peek.

rabbits, sans paste

This morning during breakfast I was startled by the tremolo call of a common loon as it flew over our house. This is a first — even though we do spot a loon or two on Lake Como each spring, no doubt in transit to the North Woods. It’s one of my favorite sounds and makes me long for quiet coniferous forests and tranquil lakes.

The humid, cool and rainy weather pattern has been lingering over our area for almost a week. The garden is lush and you can almost see it grow.

blossom on the vine

Jenny Dean’s blog post on useful garden trees for dyeing has spurred me on to try cooking my birch bark, which has been soaking for almost a month. This morning I gently simmered the bark for about an hour. The smell was not pleasant at first, but after awhile it had a vague scent of cinnamon — perhaps the tannin? After straining the liquid off I will will see what happens with some well-used linen and a couple of pieces of silk. (I used alum as a pre-mordant.)

birch brew

I am hoping for some pinks.

happy Foxglove

This past week we had some 90 degree weather so I continued my indigo experiments using the stencils that Shibori Girl gave me along with some indigo moons I purchased from her shop. The darker dots were brushed on through the stencils after two more dips into the indigo bath, washing out the rice paste, and brushing on a layer of soybean milk. The soybean milk prepares the surface to minimize wicking as well as help to prevent the indigo from rubbing off (crocking). I mixed my natural pigments with soybean milk. Sounds like a lot of fussing but really wasn’t — just a few moments in the warm afternoons, out in the blooming garden. (If you want to learn more about painting with Indigo, check out this article from Turkey Red Journal, written by John Marshall.)

some deeper blues

The glue-like grip of the paste resist never ceases to amaze me. This week I did 2 more dips leaving the fabric in for 2 minutes each and drying on the line fully between each dip.

pieces after washing out the paste resist

And closer up…

triangle dots stencil offset

My friend Sandra gave me some hand-woven African cotton and I am looking forward to dipping these pieces into the dye vat later today. I pasted through some old crocheted doilies – doilies as stencils. My head is spinning with more ideas!

paste resist sunbursts

Last week the Crab Apple blossoms burst open all around our neighborhood, including the front yard. They come in shades of white to pink to fuschia. It’s the most beautiful time of spring. This year, everything seems to be blooming simultaneously — tulips,  crab apples, lilacs. Even the peony buds are starting to emerge!

Crab Apple blossoms

shore blossoms

Meanwhile, in the basement, I tried an experiment with some 12 oz. cotton duck (canvas) that I had on hand. I pre-washed it, sized it with soy, pasted it with my minnow pattern, and dyed it with indigo pigment using the JIZOMEBAKE, or ground-dyeing-brush, which I normally use just for the soybean milk sizing. Here you see the pigment mixed with soybean milk, the brush in water, and the mortar and pestle that holds my indigo pigment. When I need indigo, I add a bit of water to the dish, measure out a little of the liquid and mix it with the soybean milk in a different bowl for dyeing. That way none of the pigment is wasted. It just dries in the bowl.

indigo dye paint, indigo pigment, jizomebake

I mixed a dark indigo – applying 3 coats to ensure even coverage. I plan to sew this into a cover for a rolling cart that I will bring to art fairs this summer. I’ll be participating in Art at St. Kate’s on July 11th, and Loring Park Art Festival on August 7 and 8.

minnows on canvas; still pasted; 3 coats of ingigo pigment

When I heard it was the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, I skimmed my scanned family photos to see if I could find one from 1970. Lo and behold, I found this photo of the only family vacation we took after some of my siblings were “adults.” I was 13 going on 14. This was taken in the summer of 1970, shortly after my brother Skip got back from Vietnam (he’s the one in back sporting his Army hat). My dad took us (except #1 son, who was starting his career as a Prof.), to Bayfield, Wisconsin, gateway to the Apostle Islands, for a week. I remember the sailing, the fresh air, and playing (beating) my siblings at Blackjack. An earthy (and watery) crew we were. (I’m the one on the far right with the silly hat.)

Bayfield 1970

This afternoon, 40 years later, I sat on my patio and stripped the windfall branches that fell from my neighbor’s birch tree. Birch is supposed to yield some lovely earthy pinks, according to Jenny Dean’s book, Wild Color. Over the coming weeks I’ll play with this and see what happens. Still too chilly today to revisit my (2nd) vat of freeze-dried indigo.

windfall white birch branches

The past few days have been warm enough to try an instant indigo vat outdoors! So here’s an update on my experiment using the freeze dried “instant” indigo to dye over the paste-resist dot patterns described in my previous post.

I dipped each sample in the indigo pail, briefly, 3 times, drying between each dip. Since there is rice paste on the surface, I can’t leave it to soak. Therefore, many dips are required to darken the color. Today I dipped each piece again but I wonder if the vat is spent/oxidized. It didn’t have the green scum on the surface when I started. I can add more freeze dried indigo and try again, but I need to wait for warmer weather. Solar energy is the best way to re-heat the vat and we’ve got some cool and rainy weather coming. The garden will like that!

drying the indigo-dyed samples

I ran out of rice paste working on a long piece of my minnows and mussels pattern with 2 repeats to go. With each experience like this I refine my understanding of the amount I need to make. Nevertheless I decided to go ahead and dye the work. I tend to make my rice paste a bit too thick/dry, and along with this, the paste was cracking a bit. This is not something I want generally, but you could encourage cracking on purpose and make it work as in batik. There are a couple of additives that can help prevent cracking — salt is one, glycerin is the other (either/or). I dissolved a bit of salt in water for this batch, which is supposed to help the paste hang onto humidity. As it is still winter here, the air is quite dry. More water and more salt next time.

I really enjoy how a fresh layer of wet dye shows up the contrast in the pattern. It makes me anticipate the final wash-out. This photo shows the 2nd of 3 layers of pigment dye in progress. The ochre+rust I used to make orange is at this point the same value as the rice paste. The indigo is just that — oxidized indigo pigment from an indigo vat.

dyeing 2nd layer on minnows and mussels

new used book

Scanning the textile shelf at my local used bookstore yielded a serendipitous find: a small paperback entitled Dyes from Nature: Plants & Gardens (Brooklyn Botanic Garden Record, Vol. 46, No. 2). Published in 1990, the 96 page volume features 28 articles by 21 different authors, experts and/or dyers, describing natural dye traditions from Mexico, Turkey, Japan and many other cultures around the globe. Each article includes color photographs. Fanning the pages in the bookstore, I noticed two articles written by M. Joan Lintault, a fiber artist and author of two blogs I follow (Magic of Light, Mystery of Shadow and My Wabi Life).

I’ve wanted to link to one of Joan’s posts for quite a while, so here you go! Check out this inspiring project using natural dyes in the Japanese tradition of kusaki-zome (grass and tree dyes).

image of Kusaki-zome dye project from M. Joan Lintault

Joan sent me a few paragraphs describing her background and passion for natural dyeing:

“I can hardly remember when I became interested in natural dyes.  It was certainly when I was in the Peace Corps 43 years ago. I was living in the mountain village of Quinoa, Peru.  The village ladies taught me to spin, dye with walnuts, cochineal and dahlia flowers.

My interest continues today because I do love a mystery and I still can’t believe it works.  I especially love indigo dyeing because it is the mystery of all mysteries.  I love giving control of my work to the dye pot and receiving in return the random flashes that can be likened to fire marks on a piece of pottery.

I like that indigo is considered a living entity in many cultures.  Most importantly learning about natural dyes is empirical knowledge handed down from one person to another. My love of dyeing led me to research the processes from India then to Japan.  I wanted to go to these places and see for myself what processes existed and how the process changed from culture to culture.”