Blog
Rhubarb Season
Rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) is one of the harbingers of spring in most parts of the US, and grows well in many temperate regions. It is a long-lived perennial that sends up bright red stalks and enormous, deep green leaves year after year after year. In fact, I have some plants at my high country home that were there when we arrived in 1986, and are probably several decades old now. This spring has been long, cold and wet, but hasn’t stopped this prolific plant. The worry is usually to get the stalks before the plant sends up its big...
read moreSustainable Tea Dyeing
Actually, there really IS no such thing if you live here in Northern California… at least not until my two Camellia sinensis plants reach maturity, I learn to properly cure their leaves, and then use them to dye with. More likely, I would be saving them to drink! I do love my spiced black tea! I have to admit that I have been in love with tea-dyeing for several decades. It was not my first foray into natural plant dyes, but it certainly has been a fast and satisfying one over the years. Just grab a bunch of tea bags, brew a big...
read moreEnd of May Update
The month of May is on its last legs, and I am guessing it is going into the annals as one of the wettest on record here in the Sierras. DH is a USFS High Country Ranger, and informed me that some of my favorite gathering places probably won’t be snow-free until late June or early July! I am happy to say that I will be able to gather adequate amounts of lodgepole pine bark and sage all the same, as well as other mountain and foothill plants. A few fiber fanatic friends have offered to help me gather barks, plants to dry, berries,...
read moreDyers in Action
I was able to attend a special dye day with the Foothill Weavers, a group that works together to share the Navajo-style weaving traditions. We met at Anni’s in Greenwood, south of Auburn, where she has the most marvelous of outdoor kitchens cum dye workstations. You can see from this photo that she has four burners on the gold stove, three more on smaller gas stoves to the left, and out of the photo, two more burners at another workstation! Anni had prepped some of the materials we were going to use in advance, and while we were...
read moreHarvesting Color In Print!
I was so excited to have the book order for the CSA subscribers finally arrive the other day, and stayed up reading it last night until my eyelids were drooping… it is just beautiful! I am really excited that I chose this book over my other top possibility when planning for the CSA this winter. I wanted a book that would serve both to inspire and instruct, no matter what level of involvement the subscriber has previously had with natural dyeing, and this book fits the bill. It also focuses on which plants grow where in the United...
read morePreparing to Plant
A long past history of working with raised beds led me to the decision to create long, wide planting beds for the dye plants. Most are either perennials, or self-sowing annuals, so I am planning to give them a well-prepared home that won’t need further major soil disruption in the future. We used this area for a large potato patch about four years ago, so the soil is already less compacted than the heavy clay we normally deal with. However, Glenn still decided to go through and first mow, then till with the large tines, to make it...
read moreDigging Madder Roots
First off, thanks to all of my fiber friends who are spreading the word about my CSA, and to those friends who offered plants, helping me keep my start-up costs down. Yesterday afternoon, Claudia and I visited Jan (all three of us are Foothill Fiber Guild members), who had offered to let me dig up all of her madder roots. Jan has become completely enamored of building a collection of replicable colors to use in her work, and decided she was not going to use the madder. Turns out she had a full 4-x10 foot raised bed of plants put in...
read moreWelcome to Nature’s Cauldron
I will begin accepting subscriptions for the 2011 Natural Dye Plant CSA beginning May 3, 2011!
read moreWhat’s Growing on the Farm
I am waiting impatiently for the rains to stop so that planting can begin! I have sourced comfrey roots, yarrow, and madder roots to transplant in, and have a lot of seeds, but our late frost date here at 3,000 feet in the Sierra foothills is mid-May, approximately Mother’s Day, each year. Come back for planting updates!
read moreNatural Dye Projects
Visit the gallery page to see photos of natural dye projects. If you have a project made from plant- or insect-dyed yarns and would like me to feature it in the gallery, please leave your email in the comments, or via the Contact page!
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