DAYS FOR MAKING "SCRAP" BOOKS

I love scraps. The smallest piece can make my heart sing. I love to go through my piles, looking at what is left over from other projects. What I have come to learn is that working with the scraps is what makes me happiest. Making a whole out of disparate parts. So the last two snow days allowed me time to do so. Indigos and rust prints made on cast off linens and cottons come together with old paper and cardstock; cuts from watercolor papers used to make contact prints become book covers; small pieces of paper from larger book making adventures become the perfect size for the pages of souvenir books of summertime leaf printing. Small pieces of vintage threads become the ties that bind it all together.

And after being inside for way too long, I went out and shoveled snow to melt for my next dye experiments with red cabbage.

CARROT TOP EXPERIMENTS

I spent the week working with carrot tops saved from our summer garden. We keep our carrots in  the ground until we need them or the ground freezes. With the mild autumn we had, we still had some in the ground until the first week of December. Not bad for Colorado! Each time we brought some in from the garden I stored the tops in the freezer. Since doing this I learned that it would be better to store them dry. Will have to try that next year.

 

So with the amount of tops I ended up with I was able to test three different mineral springs against tap water.  "The spring water of Manitou Springs originates from 2 sources. Deep-seated waters of the Rampart Range and Ute Pass provide one source of mineral water. Water below surface is run through cavernous drainage systems call Karst aquifiers. Limestone in the water dissolves and resulting carbonic acid, or carbon dioxide makes the water effervescent. The waters rises to the surface naturally. This process is an  artesian process where as water rises through layers of rock it picks up minerals and soda or sodium bicarbonate. Some of the spring water also  comes from surface water from the watershed basins of Fountain Creek and Williams Canyon. Each spring has a different mineral content and because of that, a different taste."* And for my purposes a difference in dye color achieved. (Side note: You may remember hearing about flooding in Colorado this past summer. A lot of it was in the Fountain Creek and Williams Canyon area mentioned above. All of this flooding was due to the Waldo Canyon fire in 2012 which left the hillsides bare and ripe for flash floods. Because the mineral springs are below ground they were not contaminated by the ash that came down in the flood.)

Top left scraps photo are silk dyed in Wheeler spring water which has the highest amount of copper. Middle two fabrics (silk left, vintage cotton right) were dyed in Seven Minute Spring water which has an even distribution of all minerals. Love the color of the vintage cotton(premordant with alum). Right three scraps are two different types of silk and a vintage cotton dyed in tap water. The middle  piece of silk was wrapped around a copper pipe. Not very visible in the photo but there is a difference in color between it and the left silk without the copper pipe.

Next row is silk and vintage cotton dyed in Iron spring water named because of its high content of iron. Again not very visible in the photo, but a more muted, grayed green.

So I'm out of carrot tops for now.  There are still two more springs I want to test with carrot tops but that will have to wait till next summer's crop.

This week I'll be in the library researching Dr. William Bell, founder of Manitou Spring. I know that he and his wife had a garden, and I would like to find out what they planted and if any were dye plants.

*Manitou Springs Mineral Foundation

RECORD KEEPING

 In 2008 I learned to make a flag book. It was fun to learn to make this structure but I came away  from the workshop thinking I would probably never make this type of book again. It sat on a corner shelf in my basement until this past summer when I was trying to come up with a way to keep track of my eco prints on paper. I wanted a way to display  my prints by season so that I would be able to see differences in pigments using the same plants but at different times of the year.

 

 So I used the same flag book structure to make this book with prints made during June, July and August. A variety of leaves were used including Silver Maple, Aspen, Cottonwood, Juniper, Geranium, Gambel Oak, Crabapple, Chokecherry and Serviceberry as well as petals from Coreopsis, Marigold and Iris plants. The cover was made using only iris and marigold petals.

 Last week I finished another flag book recording prints made during September, October and November. Leaves from the same plants were used but were showing their autumn pigments. I also included berries from plants available during those three months (Chokecherry and Woodbine).

