The North Carolina NAACP began a movement several weeks ago they call “Moral Mondays.” Every week draws more protesters and activists who are pushing back against the regressive policies and outright meanness of the current GOP controlled state government. It is a spiritual as well as a political event, with many of the state’s clergy participating in civil disobedience and getting arrested for trespassing. I decided that I needed to be a supporter of these fine citizens, so I went with my friend Deb to the seventh Moral Monday in Raleigh on Monday, June 17.

This movement has drawn the usual ridicule and name calling from the nastier faction of the far right, as well as outright lies about the protesters being mainly “outside agitators.” That was very nice compared to most of the other names we’ve been called for exercising our first amendment rights, but we tried to put this fabrication to rest on Monday so there are a lot of signs referring to being an North Carolina resident. Researchers from UNC Chapel Hill interviewed a sampling of the crowd and found that 311 out of 316 were from North Carolina.

There are many stories in the regional, national, and international news about Moral Mondays right now. I’m not going to try to write a long post about it. I’m proud that my sister and brother-in-law and I are a part of it. The Reverend Barber is an inspiring speaker and I’ll quote him from his Guardian article here, and follow it with a few of my photos. As usual, please ask permission if you would like to repost or use one of my photos. Thank you.

“To date, over 300 people have been arrested and thousands have lifted their voices in opposition to the avalanche of extreme public policies. The measures include:

• Cutting the payroll tax credit for over 900,000 poor and working people
• Slashing state unemployment benefits and rejecting federally-funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation to 170,000 laid-off workers
• Rejecting federal funds to expand Medicaid to cover 500,000 North Carolinians without health insurance

“In sum, the NC general assembly is making it harder for those who are sick to get healthcare; for children to get an education; for the incarcerated to be redeemed; for people to vote. At the same time, they make it easier for the rich to get richer; for the sick to get sicker; for private schools to profit while cutting funds for public schools; to implement the flawed death penalty; and to get guns.”

The protesters who were arrested for trespassing and failure to disperse volunteered to be arrested. The police were respectful and professional. There were many songs uplifted and lots of chanting. This was not an overly rowdy crowd, but I, for one, would like to see one of these protests be a silent vigil. As Rev. Barber pointed out, on July 1, many of our unemployed are going to lose their benefits. People’s lives are going to be hurt. It is a sad occasion and should be treated as such.

I’ve spent the last few months really struggling with depression, anxiety, insomnia, and hot flashes. Last summer I doubled my anti-depressant dose on the advice of my GP and my gynecologist, who said that it might help with my hot flashes as well. It did get me out of the hole, but it did a number on my already estrogen-withdrawal stressed brain. After talking to a therapist in the fall when my anxiety got high (this medication doesn’t really help with anxiety) I gradually lowered my dose back to the original. And several months ago I went back in the hole. Hot flashes intensified. One of the aggravating things about menopause for me is that I’ve been going through it for YEARS. Peri-menopause started for me in my late 30s! So every time my troubles die down, I get my hopes up that it is done. I hate depending on pills. But I hate the hole worse, so here I am, back on the higher dose and my brain is functioning at a much lower level again.

So I’m trying to adjust to this. I’m making a few lifestyle changes and working on my overall health. I’m being kind to my Self and letting her take breaks and sleep late on days off. She doesn’t have to cook if she doesn’t want to, but she does need to eat healthy food, drink plenty of water, and get some exercise. And I let her quit Elements Gallery. I told her that she has a paying full-time job so she doesn’t have to get anxious about not turning out artwork for sale or display. She can do it for fun and not worry about what other people think. Learning to nurture my Self is what started my Slow Turn toward the light years ago.

