Thursday, November 24, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you are all having lots of food and good times. 


I got roped into making a very different recipe by my bf, who wanted a garlic onion pie. He did help make it. I said, a tart? No, a pie, a dessert. No dairy. Hmnn. Well, I put together a recipe using coconut milk, and it was fairly tasty in an odd sort of way. It hasn't aged well, and he won't eat any, so I think the rest of it will end up on the compost pile. He says next time, he'd rather try for something quiche-like. Luckily I had also made a regular pumpkin pie.






Sunday, November 13, 2011

Corn Dolly

A corn dolly. I knew I wanted to make one of these when I was growing my corn, but I didn't imagine how beautiful these corn husks would be.

She is the embodiment of my own personal Fae, an assignment I was given by Shannon of Herstory , during a reading from Brian Froud's deck, in which she pulled a blank card as the space to create our own personal Fae. Intuitively, I'm tying this in with the Queen of Cups tarot card, which is my personal court card. She's usually depicted as quite domestic, but she has her wild side, as she's the human embodiment of Gaia, nurturing and abundant, but like her helper Calypso, doling out some storms when the air needs to be cleared. My dolly fae is made of Indian corn, half domesticated, half wild, bringing the best of both ways, knowing the benefit of a warm hearth and cultivatable nourishment, while retaining her wild strength, vigor and beauty.

I've saved the rest of the husks (Ok, I just had a tiny circle of corn) to use in my second attempt at natural dyes. The color of the husks is so pretty, I hope it will stay in the yarn, unlike the blackberry fiasco. The color was so pretty at first, with the blackberries, but just washed most of the way out; which led to a 2nd attempt with a different mordant, giving me a mottled, dull medium brown, my least fave color in the world. Which lead to more overdying attempts using hibiscus tea, roses and lavendar with salt, which was a slightly warmer color of still ugly brown..... which lead to my final desperate attempt to make this yarn something I would ever use, by overdying with red food color, the little bottles from the spice aisle. It's a prettier mottled brown with bright red tones that I'm going to use for my first sock knitting class next week at the Yarn Stash . I'll post some pics when they're done.


For an alternative image of the Queen of Cups, check out my friend Magi's Tarot of the Pomegranate


Monday, November 7, 2011

Other colors of mountain ash

I took a guided plant tour at the Arboretum last weekend and came across varieties of Mountain Ash that were white and pink. Anyone know if they are also edible?