Posts Tagged ‘plants’
November first frost
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November first frost
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air brittle, a broken
sliver of moon between
disrobing larches, silence
ruptured by craven’s cry
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© Jane Tims 1995
harvesting colour – Rough Bedstraw
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Rough Bedstraw
Gallium asprellum Michx.
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along the sleepy river
green shoreline, plumped and pillowed
rough bedstraw, river trick
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river and shoreline beckon
you to bed down, settle down
get a little shut-eye, tough
stuff bedstraw, mattress thick
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shoreline a bedroom, rough
bedstraw, green mattress, blue sky
bedspread, blue river tick
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orchard along the Saint John River
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Published as ‘Rough Bedstraw, Canadian Stories 17 (99),October/November 2014
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
harvesting colour – Sea Lavender
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Sea Lavender, picked long ago and woven into a wreath
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Sea Lavender
Limonium Nashii Small.
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bunch of lavender, dry
picked at the edge
of the sea
2.
at high tide, overcome
by salt water, linear
leaves buffeted
as rags, tattered purple papers
echoed in oil-slick
mirrors of foam
3.
on-shore breeze, stiff
sprays of Sea Lavender
tremble
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Published as ‘Sea Lavender’, Canadian Stories 17 (99),October/November 2014
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
dry Sea Lavender
harvesting colour – blackberry red and pink
Autumn is officially here; summer up and left last week. My complaints are suddenly of chilly evenings, not too-warm nights! But with this season comes a series of dyeing projects I have been looking forward to – dyeing with berries and autumn leaves.
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berries harvested at our cabin in 2013
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At our summer property, we have blackberries in profusion. They ripen slowly over a period of three weeks and we eat our fill. This year I decided to sacrifice a few for the dye pot.
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Dyeing with berries is easy. I brought three cups of berries to a simmer in three liters of water for about an hour. The strained liquid was a bright red, the colour of ripe cranberries …
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dye from blackberries
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I dyed alum-treated wool with a slow simmer and an overnight soak. The result was a pale pink, a welcome addition to my collection of ‘mostly brown’ …
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pink wool dyed with blackberries is front and center … other wools are dyed with (clockwise) oak (dark brown), meadowsweet (orange), bugleweed (brown), tansy (gold), lily-of-the-valley (grey), and beet root (deep pink), and in the center, carrot tops (green)
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I also tried dying linen and cotton with the blackberry dye, and these gave me the burgundy I had hoped for …
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back left to front: wool, linen, cotton and another cotton, dyed with blackberries
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I think I will be using the pink/burgundy cotton as the backing for the small ‘harvesting colour’ quilt I plan to make. I’ll hem the linen and use it in my kitchen.
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March 18, 2012 ‘blackberries’ Jane Tims
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
dry gourds
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string of dried gourds
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dry gourds
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shake
bottle and swan
goblin egg and warted
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absorb the rhythm
the rattle of seeds
in their shells
varnished, on a chord
between cupboards
strand of amber
hardened with hanging
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a nudge in humidity, the least
damp, breath
or sigh, softens
vibration, appreciation
of percussion
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August 31, 2013 ‘squash on the vine #3’ Jane Tims
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
harvesting colour – Meadowsweet
Last week, we finished installing the new gate at our cabin. To make our leveling easier, we had to cut some of the Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) growing in profusion along the road. And into the dye pot it went!
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Meadowsweet
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My botany skills are showing their age. When I learned my plants, we called Meadowsweet Spirea ulmaria. But times have changed and so has the name for the genus (it will take me a while to get used to Filipendula!). Other common names for Meadowsweet are Queen of the Meadow, Lady of the Meadow, Mead Wort, and Brideswort.
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Meadowsweet is a fragrant plant. The scent of its flowers is reminiscent of roses – it belongs to the same family as the rose. But the stem has a faint smell of wintergreen or almonds.
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Meadowsweet has a long history of use. The chemical in Aspirin was first discovered in its leaves and named from the old generic name Spirea. In past centuries, Meadowsweet was used as a ‘strewing herb’ to cover floors because its fragrance underfoot disguised less pleasant smells. The Druids considered it sacred, along with Watermint and Vervain. Across the internet, Meadowsweet is famed for being included as one of many ingredients in ‘save’, a medieval drink mentioned in Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale. I have taken the time to read The Knight’s Tale and found the reference is not to Meadowsweet but Sage:
line 2713: ‘Fermacies of herbes, and eek save’ (middle English)
‘Medicines made of herbs, and also of sage’ (modern English translation) (see http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/kt-par0.htm )
I will continue to look for an ingredient list for this mysterious drink.
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The obsolete name for Meadowsweet (Mead Wort) is mentioned in Book II, Canto viii of Spenser’s Faerie Queen, referring to the making of Merlin’s sword:
‘The metall first he mixt with Medawart, That no enchauntment from his dint might saue;’ (see http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/queene2.html#Cant.%20VIII. )
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Boiling the chopped leaves and flowers in water for one hour gave me an amber dye.
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amber dye from Meadowsweet
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Wool roving, treated with alum and simmered in the dye for an hour turned pale yellow-brown, almost apricot in some light.
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wool roving dyed with Meadowsweet
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
harvesting colour – the vegetable stand
Gardens are bursting with fresh produce and we have gone to the farmer’s vegetable stand every couple of days to get our fill of locally grown food. We usually look for new potatoes, yellow wax beans, beets, carrots, green onions and zucchini.
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vegetables at the farmer’s stand
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This year, as a result of my ‘harvesting colour’ project, I am more anxious than ever to collect those carrot tops and the abundant leaves of beet and radish. Cooking these leaves in my dyeing ‘cauldron’ fills the air with the savory smell of vegetable soup, and makes me wonder what colour will emerge from the dye pot.