I had bloodwork done last week and my cholesterol has gone down about 30 points. It still needs to go down about 20 more. There were lots more positive results – my blood sugar and liver, kidney, and thyroid functions are fine. The big surprise was that I am vitamin D deficient. I take a good multi-vitamin every day and try to eat D-rich foods, but I don’t get much sun because I am prone to sun poisoning. So I’m adding another pill to the handful that I take, which includes a multivitamin for menopause, fish oil, red yeast rice, citalopram, loratidine, and naproxen. Hopefully this and some more diet and exercise tweaking will get me back up to speed and help with my depression and energy problems.

(And, although I welcome comments, if you want to tell me that I do not NEED anti-depressants, just save your energy. I came to this place after years of rejecting them, and the fact is, I need them to live my life fully. If YOU don’t need them or have been able to find alternatives, I am quite happy for you. I am thankful every day that they work for me.)

Last weekend was spent in a major effort to clean house. We could have made a third cat out of all the cat hair we cleaned up. I love living in an older house (built in 1922) because of the little things that give it character, but I do not enjoy how much dust it generates. Granted, we ignored cleaning the floors and ceiling fans for much longer than we should have, MUCH longer. There is still much to be done, but it is much more liveable here now.

My garden has been ravaged by rabbits. They have eaten my fennel, my peas, and my little squashes. I am now in “what the hell” mode and I’m going to buy my veggies from the farmers’ market and Deep Roots and plant flowers, herbs, and dye and paper plants instead. Hopefully we will still get peppers and tomatoes and green beans, and the figs are about to get ripe, so it is not all bad.

On Monday, I plan to go to Raleigh to the Moral Monday protest at the State Capitol with a friend. My task this weekend is to come up with a sign. The Tea Party decimation of our once centrist state is overwhelming, so picking one issue will be difficult. I’ll probably choose public education since my job is at a public university, and it is vital to train our citizens how to communicate and think about all sides of a problem or issue if we are to save this country.

Maybe the next post will be art related. I’m going to mordant some fibers this afternoon, and boil some seaweed in soda ash to break it down for papermaking.

Continuing the tale of the past weekend:

Of course, we spent too much money, even though we spent two nights in the Super 8 motel in Black Mountain. It isn’t bad for the price. Our first stop was at Nice Threads Fiber Gallery on Cherry St. in Black Mountain, where I showed Leslie several of my small tapestries. She is taking them and two scarves on consignment through the end of August. At that point, I hope to figure out somewhere else to foster them, if they don’t sell.

We had drinks and ate at Black Mountain Ale House. I had an appetizer of fried eggplant sticks, mmmmm, and Sandy had shrimp and grits. Someone at the bar steered us to Pisgah Brewing Company that night to hear Hyrider, a Grateful Dead/Phish tribute band. They were really good, the beer was organic, and a cute guy with dreadlocks flirted with me. The cooks in Lovin’ Tenders, the food truck, let me sample a grilled turnip slice. It was pretty good! So that was a pleasant evening.

Sandy wandered around on his own while I was workshopping with Dede Styles. He bought a dulcimer kit in Black Mountain. We went to the Wedge Brewery after the workshop and enjoyed their craft IPA outside in the best weather possible.

One reason we love Asheville is that it was a Slow Food place before most places started paying attention to local food, so there are lots of places to get wonderful local meals.

We ate a marvelous meal at Chestnut on Biltmore Ave. near Pack Place. Again, I forgot to take photos. I’m such a bad food blogger these days. Sandy had molasses glazed pork loin and I had cream of broccoli soup and a salad with roasted beets and goat cheese.

This morning we had brunch at Louise’s Kitchen in Black Mountain, in an old house with a big wrap around porch, perfect for sipping coffee and easing into Sunday. They had a couple of rooms for rent upstairs for office space, and I actually took a semi-serious look, even though I knew I’d never make the three hour drive on most weekends to make it worth the cheap rent. I said to Sandy when he gave me that look (you know the look), “When opportunity knocks, you need to at least open the door to see who’s there.” That made him smile. We can’t afford it when you add in the gas and time, but it is fun to daydream about renting a room in the area.

