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I am a bit of a womble. My Studio is a layering of things that have been found, things that have been saved, things that have been given to me - I like to be surrounded by a bit of history. ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ I am known as an avid skip diver so people kindly keep me things. This weekend I am off to pick up 13 sash windows rescued from a skip.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ This is my dye cupboard - the mordants and other powders, the piles of fabrics and yarns, my newly started record book and the glue to paste the swatches in.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ It has had a hard life - the back is patched with hinges as plates, there are many, many layers of paint and a door has gone missing along the way. It is perfect.⁠⠀
Back when I grew flowers commercially the area that is now ‘the orchardy bit’ was rows and rows of spring bulbs.⁠ In the years where the deer didn’t eat the tulips they looked magnificent, stripe upon stripe of pure pigment. ⠀ ⁠⠀ When I turned my back on growing for money, we simply took out the beds and levelled it, turning it back to grass.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ The tulips quickly gave up - never brilliantly perennial here anyway, they took the opportunity to fade out fast.⁠ Well if you don’t want us . . . ⠀ ⁠⠀ The narcissi loved it though and every year appeared back in their serried rows through the grass. ⁠There was something disturbingly grave like about them. ⁠⠀ My planting ever since has all been an attempt to disguise that - feathering the edges, making little islands, trying to make it all look haphazard.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Gradually it is working - this is the edge of what would have been a bed of Narcissi geranium (best vase life, along with best scent) - now happily interspersed with a pheasants eye and a little lemon coloured one I have lost the name of.
Abundance.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ And the hedges beginning to vibrate with that gloriously specific spring green.
This week has been about experimenting.⁠⠀ Experimenting with all the ways to dye with daffodils, experimenting with the new e-course part of my website, experimenting with shooting and editing videos on my phone.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ My business hero is @sethgodin and his mantra is 'ship it' - a way of saying that the best way to learn is to make things and get them out in front of people before they are polished and 'perfect'.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ So I took his advice and combined all three experiments. Today's newsletters will have links to a free e-course all about dyeing wool with daffodils.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ I have been absolutely amazed by the colour you get from faded daffodil flowers (see the second photo). It is a bright, yet somehow soft, golden yellow which is now adding an amazing zing to my pile of plant dyed fabrics.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀
I am prone to obsessions. My brain hones in on topics and rabbit holes away, a constant background chatter to my life.⁠⠀ ⠀ It annoys the people I live with as my world shrinks to one topic. ⠀ ⁠⠀ My camera roll shows me it is three years ago this week that I returned to natural dyeing with plants, concentrating on using only the plants growing within a couple of miles.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Three years of experimenting with plant after plant, three years of googling and reading obscure articles and piling up samples. ⁠three years of conversation about mordants and modifiers. ⠀ ⁠⠀ Three years is a short time in such a slow craft. A blink of an eye. ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ But already I can see a difference in my skill.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ This is a corner of the cupboard where I stash my fabrics and yarns building up enough for a project. These have all been dyed this year - with barks and cones. ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ This week I am dyeing with bright deadheaded daffodils and the golden yellows will join these soft terracottas and pinks while I dream up something to make.
I grow very few white flowers. ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ White summer flowers tend to mark in the rain - white roses look like discarded tissues, white dahlias spot brown. Even cosmos purity - which I do grow - goes droopy and grey in a way that the coloured versions don't.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ The petals of spring bulbs however seem rain resistant - so I can indulge my love of white flowers and enjoy them backlit by the morning sun on the Studio window shelf. Bright and light and pretty.
I am spending a lot of time in the greenhouse at the moment - playing an endless game of jenga with my seed trays.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Many of the seedlings are for the community gardens - being planted out gradually under fleece. We are biding time, taking the cautious route so that we minimise the risk of everything being wiped out by a very cold night.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ We still have a full month of frosts to go here - little ones of -2 or 3 are manageable, an extra covering of fleece, some bricks to act like a storage heater. Most hardy seedlings will recover from getting their tips nipped a bit.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Last year though we had a really cold night in mid May, when growth was going well and sappily. It blasted the blossom and killed many of my hardy veg too. Slightly too late to resow.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Speak to the older generation of gardeners and they all sowed and planted out much later than is the fashion today. They perhaps had a point.
I wrote in my Friday letter this week about the sudden lifting of the uncertainty and inertia that had been dogging me for a few months.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ It's always easier to write about these things once they are resolved - do you find that? Once I am unstuck and lolloping along happily again, I can look at it all and not get sucked down.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Of course all this talk of getting going again, of new plans and exciting things . . . . it all actually means hard work. ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Head down, working through an actual written plan kind of hard work. Not always my natural strength.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ So yesterday I rearranged the studio window shelves and cleared the working table, ready for an uninterrupted start today. ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ An attempt to keep momentum.
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About Snapdragon Life

At Snapdragon Life I gently guide you through bringing the changing seasons into your daily life, helping you slow down, so that you can experience increased well being, calm and creativity.

 

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