Hip Dips

 

Hip Dips (Coffee, Black Walnut, and Sumi Ink on paper)

This past fall I got into dyeing with black walnuts. I have stared at a black walnut tree out back for years and never picked up any of the fruits to dye with. Yet this year I did, and especially got into making black walnut ink. I found a great book in the library called "Make Ink: A Forager's Guide to Natural Inkmaking" by Jason Logan, and went off of his recipe. This painting of my hip dips is one of the results that sprung from one of my little ink batches.  

I made some short videos for the Baltimore County Public Library on how to forage and dye with black walnuts. The virtual services department edited them together and gifted me a squirrel. I made a little mistake when talking about ripeness of fruit-the more brown the fruit the more ripe they are. But super easy recipe and pretty results. Black Walnut Dye

[Your breath was shed]

 Poem [Your breath was shed]

Your breath was shed

Invisible to make

About the soiled undead

Night for my sake,

A raining trail

Intangible to them

With biter's tooth and tail

And cobweb drum,

A dark as deep

My love as a round wave

To hide the wolves of sleep

And mask the grave.

from The Poems of Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1946 by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

Author Dylan Thomas

-via poets.org

Saint Pomegranate

 

"..The pomegranate tree had borne fruit, it was in fact laden with pomegranates. The pomegranates had ripened and cracked open, and their shining red seeds shone in the golden-bright sun. The woman thought that this was the truth, the pomegranate seeds. She had received a vision that truth, the truth which she did not know and yet had spent a lifetime guarding, was born of Saint Pomegranate."- pg.323, Touba and the Meaning of Night by Shahrnush Parsipur

I dyed another linen of my grandmothers' with pomegranates- this time with dried rinds. I cut open another pomegranate and dried the skin in the oven. Then I let the pieces sit in my bathroom under the skylight for a week or so to further dry. Once dry enough, I boiled and left the rinds soaking overnight, took them out the next morning added the fabric, simmered it, and let it sit for four days (I believe). The results are very similar to using freshly harvested rinds. 

The Witch

 

I made 'the Witch' for a Halloween decorating contest at the library. She's got a dried yellow rose tucked up in her logwood dyed alpaca hair. She sports a lightly pokeweed dyed top tucked into a logwood skirt and belt. She herself is a lovely shade of black walnut. Her pointy hat is sumi ink on felt. Every witch needs their familiar, and her kitty is a grey (like mine) from tea/iron dyed muslin. Every witch also needs their broom. Hers is made from some of my dried mugwort, willow, river birch, and black walnut from the woods out back. And, yes, I did just find the broom stick woven in vines waiting for me in the grass, already magical on its own. She surprised me when I finished her. (I also won Halloween) 

Pomegranates

 

Late last Saturday night I decided I just had to dye some antique linens with pomegranates. So the following morning I masked up and picked some up at the grocery store. That same day I harvested the seeds and boiled the rinds (of 2 poms), mordanted the napkins with alum, let both pots sit overnight, and dyed the linens the next morning. Which happened to be Monday, the winter solstice. After harvesting the seeds and while boiling the rinds on Sunday, I was reading "Bottom of the Pot" by Naz Deravian, which I had gotten out of the library to learn more about Persian cooking. I intended to find a recipe to use the pomegranate seeds and in the process I found out that the following day, Monday (the day I dyed the linens using the dye bath created from soaking the rinds) happened to be Yalda, the Iranian winter solstice celebration. Pomegranates bear particular significance. I experienced delightful pomegranate synchronicity through Spirit. My intuition knew before I consciously did that I needed to buy some poms. The napkins turned out this lovely creamy gold color.  https://persianmama.com/shabe-yalda-a-persian-celebration/

The Stag Skirt

 

The stag skirt. A simple skirt made from muslin I dyed with black walnuts. I added a large stag themed ribbon that I bought at M & J Trimming a few years ago while on a trip to NYC with my mom as the waistband. Minus the ribbon, this is the medium length version of the DongoDesign "Charlotte" skirt pattern. 

Touba and the Meaning of Night

 - Along with the lightening and thunder outside, Touba felt a flash in her mind; what was in the dark came to light. "When you procreate, there is a freshness in being, but the main part of this being consists of repetitions. And in this circle of repetitions, we seek help from the dead. Prince Gil, the presence of your wife is dear, she brings with her a soft breeze and joy. Of course, she can steal a man away from someone like me. Perhaps she can steal many. But for how long? Someday she will be enlightened and then become ordinary, and will not steal anymore. But her presence will give off joy into the world, for she is like flowing water. She moves forth, purifies the air, gives life to earth. One must be patient."

-pg. 170 from "Touba and the Meaning of Night" by Shahrnush Parsipur 

 I finished the longest version of the DongoDesign "Charlotte" skirt pattern. It is made from an antique tablecloth I dyed with logwood from my Great Aunt Kay's old linens. She lived in an apartment on the West Side of Central Park in NYC. This tablecloth belonged to their neighbor Mrs. Horvath or Mrs. Horowitz. Neither my mom or my grandfather could agree on her name. She was Jewish and came to NYC to escape Nazi Germany. My mom tells me Mrs. H lived in a big dark apartment with big dark furniture. Once I dyed it, I spotted six cherubs I hadn't seen before.