Then we went to a street art/craft fair in Black Mountain where the artists were starting to pack up in anticipation of a line of thunderstorms heading east. I bought a pair of earrings from a young woman making very attractive jewelry with recycled magazine paper beads. Another mixed media artist used tubes wrapped with different papers and fibers in woven-like structures and collage. Resolved: will take an old National Geographic, some straws, and a tube of white glue to work for slow days.

Back to Asheville, where I abused my credit card at Earth Guild by buying a variety of mordants, along with madder root, cochineal beetles, and indigo. I ordered thiox (a color remover) and a digital scale from Amazon today, since I missed that I needed the thiox for indigo dyeing, and the scales at Earth Guild were more than I can afford right now. I’m quite tempted to buy a used turkey fryer with a propane kit to dye hot baths in, but I am a little bit afraid of cooking with gas. My first apartment had a gas stove and I called the gas company every time the pilot light went out. I’ll make do with an electric burner for now.

Preparing the rhododendron leaves while our fabrics and yarn skeins soaked in a mordant bath with alum. We only used the older leaves, not the new, sticky shoots and new leaves. The breeze felt great but it kept blowing out the gas stoves.

The rhododendron leaf dyepot: We simmered the leaves for about an hour in a cast iron pot, scooped them out and strained the dye through a cloth, then put the fiber in the hot dyebath (about 160 degrees) for three hours. The iron pot acts as a second mordant which darkens and dulls the color.

Here are the yarn samples Eileen and I got with the rhododendron dyepot. Top to bottom: silk, wool, and cotton.

Barbara scoops out the cooked mullein leaves after about 45 minutes.

We tore up the mullein leaves the same way, but we made two dyepots with the mullein leaves. One pot was brass, which contains enough copper to be a mordant. Copper brightens and pushes a color toward blue or green. The other pot was stainless steel, which doesn’t have any effect on the dye. You can buy copper (called blue vitriol) and iron (called copperas) mordants if you don’t have the pots. Or you can throw in pieces of scrap metal. Old dye books talk about using tin and chrome for mordants, but hardly anyone uses them any more, especially chrome, which is extremely toxic and hard on the fibers. When I first tried natural dyeing, my teacher used chrome. The yarn fell apart a few years later. Not worth the vibrant colors if it is toxic. Another instance of “just because it’s organic, doesn’t mean it is safe.”

More notes:
Mordanting with alum: Use 15% alum to the dry weight of the fiber, more for heavy fiber. Dede uses 4 oz. of alum for 1 lb. of coarse wool. Dissolve the alum in the water first, then cream of tartar (if used). Cream of tartar helps the alum brighten the color. Don’t use cream of tartar if dyeing in an iron pot because it will move the color to brown. Add the fibers at 160 degrees for at least 45 minutes. Avoid abrupt temperature changes and lots of agitation with wool or it will felt.

Adding vinegar to cochineal in an iron pot gives you a beautiful purple.

Grape leaves in an iron pot gives you olive green.

Boiling fibers make the yellow colors look dingy.

Don’t use an aluminum pot because it makes the colors blotchy. Unless you like blotchy colors (I do). “Use a bright pot for a bright color” and vice versa.

Dede’s samples:

1. Goldenrod in alum
2. Goldenrod in iron
3. Goldenrod boiled
4. Daisy fleabane in alum
5. Daisy fleabane in iron
6. Daisy fleabane cooked longer in iron

I hope I remembered that right because Dede is not interested in looking at this blog to correct me! Although she was generous with her cell phone number and address, she is definitely not an Internet person.

More of her samples:

I wish that I had brought a few fabric swatches to try, but I got to see the others’ fabric samples, such as Sharon’s wool felt (top left) and Barbara’s silk (bottom left).

