a play day

it  finally happenned: A & R had planned to get down to some dyeing experimenting for a looooong time and on saturday we got down to business! G joined in.

We used 4 different dyes as our first adventure:

              1 red onion skins - simmered

2 coffee - simmered

  3 avacado - simmered

                                                             4 chlorophyll (a gift from Merlene, of the Fibre shop in Barraba. A plug for a wonderful lady and an inspiring shop in a small country town nw of Tamworth. 'Do yourself a favour.....')

mordant: alum

R worked with a few different silks and produced some wonderful pieces:

but the best one came out at the end of the evening:

don't know why it comes out sideways - all the others are right way up!

this silk was done in red onion with the spinner gum leaves laid in it, rolled up and then tied with string. 6 hrs in the hot dye bath. the blue sample next to it is the chlorophyll - an intense blue on silk! a sky blue on G's cotton pieces.

I worked with wool samples as i want to dye some larger quantities of 1 ply to get shades of more natural colours than the ones in the shops which are all either strongly variegated or strong plain colours:

my samples ready to pop into the dye baths

i forgot to take pictures of the results - next time!

the coffee came out quite pale; the onion came out lovely shades of limey olive green. both darker if left in longer......

greta doing some drawing practice

 

    

and then my other experiment using the 'bus-sticks' i've been collecting. they are small thin straight pieces of steel that i find on the roads around Sydney.....

i've packed the piece in wet mulch in a plastic box and i am keeping it on my car dash in the hot sun for a month to see what happens

More things abstract & almost psychadelic

Opportunities to photograph these wonderful ever-changing pits of earthy mush are becoming rare as the environmental standards are becoming tighter. These days it is more usual to use large removable tanks so you don't get to see the recycling drilling mud in all its glory. Here are some recent shots from where i was working in Queensland. These pits were only recycled water with no drilling muds added and it's the ground up rock that creates the wonderful froth and colours (metallic in the case of the very fine bright coal). Enjoy, (i certainly did, taking an awful lot of photos in between core runs .....every core run made a different effect in the pits.) And don't mention the cows.........

Jade from a new place in Australia

This is the beginning of a new adventure: the ultimate goal is setting up a small jade mine in the New England area of NSW. A collegue at work is the driving force for this project - he has been a successful opal miner at Lightening Ridge and has been keen to source other semi-precious to precious stones. So with a bit of good quality geology research we came up with a mention of a jade occurrence near Tamworth that did not appear to have been ever followed up........so off we went to have a bit of a look.........
                          

  ......................and we found something!

and it looks good, doesn't it?

This was made by a carver in Lightening Ridge from a small block about 3cm long by 2cm by 2cm. Quite a small piece that she has cleverly used to its best!
(Still a very long way to go to really have the mine happening though, but it is good to dream)

Rhonda and Greta are back.....thanks to some blogging tuition by Ali!!!

Today we have been experimenting with dyeing fabrics from avocado and learning how to make a simple skirt!

guess who!....love these garage windows!

Some more from LaPerouse

Just another picture from time spent around Bare Island at LaPa.
shows interesting colours from the algae and slime growing in a drying-up pool above the tide line.

The pinky colour is quite lovely

 This one shows beautifully colour banded bedding in the sandstone. The layers are only a few sand grains thick.

 And this one i just like. it's located in an overhang and slightly protected. kind of looks like people.......

Random Photographs no.2 Iceland flowers

This is not a great macro/still life shot by any means, but what a COLOUR!

These are Himalaya Blue Poppies growing in Iceland, at the Botanic Garden in Akureyri. This was from the June trip in 2012 that i did with Philip & Nikki.
The gardens there are absolutely lovely, especially in summer when most things are still in flower. Remember that spring is late and summer is short there.....the gardens are on the hill towards the top of town with gorgeous views across the fjord.

This photo is from Dettifoss on the same trip:

Dettifoss is a MASSIVE waterfall and last year in autumn i was there as well and had a most amazing & exhilarating time - standing so close on the other side of the canyon it felt like my brain was being given a complete clean-out! The sound of the water and the feeling of standing on the edge of immense power and the wind blown spray.....see one of my shots on the flickr site mentioned in previous post to see the snowy rocks at the top of the canyon.

But in summer the flowers are doing their thing, and i loved these daisy types. These are featuring in part of the embroidery Project and i will post the piece when it is finished in its third version, soon i hope.

Stella and i had a lovely time at LaPerouse and then all over sydney

While Stella was visiting Sydney during Easter holidays, we went down to have some fun with our cameras at LaPerouse and Bare Island, but we didn't even get across the bridge as there were so many things to see and photograph on the rock platform under the bridge.....
we were there for at least an hour before we had breakfast at one of the cafes, then we went off to see Greta and Sienna and Eli & brand new Millie and THEN we went off to look at cakes and bread and Newtown and Surry Hills and then we met up with Rhonda for dinner......it was one busy day but soooooo good........

nice colours in the sandstone

Stella can post her pictures now that she knows how to use bintfaden