Tag: Japanese indigo

On Sunday April 19th I decided to start some of my Japanese indigo seeds. You may recall that I was able to save a substantial quantity last fall. I ought to have started them weeks ago, perhaps even months ago. However, earlier in the spring it was hard to believe that the snow would ever melt so I just couldn’t handle seed starting. This past weekend, it was gloriously warm and it was clear that spring had triumphed at last. So, I figured it was better late than never.

I borrowed a teeny cold frame from school, which has been sitting in the basement over there for years. It needed a little washing and reinforcing. I used our very own compost mixed with potting soil, planted seeds in little six-packs, watered them, and set them in the warm sun. The cold frame is on the wagon is so we can move it around to keep it in the sun, and bring it indoors easily at night.

Continue reading “Japanese Indigo Take One” →

About a month ago I was tidying up the crafts room. I was trying to get organized so I could weave a new crop of “Jack Frost” bookmarks before the winter holidays.

The crafts room is the room in our apartment which houses my loom, all my yarns, dried dye plants, dye equipment and materials, niddy noddy, swift, scales, carders, and drop spindles. It also contains two large book shelves full of books, a desk, a small filing cabinet, bookbinding supplies and tools, two antique scutching knives and an antique hetchel. The crafts room also contains a lot of dyed fleece and spinning fiber, hand-woven items, notebooks with all my dyeing, weaving, and teaching records, and some fiber magazines. Also, it’s where I store plastic bins with samples and materials for various fiber arts activities that I teach, and an ironing board and iron. And lots of other stuff like dye plant seeds and the beater and reeds for a 40 inch Macomber loom that’s been occupying my mom’s laundry room for a year while I try to figure out what to do with it. I know, that is a nutty list, and I didn’t even list everything. It is in a fairly chronic state of chaos. Continue reading “Three Bags Full” →

Why two blog posts in one night, you may wonder? I am typically a binge-blogger. Once I finally sit down to deal with photos and organization and writing, I get in a groove and it’s fun to keep going. Tonight, however, I am killing time while I wait up for a tansy dye bath and a wool mordanting bath to get done. Tomorrow I am doing a natural dye workshop for Mass Ag. in the Classroom at their day of hands-on gardening skills. I have been absurdly busy with one thing and another all week, so tonight was my sole free night to wind skeins, scour, mordant, and make the dyebath. It’s more than I usually try to do in a night after work, and makes for a later night than usual. Anyway. I am not actually writing about that. I am writing about my gorgeous Japanese Indigo plants.

After a few frost warnings this month, during which I covered the Japanese Indigo with several layers of sheets, the forecasted temperatures on October 19th were in the 20s. I figured the time had come to cut all the Japanese Indigo and hang it up to dry. You may recall that I had decided to let the plants get as big as possible, and to try to save as much seed as possible, rather than harvest the leaves for dyeing this season. I had brushed off seeds as the flowers stalks matured and dried out, so I already had a pretty nice stash of seeds. But, I read in Dorothy Miller’s seminal book Indigo From Seed to Dye that you can cut the whole plants and allow them to dry, and the seeds will continue to mature. Since I know this is true of flax and some other plants, I was pretty confident that it would work. Continue reading “Japanese Indigo Harvest” →