Monday, June 22, 2015

Food as art and art as food and language as both

Forelle pears, at a great price for once, so I picked up a few, and once again was happy with their looks, and their name. Forelle, meaning trout, for their trout-like speckled appearance.  




Do you know the trout lily, a lovely spring flower with speckled leaves like little trout in the shallows?  and the Trout Quintet, Die Forelle, of Schubert.  If you don't think you know it, but you've watched Waiting for God, that's the incidental music, so you do know it after all.

Just musing over the intersections of art and music and language and how they're right there in front of us if we notice them.

But, onward and another dyeing adventure today:  shibori, tied work, very simple approach. Shibori can get very sophisticated, but here I was just finding out if my dyes would do it at all.  Using spinach in one bath, turmeric in the other, I did two shirts, great fun.  I plan to cut them shorter though, since they're usually a bit too long for me.  Since they're knitted, the edges will curl up and not need hemming.

Here's the general sequence of events:

Dyebaths ready for service, and I added alum in to the spinach bath,but not to the turmeric one, which doesn't need the help.





The little parcels are shirts, fanfolded, turned over and tied up a bit like a piece of pork.  This is what gives you the stripey effect.  I did a similar thing with both shirts.  Next time out I'm going to enclose some round objects and tie them to get round motifs.  Just to see how it goes.

And after the exercise of great patience and several hours in the dyebaths, the shirts emerged with a fanfare.  



Very happy with today's work.

3 comments:

  1. Another day of interesting results. You're going to have a wonderful wardrobe for the summer!

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  2. I thought it would not be long before you got dyeing again, love the yellow one

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  3. Here's another experiment for you! When I saw your vivid turmeric results, I thought to pass on a recent discovery I made when researching a fascinating tree in the butterfly conservatory down here. Annato! You can buy it in seed form or powder form in the spice section. Often it's in the Latino/Hispanic foods section, and is the mainstay nowadays (saffron is too expensive) of yellow rice and beans. It is also the FDA approved natural colorant of many popular foods and cosmetics-- everything from cheese to crackers to rouge and lipstick. I have read that it is used in textiles!!! And in ancient times, to highlight manuscripts. Could there be another colorful exploration in the offing?

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