The right photo is of my samples. From top to bottom:
Wool, rhododendron, alum mordant in iron pot
Wool, rhododendron, alum mordant in iron pot, dyed longer
Wool, mullein, alum mordant in brass pot
Wool, mullein, alum mordant in brass pot, dyed longer
Wool, mullein, alum mordant in stainless steel pot
Wool, mullein, alum mordant in stainless steel pot, dyed longer
Silk, mullein, alum mordant in brass pot
Silk, mullein, alum mordant in stainless steel pot
Silk, rhododendron, alum mordant in iron pot

Dede gave me most of this dried broom sedge to bring home so I plan to give it a try this weekend. I just can’t express enough how much I enjoyed this day, learning with a master natural dyer with such a sparkling impish wit. She was a true delight, and it lifted the cloud that’s been hanging over me for months now. I feel rejuvenated.

I couldn’t wait for the India Flint workshop so I signed up for a workshop with Dede Styles at Cloth Fiber Workshop on Saturday. I’m so glad that I did. She gave us a great lesson in identifying local wild dye plants, with information about when to harvest and what parts of the plants to use. It is much more helpful to me to have someone show me an actual plant rather than identify it from a photo in a book or on the Internet. I never trust the photos.

That being said, here are some photos for you not to trust. But they’ll help me remember, so there.

First we tore up the older rhodedendron leaves that Dede brought and started cooking them and mordanted our fibers while we went searching for dye plants in abandoned scrubby places under a nearby bridge.

Dede told us to look for dried broom sedge and remember where it was to harvest the green broom sedge around late August, when it yields the best yellow dye. You can dry it yourself to use later but the old stuff that has been outside over the winter doesn’t dye as well. It is one of the quickest natural dyes.

This is the goldenrod plant. Harvest the flowers in fall for a goldenrod color. Contrary to popular belief, goldenrod pollen doesn’t cause allergies because it is not wind-driven. It blooms at the same time as ragweed, so it’s a scapegoat.

One major difference between sumac, which produces a brown dye, and tree of heaven, which does not produce dye, is that sumac (on left) leaves have serrated edges, and tree of heaven (on right) leaves have smooth edges.

Nettles produce a lot of good things, but they also produce major skin irritation and pain, so they’re identified here to help me avoid them.

Burr dock – use the big leaves, avoid the burrs like crazy. These plants here don’t have burrs yet. Other kinds of dock should produce dye also, but she had not tried them.

Use the leaves of blackberries or the whole canes of the shoots that come up. On the right is mullein, which we collected by the roadside.

Other dye plants we found were grapes (leaves) and daisy fleabane (the whole plant). Daisy fleabane blooms in spring. A similar plant, the fall aster, blooms in fall. I have both in my back yard.

More from my notes:

Wear gloves when harvesting burr dock leaves. Harvest in late summer.

Queen Anne’s Lace – use whole plants.

Black walnut hulls – use the green hulls only for the best dye. You can crack the green hulls off with a hammer and dry them for future use, but the black ones already on the ground are not best for dye.

Black walnut leaves can be identified by their smell. You can get black by packing leaves with wool in layers with metal slivers, unpack and repack for three days.

The color from blackberry shoots turns from yellow to a dull gold after about two years.

Madder roots produce red/orange. Wait two years before digging the roots. (This is grown in gardens.)

Little bluestem grass will dye like broom sedge.

The inner bark from black oak is a great historical source of yellow dye. The color “Bancroft’s Aurora” is black oak bark and cochineal. Harvest fresh from windfalls April – early May.

Even though you usually see these plants along the roadside or along railroad tracks, it is best to find them elsewhere if you can because of chemical sprays. And never harvest all of a plant in one place. Always leave a few to reproduce.

Next post: The dye pots

I spent a lovely day at Lake Orange with my friend Missy yesterday. I had never even heard of Lake Orange before I met her. Now I want to move there! It is a small reservoir lake between Hillsborough and Mebane, North Carolina, but big enough to allow all kinds of boating.

Missy made us a picnic lunch and we paddled to a wilder area of the lake, with the hopes of seeing the bald eagles that nest there. We saw lots of turtles and a great blue heron. I love paddling but I haven’t done any in a long time, so I am feeling it in my arms and abs today.

