Long story short; a dye bath for fabric or fibre is dependant on having either fabric or fibre ready to dye which makes it not worth doing when you don't have fabric or fibre you want to dye. Further complication is that when you are dyeing cellulose fibres with plant based dyes you may end up with nothing other than boiled cotton fabric which has steadfastly refused to take up even a smidgeon of colour from the dye bath !
 
Make Ink A Foragers Guide to Natural Ink making by Jason Logan had been mentioned on Instagram & as it piqued my interest but wasn't available in NZ, I requested it through our local library & waited patiently for it to arrive. I knew it would be full of plant references which are pretty much useless in NZ & especially useless for me as I'm still far more curious about the potential of what we have available here, particularly in our own native plants.
That's ok. I'm used to that.

I was not expecting magic.
I was expecting a very beautiful book with a few tidbits of useful information.
It is indeed a very beautiful book.  
It is an absolute pleasure to read & it does contain magic.

The magic it gave me is freedom.
It gave me a reason to make colour for the sake of making colour.
It gave me a water based process which, for the plant based explorations, has it's origin in natural dyeing.
A process that is very familiar to me.
This particular ink making process removes the stumbling block.
It reduces the colour making to it's simplest form & the end point is when YOU get the colour YOU want.

"What distinguishes ink from other art supplies is its use as a tool for communication."
I could go on & on about how much I love this sentence.  

I'm going to add to it.
​
Making ink is about communication. 

​Foraging is about observation.
Observation is about being attentive to your surroundings.
Being attentive to your surroundings is about developing a relationship with place.
It's about the unspoken dialogue you have with your surroundings which informs you of the health & well being of place.
It's about sharing. 
It's about reciprocity.
It's about acknowledging & honouring place through the language we use as writers, artists, stitchers, weavers or spinners.

Now off you go.
Make Ink my friend & let's get this conversation started.

Sal xx

I've been lamenting the fact that while the entire rest of the southern hemisphere seems to have had a 'heatwave', summer in our little corner of Taranaki seems to have been hit & miss.
While others have moaned about 'climate change' making everything too hot, we have had shitty, windy days with ocean temps 15.7 degree celsius (ie very freakin could !) for weeks on end.

Although this has been blah for me it has been ideal for our native bush. All the plants are looking healthy & vibrant.
There have been masses of sweetly scented flowers on all our trees; some day pollinated, others night pollinated, & this means our insects are happy.
Harakeke flowers & pods, karamu berries & kawakawa fruit production this year is abundant which means the birds are also having an amazing summer.

Since December we have had the pleasure of watching twin ruru develop from fledgling to teenagers to adults, flocks of pīpīwharauroa visiting the kowhai trees, seen & heard many korimako, the tui haven't needed to be quite so territorial, the small birds such as riroriro & tauhou are plentiful, as are the finches.
Every being seems calm & happy.
It's been delightful.
I imagine all the creatures we don't see are having a great season too.

I have also taken advantage of the abundance & harvested for some ink & pigment making experiments.

In December I started with harakeke pods as they seemed even more abundant, attractive & diverse than last year.  
​There also seemed to be such an amazing variety of different coloured pods this year.
​I harvested some immature as well as mature pods as I wanted to see if I could obtain different coloured inks which reflected the different colours & characteristics of the pods. 
So far it seems to have been successful & I'll just keep testing the inks every now & then to check colour & light fastness.
I should probably tell you, altho it is obvious from the photos, that my initial ink making was specifically for using with a dip pen.
I also had a partially exhausted tanekaha leaf dye bath so I reduced that down to see what I might get.

The 2nd batch of pods were from a different part of our place & one specifically from the driveway as it was hanging over the road & bashing into the car as we drove past. 
This time I decided to use 30cm squares of various weight cotton fabric as the 1st filter cloths & squeezed the liquid through the pieces of cloth by hand.
​I'm interested to see if the difference in cloth colours remains with time & washing - or whether it will just gradually drift back to harkeke tannin brown.

I'm pretty excited about these inks as most of them seem to have a great consistency for using with my pointy pen.
Our birds are moulting at the moment so I'm collecting feathers to make quills . . . . I'll keep you posted on that one ;)

Next up was the fruit of my most loved NZ native plant, Kawakawa.
So plentiful that the birds were barely touching them which I took as a sign that it would be ok for me to gather a few to play with.
​Honestly, I have never, ever, seen so many fruit & my god, they smell divine !
Like a papaya with a hint of black pepper. 

The colour is the pulp, the little dot is the seed. The fruit crush super, duper easily & can be squashed through a sieve with minimal fuss & bother & the ink is fugitive ! 
​Everything I wrote a month ago has vanished from the page.

So in the end I dried some out on filter paper & resorted to science & modern technology.

I had read about a 'Golden' product GAC900 which is designed to be mixed with acrylic paints to create a textile paint which can be heat set. I'm not averse to all man-made chemicals & science* so I bought some & mixed it with a few of my pigments to see what I might be able to achieve.

Must admit I was surprised & really quiet in awe of how easy it is to use & how great it felt to be able to use my humble little scrapings, mouldy sludges & strange smelling fruit pulps into well pigmented textile paints.
 
I let them dry & left them sitting for 10 days or so & now they are ironed & sitting on the back of the couch in the studio, hanging out seeing what happens with time . . .  I'll keep you posted on this too ;)

I know I would be able to do this with both harakeke & tanekaha without the GAC900 as they are substantive dyes & dye cellulose fibre well. 
I also know I could probably use gum arabic &/or agar to thicken the ink to paint like consistency.
I plan to do some experimenting with that either during February or sometime in March, however I really, really, really want to be able to mono print kawakawa leaves & now I know it is possible.

Below is me having a bit of fun with harakeke 'ink' using the dried sediment from filtering one of the inks through fabric &using the 3 modifiers I have made; ash water, copper water & iron water (clear, blue & orange drops on the last photo)