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


2 comments:

  1. I had no idea corn dollies could be so beautiful! I love this one - definitely Fey. So fanciful! Enchanting! Like a sprite dancing.

    It appears that the husks you used were more red than deep purple. If this is the case, it might explain the brown results on the dyed yarns.

    Thank you for sending the link! I love your corn dolly!

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