Dyeing Continues

I've continued volunteering with the Friends of Sausal Creek, a habitat conservation group that works in my urban watershed.  Once again, I pulled weeds for hours in the blazing sun. Once again, I came home with a car full of potential dye plants.  And once again, it's a total miracle that I didn't get a horrible case of poison oak.

This time I brought home young eucalyptus sprouts (which nobody could remember the Latin name of).  A large part of this project is removing the invasive eucalyptus.  Even after the trees have been cut down, and their stumps covered in a plastic tarp, the plant sends out fresh growth.  It's strange to see such lush, soft leaves from eucalyptus trees. Typically, I think of these leaves as very woody.

I simmered these leaves and shoots for several hours, and they produced a lovely orange-brown color. It's odd, because the last time I dyed with eucalyptus, I got a more terra-cotta flowerpot orange color.  I wonder why this batch was browner?

These cakes of yarn are infuriatingly difficult to photograph. The stack on the left should look a lot yellower than what I'm seeing on my screen.  You can see better photos on a previous blog post.

I still have to process the Scotch Broom that I brought home last month. It has been sitting in my studio, and I keep forgetting to bring it home.  I've been working on yet another show that has Broadway aspirations, and that has been sucking up most of my mental energies. We've done two of these shows in rapids succession this year, which has been exhausting.  Unfortunately, both projects are under photographic embargo at the moment, so I can't share pictures.