I mostly relaxed with a novel yesterday. My hands needed a break. The lichen tea dyepot was the last art project, and it was a success, although it produced almost exactly the same color as the onion skin dye, which was a tad disappointing. However, I was thrilled to get any dye at all since I’ve never tried lichen and it is unpredictable, and I did it with just the lake water, so next time I’ll try some mordants and additives and see if I can manipulate the color.

The biggest difference was in the silk. Below, from left to right:
Onion skin silk
Lichen silk
Onion skin wool
Lichen wool

We went to Dale’s Seafood for lunch again, where I got a veggie plate with double fried yellow squash again. Man, I could eat that for every meal. They fry them just right – thinly sliced with a light batter, sweet and tender on the inside, crispy on the outside. It is one of the small pleasures of coming to Lake Waccamaw.

I sat for Sandy to draw a charcoal portrait of me. He complained about not being able to make it look just like me, but really, my features are not very distinguished in any way except for my very blue eyes, so considering that it is black and white and the small amount of time he spent on it I think that he did pretty well. He was too kind to my jowls, though.

This morning I was awake before 6 a.m., mainly due to itchiness. Forgot my Claritin. So I had no excuse not to photograph the sunrise once the fog lifted. The best one is at the top of the post and here are the others.

Yesterday was a full day of mixed emotions. I mixed up three colors of Procion dyepots, then combined some to get a variety of colors on a variety of rags, fabric remnants, and silk and wool skeins. I didn’t get the purples that I wanted, so I’ll take that up at home. The dyepots were too red, but I was working with a turquoise dye and that color is difficult.

I like the colors that I got on Sandy’s old khaki trousers and my old pajamas. These will go into the rag rug project. I haven’t decided about the fabric remnants. I’m thinking shibori and overdyeing on those.

The wool skeins have very muted colors, which I expected (and wanted) because wool needs a hot dye bath. The silk skeins were fun and unpredictable. Lesson learned – do not use twist ties on skeins. What a mess to untangle.

The afternoon and evening became caught up in the small drama of trying to rescue an abandoned mallard duckling. Baby D was with a mama duck and three other ducklings at our house earlier in the day, but I noticed that Baby D kept her distance from the others. Mama Duck did check her out now and then but she swam away from the rest and Mama Duck abandoned her. We picked her up and she seemed exhausted and I really expected that she would die. We brought her/him onto the screened porch to protect her from predators and when the duck family did not appear again, we started researching wildlife rescue groups in the area. Skywatch Bird Rescue in Wilmington was willing to take her that night so we jumped in the car with Baby D (or Henry/Henrietta as Sandy named him/her) in a big box with a towel. As we were entering Wilmington she started freaking out and scrabbling around under the towel, pecking. She did that twice, and then she died just before we got there.

I had already gotten attached and Sandy was sort of considering taking her home, which we both knew wouldn’t work. So sad. Her feathers were so soft and she relaxed when we petted her – it was obvious that she enjoyed it.

So we drove back to the riverfront and had a pint of Smithwick’s at Slainte Irish Pub on Front St., then walked across the street to Circa 1922, where the food and service was amazing. Sandy had on shorts and flip flops and I know that I probably reeked from sweating over dyepots outside all day, and nobody seemed to notice or care. I had scallops over carrot spaetzle with pea sprouts and Sandy had chicken orechhiette with a cream sauce – both dishes were incredibly delicious, and the restaurant itself was full of huge reproductions of Hopper paintings on old brick walls. A fascinating ambience. I want to go back there because there was so much to choose from on the menu. They use local foods too. The carrots were obviously not from a store.

I didn’t bring my camera or there would definitely be some food porn here.

I had a bamboo turtleneck sweater that had picked up a brown stain somewhere so that gave me a perfect opportunity to try dyeing bamboo for the first time. And boy, did it suck up the color! All I did was soak it in the lake water for a day and then dip dyed it in a cooling pot of onion skin dye. I’m really pleased with this.

