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.

LOOKING BACK AND MOVING FORWARD

I started eco-dyeing in the summer of 2011 purely for the fun of it. Reading India Flint's Book, ECO COLOUR, I learned that silk and wool were the easiest to work with because no mordant was really needed to set the color obtained. I found a white silk shirt in my closet I hadn't worn for at least 10 years so I ripped every seam and used every last scrap of that shirt for dyeing and printing. I WAS HOOKED and spent the rest of the summer and the summer of 2012 experimenting with India's techniques. I used whatever leaf, flower, scrap of fabric I could find. The joy was in the pure fun of being outside, gathering botanicals and bringing them in to cook up a witch's brew of nature.

 

This summer I have found myself more interested in using native plants of the area I live in. What I have learned is that way back when the  city of Colorado springs was founded it was a treeless and barren area. Considered a high desert. there was not a lot of botanical beauty that would make anyone want to found a city here. But there were other reasons why General Palmer decided to go ahead and found the city of Colorado Springs. I won't go into that here. Suffice is to say he made a good decision. Here is a picture of the young city with newly planted trees to help shade the young city. (picture  taken from Wellsprings, A History of the Pikes Peak Region, edited by Jan Mowle.)

 Those trees were imported and reported to be Cottonwoods. Supposedly thousands were planted to make the growing city more habitable. Many of them died and were replaced by Maple, Elm and Ash. I've read that these trees as well as the Cottonwoods were trees that would remind the people of their east coast home. I've also been told that they used whatever was available since, of  course, there weren't many tree nurseries at that time.

Today I live in Manitou Springs. About 5 miles down the road due west from Colorado Springs, it was founded at about the same time. A little higher in elevation at 6200 feet, it is a foothills climate with more evergreen trees and a variety of deciduous trees along the creeks, but still a pretty barren area especially since a fire had come through the area in the 1850's. Here's a picture of early Manitou, compliment of Historic Manitou Inc. published in the Wellspring book noted above.

 Manitou also planted many trees to shade the main street but because of floods, widening of streets, widening of sidewalks, and just plain development, there are few trees that are historical to the area along the main street. There are  old willows and cottonwoods along the creeks in town which is quite wonderful to have at least a few trees of historical significance.

There is so much more to research, but for now I am having fun eco-printing with cottonwood leaves which mean so much more to me now that I know their history in the area. Here's a journal I made presently listed in my etsy shop http://pdlugos.etsy.com

BLOG BREAK

This is what it looks like today. Although it is not unusual for us to have snow in May, it is unusual for it to be  this cold and the trees to still be so bare. I guess we won't have a Spring this year and will go directly into Summer.  I'm taking the month of May off from blogging to concentrate on changing some things with my Etsy shop. See ya when it warms up.