 Cover fabric is vintage cotton mordanted with alum and printed with Woodbine berries, Gambel Oak, Norway Maple and Rose leaves and a few Coropsis petals.

 I am very happy with this method of recording my prints and am presently working on my book for December, January and February.

POETRY TO BEGIN WITH

WHAT WE NEED IS HERE

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear

in the ancient faith; what we need

is here. And we pray,

not for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye,

clear. What we need is here.

               --Wendell Berry

MORE MINERAL SPRING WATER DYEING

A few posts ago I wrote about my experiments with red onion skins and the different mineral spring waters in my town. The photo below shows the red onion skin results on the right. Big change in color except for one of the springs. The top two swatches are rain water and tap water (left to right). Only one spring kept the mauve color. All others saddened the color. The left side shows results from my recent experiment with yellow onion skins.

 I expected the same results--all of the waters saddening the color from the skins. But much to my surprise I got some awesome color range. I used silk fabric just as I did with the red skins. Tap water resulted in a medium apricot color (top left swatch). Other springs gave a range from pale gold to variations of what I am going to  call a squash color. The one spring that has a significant amount of iron in it shifted the color to the golden khaki (second swatch on the right).

So it seems the pigments in the red onion skins reacted more to the minerals in the water than the pigments in the yellow skins. Interesting. I wish I understood more about what is happening. More research needed.

A big thank you to India Flint www.indiaflint.com  for starting me off on this journey.

HISTORICAL TREE WALK

American Elm planted in 1907

I have continued my research on native trees in the Colorado Springs/Manitou Springs area. I actually found a reference for a walking tour of notable historic trees. I printed out the map and set out on this tour one day last week. So few of the original trees planted by General Palmer (founder of Colorado Springs) have survived so when you come across one of these magnificent trees it is awe inspiring. Not so much because of the size of the tree, but that they have survived this long planted in this climate. I am a native of New Orleans. There are oak trees there dating back 400 years so, relatively speaking, these Colorado trees aren't that old. It's the fact that they have survived amidst harsh conditions that is fascinating to me.

As I walked along I gathered fallen leaves from the ground underneath these trees. I collected Cottonwood,  American Elm, Willow, Green Ash and Maple leaves. They feel special to me because of their history and I am looking forward to seeing what kind of contact prints I get from them.

Cottonwood Leaves  from tree planted in 1872. Leaves are 6-7" in diameter. Norm is 2-3"
 

MANITOU'S SPRING WATER

Tucked into the base of Pikes Peak, Manitou Springs, Colorado (the  city where I live) has been a tourist town since the late 1870's  when visitors discovered the sacred waters that native Americans had been drinking for years. The founder of Manitou, Dr. William Bell, envisioned a  spa town with fresh mountain air and healing waters. Many of these effervescent springs still function today, and there are those who still swear by their healing powers. Me, I think the water tastes gross. As a 22 year resident of the city, I have yet to acquire a taste for it.

 

This summer I finally have gotten around to using it with my natural dyeing experiments. For my first experiment I used red onion skins and water from six of the functioning springs and the solar dyeing technique. I used equal amounts of skins and water and left the jars for an equal amount of time out in the sun. Then I removed the skins and added a small swatch of white silk fabric to the dye and let it sit for 24 hours. See the photograph for my results.

Water from the 7 Minute spring yielded results close to tap water. (Tap is top upper right hand corner, 7 Minute spring is below it. All the other waters yielded a khaki color with slight variations probably not visible in this photo. Two of the swatches have a slight greenish tinge. Water from these two springs contain copper and calcium which I think is the reason for the green. The spring with the most amount of iron (3rd one down on the right) yielded the most neutral khaki. Next one down has a rosy tint to it.

All of the springs are alkaline and  contain varying amounts of calcium, chloride, copper, fluoride, iron, lithium, magnesium, manganese, potassium, silica, sodium, sulfate and zinc. I know that calcium, copper and iron will affect my dye results but I'm not sure about any of the other minerals. Any information, thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.