Going back

I've sometimes wondered is it is possible to go back.  You know, to visit the past.  I think I read somewhere that you can never go back.  It's never going to be the same and it's bound to disappoint.  And I have tended to agree with this viewpoint most of the time.  I know that when I've gone back to visit places where I've worked it's always been kind of awkward.  Even if I was there on genuine business and not just to visit old work mates.  But then again, I recently met an old friend that I hadn't seen in ages and it felt like we spoke just yesterday.  So I don't know.

Nostalgia is a positive thing in my mind, although I've never really looked the word up in a dictionary until now.  I just did and I guess my husbands view of it's meaning is more correct than mine.  Wikipedia says it's a: Yearning for the past, often idealized.  Hmm.  I don't feel that way about the past.  To me it's more of a celebration.  A happy feeling.  Memories of an adventurous life, strange places and foreign people. A realization that I was very young once, not that I knew it at the time, and probably made some mistakes.  But that's all right.  That's life.  "Je ne regrette rien" and I certainly don't long for the past to come back.  As much as I love to look through my albums at my old photos (and it always brings a smile to my face) I do not want to relive it.  It was happy, but not all the time.  Any given stretch of time is bound to have it's ups and downs, it's life.  That's the way it is.  Messy, but wonderful on the whole.

So anyway.  I got to go back.  To this place that I first saw 31 years ago:  Colorado.  Wonderful, wonderful place where I spent five years of my life.  And it celebrated my return with the most glorious blue sky, bright sunshine and wonderful autumn colours on the trees and a lovely unexpected 80 degrees.  I even got parking spots downtown without problems!  So, yes.  It is possible to go back.  It's not the same as it was, but I didn't expect that.  I didn't even want that.  Part of the fun of going back is to see what has changed.  The roads are wider and there are houses everywhere, where there were none before.  And new shopping malls.  But the Pearl Street Mall is there and the Hill, and The Harvest House and Boulder Canyon hasn't moved an inch.  My apartment building is still there and the Denny's is still on the corner.  The Dairy Queen has moved from the shed into a better building and now there is a Starbucks close by, and Whole Foods.  And a Goodwill store.  Perfect!  I could move right back.

But, no.  I'm back for real now.  To my life, the one I live today.  I already coloured some more wool and I have planned a soap session with my cousin tomorrow.  It doesn't matter how much fun it is to travel, either in time or space, it's always best to come home.

Lichen: Ochrolechia or Pertusaria - Obsession nr. 3

The lichens that I have already posted about, have been foliose, but now it's time for a crustose lichen.  Those are the ones that are like stains on rocks.  This type is quite abundant on rocks in the wood where I walk the dogs.

I am not sure if it's an Ochrolechia or a Pertusaria.  It is probably either lactea or corallina.  The former is a creamy or gray colour and has a pimply surface and can grow to about 15 cm, the latter is very white and without the bumps and gets even bigger, to 20 cm.  I'm not the only one who is confused, P. lactea is sometimes also called Ochrolechia lactea, so if biologists are confused...

But anyway I'm pretty sure that both O. (or P.) lactea and O. (or P.) corallina both grow on the rocks because there definitely are lichens that are more white and others that are more gray or cream.  I collected tiny amounts of the cream or gray ones and still have the white ones to explore.  Oh, there is so much to do and so little time!  But, on the bright side, I have something to look forward to.

It is pretty amazing that a colourless body of a crusty something can produce colour, but it can.  This lichen gave me the most beautiful sunny yellow on wool when simmered.  I first dyed a small amount of Icelandic wool and as it is very white I got this beautiful yellow.  The Alpaca wool that I'm using for the lichen dyes now are much darker in colour, so that the colours are more muted.

After I had used the lichen to dye in water I put the same lichen into an ammonia solution and it turned a kind of red colour with a hint of brown to it.  I shook the jar every day faithfully for over 3 months, sometimes thinking it was on the verge of turning purple, but I gave up in the end and dyed with it.

It is a lovely earthy pink.  I also dyed another skein in the exhaust bath, which gave a lighter shade.  I was very happy with that and expected great things from it in a soap.  But of course you never get what you expect in this natural colour business.

In preparation for the glorious pink I expected I scented the soap with Geranium as well as the Vetiver and put some hibiscus on top.  But the colour never showed up.  Just a slight blush of a tint in spite of the strongly coloured water.

It is so amazing to me that it is possible to get two such different colours from the same material.  How can one not be fascinated by these unpredictable things?

Lichen: Melanelia exasperata - Obsession nr. 2

I noticed that there was a lichen growing on one of the birch trees in my garden.  It wasn't pretty or anything, I actually thought it was slightly revolting.  But it was a lichen and there was plenty of it. And it was on my tree.  So I took some.  It had a green colour that was quite tempting.

I first boiled it in water to see what colour that gave to Icelandic wool.  It produced an off white colour.  Not the most exciting, but quite useful in many colour combinations.  I gave it to my daughter for a blanket that she is crocheting.

Next I put the Melanelia in Ammonia solution and I let it sit for a few weeks.  This is quite common to do with lichens because some of them will produce remarkable colours if they are steeped in this stinking solution for a few weeks.   And shaken every day.  In the olden days they used stale urine, most often from cows.  I have it on good authority from an Icelandic dyer that running after cows with a bucket to collect urine is a rather uncertain endeavour.  And as much as I love the methods of old, I decided to skip this one.  And peeing on it myself just seemed too self sufficient, somehow.

Anyway the ammonia solution is generally 1/3 ammonia, 2/3 water and it's better to have a good lid on this.  The smell is horrid.  I really knew that it wouldn't produce any exciting results because I have basically read which lichens are the primary dye lichens and Melanelia hasn't been mentioned.  But the thing is, there are a few thousand of these lichens and not all of them grow everywhere and maybe no one tried this with Melanelia.  So I had to try it for myself.

When it was apparent that nothing exciting (that means reds, pinks or purples in my mind) would come from the Melanelia I used it to dye a small skein of Alpaca wool.  The colour was slightly olive green.  Not as green as I expected because the water from it was a fairly distinct  green in a muddy brownish sort of way.  But I read somewhere that the colour of the dye water is not a good indication of the colour that a lichen produces.  These guys are just full of surprises.  But this is the greenest colour that I have had from lichen.

The Melanelia soap I did was exactly the same recipe as the other lichen soaps.  I only varied the water and the scent.  For this soap, which I hoped would be some sexy green colour I chose Ylang Ylang with the Vetiver.  I didn't get a sexy green, nor the rather muddy sort of greenish brown that I more realistically expected.  In fact the soap hardly took any colour at all.

I put some Birchbark with Melanelia on top to make it a bit more interesting, but maybe it's just a bit creapy.  But the scent is lovely, earthy and seductive.  I might use that again.

But the conclusion is that Melanelia exasperata (I'm pretty sure it is exasperata, but I willing to be corrected if a lichen expert should see this) is worthless as a colouring agent in soap.  It will produce an olive tint to wool in roughly equal quantity of lichen to wool.  The exhaust bath will be a light beige.  No reds or purples lurking in this lichen and it doesn't give much scent to the yarn, although the decoction smells nicely of lichen.  But it was a nice experiment and now I can leave it alone on my tree.