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beet leaves and stems ready for the boil
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Orange carrots, red beets and scarlet radishes … I am sad to say my expectations were low. I was certain every batch of leaves would yield yet another shade of brown. For radishes and beets, I was correct. Beautiful browns.
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my hand-spun balls of wool from radish and beet leaves … the pink is from my earlier tests with pickled beets
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Imagine my delight when the carrot leaves yielded a bright celery green!
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dye and wool roving from a boil of carrot tops
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I tried to repeat the colour on a second length of wool roving, but the second simmering gave me a gold shade of brown. The dyestuff had offered up all its green colour in the first boil!
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colours of wool obtained from the first and second boil in a dyestuff of carrot tops
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vegetable bin
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most look for
vitamins and
anti-oxidants
seek the colourful plate
look at the farmer’s display and see
carrot orange
radish red
spinach green
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a dyer looks
for juicy leaves
and the possibility of yet
another shade
of brown
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
learning to spin
All spring and summer, I have been dyeing wool roving with dyestuff collected from the roadside and garden. I have always intended to use this wool in some of my weaving projects, but lately, I have decided to first spin the wool roving into yarn. Everyone recommends learning first to spin with a drop spindle, later graduating to a spinning wheel.
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First, I went online to learn the basics and decide which drop spindle I should use. Then I ordered my maple bottom whorl drop spindle on eBay for $7.95 ( $15.60, including shipping).
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To spin, I first attach an end of the roving to the hook on the end of the spindle. The method is to tease out a sparse bundle of fibres and spin the spindle, twisting the section of wool into a thread. I spin the spindle counterclockwise, pinching the wool as I tease it out, holding the spindle still on my lap when I have to use both hands. Eventually, I will get better and be able to hold the spindle in the air with one hand and spin the spindle with the other. I do this a bit now, but I am plagued by breaking wool. For an enjoyable beginner’s lesson in spinning, see Jennifer Beamer’s video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtBLIg4JhNI .
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Spinning with a drop spindle is addictive! I now spin the roving as soon as it is dry after dyeing. My yarn is still very knobbly – a little like the yarn you use to knit those bulky sweaters! My balls of yarn are getting better all the time, although I have trouble getting too much spin into the yarn, so it twists up on itself quite easily!
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So far I have eleven balls of wool: Tansy, Old-Man’s-Beard, Bugleweed, Alder bark, Lily of the Valley (2 balls), Beet roots, Beet leaves, Carrot leaves, Radish leaves, and Comfrey.
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This is so much fun!
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
colour transfers
As I was preparing my eco-bundles for steaming ( https://nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com/2014/06/20/an-attempt-at-ecoprinting/ ), I was thinking the words ‘heat’ and ‘steam’ – after 30 years of ironing my husband’s work shirts every morning, these words mean ‘steam iron’ to me. So I wondered if it would be possible to transfer the colour of a flower to cloth using my iron.
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So far, I have tried two species: Bugleweed (Ajuga reptans) from under our apple trees, and Birdsfoot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) from the roadside …
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basket of Bugleweed
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I placed the flowers between two layers of cotton, sprayed the material with water and pressed down with the steam iron set on medium. I pressed fairly hard and ironed the cloth/flower sandwich until it was dry. Then I wetted it again and continued until I had transferred the colour …
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using the steam iron to transfer colour from Birdsfoot trefoil to cotton
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It took five successive sets of wetting and pressing to obtain the colour. The blues of Bugleweed turned out best …
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colour transfers from Bugleweed (the pale green in the background is made with leaves from my rosebush)
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But the yellow colour from petals and stems of the Birdsfoot trefoil also came out well …
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colour transfers from Birdsfoot trefoil
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Now I have two new colour patterns to add to my future ‘harvesting colour’ quilt !
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colour transfers using Bugleweed and Birdsfoot trefoil
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
an attempt at ecoprinting
After our drive to Canterbury over the weekend, I was anxious to capture some of the roadside flower colour in my ‘harvesting colour’ experiments. I decided to try a technique described by India Flint in her book Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles (Interweave Press, 2010). ‘Ecoprinting’ involves bringing a plant into close contact with a fabric in order to transfer the colour to the cloth. I am very impressed with the effects shown in Eco Colour – prints of leaves, flowers and berries.
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For my experiment I tried a handful of the Forget-me-nots I collected on our weekend drive …
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Forget-me-nots in the woods
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a bundle of the purple Lupins growing along the road in my community …
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Lupins along the road
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and a bunch of a ground cover plant growing in my yard, Bugleweed (Ajuga reptans) …
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Bugleweed in the orchard
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basket of Bugleweed
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I only used small samples of cloth … my idea is to use these ‘patches’ to make a little quilt to show the results of my ‘colour harvest’. I arranged a few of the flowers, both petals and leaves, inside the cloth …
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Forget-me-nots on cotton
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Lupin petals and leaves on cotton
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Bugleweed on cotton
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Then I folded the cloth in half, enclosing the flowers like a sandwich …
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flowers folded in cotton
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and rolled the cloth up tightly …
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rolling the bundle tightly
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and tied it with cotton thread …
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flower and cotton bundles
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I put my bundles in a wire basket and steamed them for an hour …
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flower and cotton bundles steaming (as usual I have thrown in a bit of woods and sky)
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After cooling, I opened the bundles, discarded the leaves and flowers, and rinsed the cloth. I was quite pleased with the results. After ironing, I have a pale array of colour. The Bugleweed left a definite lime green. The Lupin a more indefinite green and pale violet. The Forget-me-nots left a faint violet-grey.
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pale colour
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I did not get the flower and leaf impressions I expected, but I will keep trying. There are so many variables, steaming time and ‘unbundling’ time among them. I do hope to see that lovely lime green again!!!
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
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