Naturally beautiful dyeing …

I’ve just spent a week at Bellingen’s annual Camp Creative, and I think I might be developing a new obsession – dyeing natural fabrics with plant pigments.

For five days, the ever patient Anne Leon guided us as we experimented with leaves, seeds, flowers, twigs and vegetables which we placed between layers of natural fabric and then wrapped around pvc pipe, folded, clamped or tied and dropped into simmering pots of lemon myrtle, eucalyptus, red cabbage and brown or red onion.
With mordant (setting agent) added, the magic started …

Checking the pots for unexpected results!

During the week we all learnt a new mantra:

“there are no mistakes, just unexpected results”

Here is a selection of unexpected results which I am happy to show off.

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Gum leaves & Lemon myrtle flowers on cotton

Perhaps the weeds in my ever increasing collection could be put to
a creative use instead of just being composted ?

Lounging with Lace Monitors …

From time to time I hear loud rustling noises in the garden.  So far, the source has always turned out to be a Blue Tongued lizard, a Carpet Python or a Lace Monitor – but as their tails resemble that of several venomous snakes, I always freeze and wait until I am absolutely sure!

Several years ago, a large Lace Monitor posed obligingly for me in a tree …

From then on, I assumed that I was seeing the same monitor, but today I realised that this was not the case.  When I was sitting in the garden this morning, I realised that something was watching me … and there lounging in the sun nearby was a much smaller monitor with quite different markings.

There are, it seems, two distinctively marked variations of the east coast Lace Monitor, and when I compare my photographs from 2012, 2014 and 2016, I realise that in size and markings, they are all different.

This may explain some of the loud rustlings I hear at night, and now I wonder just how many Lace Monitors are out there ??