Dye Garden

My dye flower seeds arrived. I decided that time and weather permitting this year I would start a dye garden. I ordered seeds from Wild Colours and they promptly arrived. I ordered: Madder, Chamomile, Coreopsis, Weld, Indigo and Woad seeds. Germinating seeds is not easy around here, especially now with so many snails and slugs about. Lets see how that goes.

There is a plant that grows abundantly nearby that is in flower at the moment, the yellow flower pictured above, that looks like Woad, except for the leaves. Indeed, it may be a close relative as I remember reading that Woad was of the brassica family, Cabbage and broccoli etc., and so seems to be this yellow flowering plant. Actually this flower looks more like one of the plants used to make Canola. There goes my hope of having wild Woad in abundance just around the corner.

Spring is here again and so are the flowers that come with it and the fields are slowly filled with Poppies,  Jointed Charlock, Yellow Wood Sorrel, Borage and so on.  

New scarves - new model

These are the new scarves that will soon be up for sale online. The new year brought a guest model, the wonderfully charming and ever so happy, Sean. It is a shame the day was a little overcast. More close up photos of the scarves to follow.

Scarf and X´mas Market

This new scarf in on its way to Melbourne, Australia. I hope it makes it in time for X´mas. I also hope it makes someone very happy on the other side, who will have to wait quite some time before they get to wear it. 

I am also happy to announce that on the 19th of December, a saturday, I´ll be at the X´mas Market in Portimão, hosted by the Contramaré Association. It will be a very fun day, so if you are on this side of the world come down and say hello and support the locals.

This also means that I need to get my act together and start weaving instead of looking for that elusive 4 leaf clover. There has to be at least one out there, I swear it.

Small blanket.

Blanket off the loom,

the grass really is greener,

almond trees blooming.

The blanket hanging from the small verandah, as it came off the loom in one long strip, reminds me of the blankets and quilts hung the same way during religious processions. It did look nice in one long piece. After separating the 2 pieces I joined them using the invisible stitch technique, but because my selvages are double threaded it looks anything but invisible. Either way, I like the fact that you can see that the 2 pieces were clearly joined, much like the blankets made on traditional narrower looms. Only when I was doing the "Papa blanket" workshop did I get to use a traditional loom that was wide enough to make a blanket in one go. Otherwise all the older woven blankets etc. got their desired width from joining 2 or 3 lengths side by side.

The weather is only today asking for a little blanket like this, so the timing is perfect.

Blanket and Bread.

Louro waited and waited and the cows came home, the wrong home, because the grass really was greener on the other(this) side. It was a pretty sight that thankfully did not last too long, we sure could have done with more cow poop, but these beautiful beasts would have ruined what is left of our nice stone walls.

This week I am weaving a small blanket, in 2 parts because my loom is not wide enough. I´ll have to sew the parts together much like in the old days when the looms were also narrower. Along with the wool I normally use I am trying a new wool from Guarda to see how it holds up. So far it is proving to make a bit of a mess and lose lots of little fibres as well as contain some dry vegetable matter that I have to pick out. Otherwise, the lightweight blanket is looking pretty good.

We also got the fire started to test our oven and baked this weekend, bread and folares, a sweet bread normally made at Easter. Urze helped clean the bread bowl and liked it. And the baking was generally successful, but we´ll have to make some minor adjustments next time. The bread and cakes go into the oven on palm leaves so as not to stick to the oven floor, get dirty or burn. When these palms are removed they leave the pretty mark you see on the base of the bread. The palm we used is a native dwarf palm, the chamaerops humilis, also used to make baskets, bags, containers, mats, etc.

JAPAN!!!!!

A slightly blurred picture of a Japanese Loom because I am so excited to announce that the Fundação Oriente have awarded me a partial short Term Scholarship to study Kasuri at the Kawashima Textile School in Kyoto, Japan, Spring 2016. All donations to this cause will be kindly accepted ;-)

A big thank you to all who helped so far. And if all goes well, next year, JAPAN!!!!!! 

Dipsacus- Teasel thistle

I recently noticed on a field near us dry thistles that reminded me of the ones that we had been shown at a "Papa" blanket weaving workshop I attended back in 2013. At the time I found it rather strange that a single thistle would be used to card or lift the nap of the blankets one at a time. It just seemed so time consuming compared to the carding machines that we were shown at the recently closed factory nearby, that had huge drums with horrible looking metal spikes to do the same job. These machines are called raising gigs.

Coincidently that same week, I noticed in a book I had just bought (The Complete Spinning Book, Candace Crockett, 1978), and the second image you see, an example of carders using the same thistles. Now this made much more sense. The description of the image reads "These early California carders from the Spanish days are made of common thistles mounted between two slats. There is some question about whether they were used for carding fibers or for raising the nap on woven fabric.(Photograph courtesy of the Oakland Museum.)" In another book that I had bought also that same week I came across another image of an instrument that used thistles. The book is in Dutch, so I am not sure what it says about these but they are commonly called paddles, crosses or hands, and are described as being used to raise the nap of the fabric. 

But it got more interesting when I searched for this thistle and I found them on Alibaba as being sold by the tonne. It was then that I realized that there were raising gigs that used these thistles still today. Crazier still I found that these half metal and wood half thistle machines had been developed as early as the sixteenth century in England. But of course this also made more sense for the blanket industry.

As to what kind of thistle we had found on our nearby field, well, Urze the puppy that devours gardening books, got straight on the case of identification but had no luck, perhaps because the book was upside down, in German and she can´t see so well (she´s more of a feeler/sniffer). I on the other hand can say with the help of wikipedia the teasel thistle we found is not really the one that is used more commonly for the job as seen from the various pictures including the one I took at the workshop, which seems to have a longer flower head and is a wild variety. Ours is most likely the Dipsacus liciniatus. But I assume our teasel can also be used for the same purpose. Above all I am relieved to know that it is unlikely that anyone ever had to card a blanket using a single thistle.

Around here I am told that bunches of these thistles were painted using water colours and sold at the markets back in the olden days. I am sure they would make nice arrangements although a little spiky and would be better used to clean cobwebs or chimneys than to grace vases. Just sayin´.

To end on a sweet note, the last photo shows the most delicious Lemon Drizzle Cake, with hand made sugar flowers, both made by my friend Helen. The cake was delicious and the flowers outstandingly beautiful and so well crafted. The photo does not do it any of any justice.