saturday


 men at work in the woods: they've been chopping down appr. twenty-year-old alders for a couple of weeks now; it will be used as fire-wood according to the guy I spoke to this morning, it's all going to his backyard where he'll be selling it on to the woodburner owning part of the population; the left-over stumps will regenerate and within a few years it'll be bushy again and then woody
the taller tree stumps in the foreground are pollarded willows, the trees left standing are mainly oaks; alder and willow are fast growing trees, extremely well-suited to this particular bit of land, which is basically swamp or marshland, as seen below a younger alder bush with the iron rich water in the 'sloot'

ha, what I should do next time I go for a walk is bring a jar with me so I can collect some of this iron water, see how that might influence the dye!!
useful tip from India Flint's book Eco Colour, page 203; I am not a systematic book-learning-person, rather I browse and go back and forth and read bits that matter because I'm trying something or other and then I'll DO it and go back to the book later; I learn most from doing, looking, observing, retracing, something I call osmosis-training....

above: non-mordanted cotton wrapped around metal circle (from broken coffee-maker) folded over and clamped with 4 clamps, alas no dots, but there are markings made by the clamps thanks to the metal and rubber, went into avocado/onion peel dye

below: in same dye pot cotton wrapped around dried eucalyptus leaves, rolled and bound with sisal string, no clear leaf marks but they did leave dark traces


here you can see the two results next to the first pink-dye result, which went into the dye pot at it's most potent and fresh


they decided they wanted a roof garden and needed to grow their own crops: as you can see Malle and BirdBoy have been toiling away


they've sewn basil, chives and parsley seeds
(if I'm honest I think BirdBoy only agreed to help out so he could get up there and do a daring balancing act!, see what I mean on bottom pic?!)


I'm off to town to the opening of an interesting sounding exhibition Te mooi om weg te gooien (=to beautiful to throw away)where I also hope to meet in person the artist Marijke Bongers; we've only met through internet, how exciting!

Comments

Nancy said…
Very exciting to meet the artist...in real life! I like the marks , especially being on each side of the rosy colored one. So, trees coming down near you seems not so bad as they grow back. I think a scoop of the iron water sounds like a great plan.
And, last but not least...that BirdBoy!!! He seems to be every 9 year old male all wrapped into one! And maybe he wanted to plant, so he could sneak a few seeds for himself, what with being part bird and all! Ha!

tungsten

tungsten

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