I was able to dye silk, wool, cotton, and bamboo in the same dyepot. I boiled the onion skins for a few hours and added everything after I took the pot off the heat and let it cool to below the simmering point. I heated up the wool skein gradually under hot water from the tap before I added it – it didn’t felt too badly.

The other dyepot was more problematic, and the way I dealt with it was not the best because I did get a little color out of it but I don’t know what factor produced it. I started with boiling English ivy leaves that I cut up in lake water. The water did turn a faint green, but when I dipped a wool skein in it it didn’t seem to pick up any color. So I added wild aster flowers that I picked from this yard and a yard down the road, with a couple of dandelion flowers thrown in just because they were there.

The bundle is cotton wrapped around a thick twisted wire that I found and a bald cypress branch. I only added a silk skein because I didn’t think there would be enough dye produced to do any more.

I got a very, very pale gray green on the silk, and a light yellow green on the cotton bundle. The color is stronger on the areas where the cypress branch was touching the fabric. So, did the cypress have some dye in it, or was it that the extra tannin drew in the dye that was there? I’m guessing that it was the tannin. So I’m going to try the English ivy dye again at home with a better mordant. I know that wild aster flowers produce dye because that was the first natural dye I ever produced on wool (with a mordant), but I suspect that I did not use enough flowers.

The photo below is the silk skeins: English ivy/wild aster on left, no dye in the middle (for comparison), and onion skin on the right.

The cotton fabric bundle being unrolled. The black is from the metal:

You win some, you lose some. I still learned a lot from this. The pale color on the silk is very pretty.

Last night I boiled Spanish moss and the lichens are still soaking. I’ll probably give them a shot today but my focus is turning to Procion dyeing and paste papers now. Hopefully some sun printing too, since the sun is back out.

UPDATE: The green on the cotton bundle turned brown after washing. Much of the color on the cotton fabrics washed out. This could be due to a number of things, including commercial finishes. So I won’t be taking on another big dyeing project without using mordants (safe ones, of course). The onionskin dye still produced well on the bamboo sweater and the yarn skeins, though.

Also, I learned in my natural dye workshop on June 1 that the “wild asters” were actually daisy fleabane, and you use the whole plant. The wild asters bloom in fall. Both are good sources of yellow dye.

I am back in one of my happy places – my cousin’s house at Lake Waccamaw. This time we are here alone for a couple’s art retreat. Sandy brought canvases and paint, and I brought dyepots, fabrics, yarns, hot plate, Procion dyes, and acrylic paints, paper, brayers, collage materials, and my Gelli plate. Also a tapestry on a box project I found in my closet that I had forgotten in case I get the urge to do some needle weaving.

This time I’m taking the opportunity to concentrate on natural dyeing with the tannin-infused water of Lake Waccamaw to mordant my fibers. Hopefully, if I will maintain a wifi connection and the camera cooperates, I’ll document it here. This morning I am getting started by washing the silk and wool that I wound into skeins for dyeing with Ecover delicate wash detergent. I bought this silk on the cone from Colourmart and this is the first time that I have worked with it. It has to be scoured before dyeing. I bought the handspun wool from a vendor at the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market. I don’t remember the name of the farm and will add it later when I get home. The rest will be fabric remnants and scraps from my stash.

Also on tap: sunprinting and gelli plate printing on fabric and paper. And photos. Stay tuned.

And lots of reading in between. No cooking but I can’t avoid some cleaning. It is my cousin’s house, and it is May, and that means lots of bugs that have overwintered and lots of pollen on the porch. But, BEAUTIFUL weather – can’t ask for better. Sunshine, high 80s, lots of wind from the southwest.

Yeah, it’s 4:42 now and I haven’t gotten much done. It’s mainly a set up and clean day. I tried to mix some Elmer’s Art Paste to paint paste papers with, but most of it is floating on the top of the pitcher in lumps. Most of the fibers need to soak anyway. Maybe I’ll just read for a while and tackle more tomorrow.