If I were going to write a book on natural dyes, using NZ native botanicals, this image would be the cover. 

This time of the year, December to March/April, has become our season for natural dyeing using our NZ native botanicals. 
It's warm, the days are long & summer in to autumn is when the plants we use seem to be at their best.
Birds (& most insects too I think) are past the busy time of their breeding season & if there is an abundance we feel it's ok for us to be gathering plant based resources*

So far this season we have made several dye baths from different parts of 4 different plants**
The first two dye baths were made from leaves of Tānekaha & Hīnau.
We collected the fallen leaves from under the trees.  
We dyed white cotton calico, muslin netting & muka in all the dye baths.
we also dyed a few odds & ends which I've mentioned separately in the relevant section.

The third dye bath was from the green prunings of some young Tōtara. 
This dyebath took quite some time before there seemed to be enough colour within it & finally after 5 days we obtained beautiful soft peachy colours from it. ​

As part of the exploration we put some fabric & muka from these 3 in to paru***

​We obtained brown, as expected from the Tānekaha & a dark grey/green black, as expected from the Hīnau. 
Initially the colour from the Tōtara after being in the paru was a gorgeous soft grey however this has shifted to a gentle brown.
​It’s an absolutely beautiful colour & I must admit it’s actually what I had anticipated we might obtain from Tōtara, simply because it’s a conifer. 

It’ll be interesting to experiment with dried branches & leaves of Tōtara in the future. ​

We collected fallen berries from the Tawa trees which are behind the shed.
It’s been a super abundant season & although we’ve had flocks of kererū coming & going, coming & going, there have still been many berries falling to the ground.  

Once the berries are on the ground we noticed nothing eats them, in fact, nothing even touches them so we decided it would be ok to collect some & make a dye bath. ​

*We gather the dried leaves, prunings & berries from trees we have on our property. 
The Tawa are mature forest trees on the perimeter of our covenanted bush area. 
The other trees we gather from are all part of a wetland restoration project we started about 16 years ago when we retired a hectare of badly degraded land & started planting native trees in to that area.
It’s such a wonderful thing to be able to watch the changes over the years, to know that we have helped to create this & in return are being given this abundant resource, simply by being patient & nurturing the area back to health.

**Here's a list of the trees we've gathered from this season
​Tānekaha: Phyllocladus trichomanoides
Hīnau: Elaeocarpus dentatus
Tōtara: Podocarpus totara
Tawa: Beilschmiedia tawa 

***Paru is iron rich mud which is used for iron tannate dyeing & traditionally, by Māori, used to dye muka

creating with materials that you grow or gather means you slow down
you work with the seasons
you wait, you watch & you listen

the more you wait the more patient you become
the more you watch the more you see
and the more you listen the more your world will tell you

it is profound

and on those days when the world seems so fucked up i want to scream
i walk in amongst our trees & know that our little world is doing ok
which means i’m ok too

It's 12 months since I finished Pare Kawakawa & as Puanga/Matariki draws near it seems appropriate to reflect & share.
I've never been able to write about this work here & yet I have shared it elsewhere.
It hung in our LTTL exhibition last year & it's in a book ! 
I dunno.
Sometimes these things are just too close. 

Pare Kawakawa is in the studio with me.
It keeps me company.
It sits adjacent to the high south facing window & through the window I can see the sky.
A sky just like any other day.