It has been a while, as you can see from the little snippets on the blog, life is a blur.
It was wonderful to have the week away, a real change a pace and lots of time to talk and dream as well as the stimulation of the workshop and Avani as well.

 We get a bee in our bonnet and boil stuff at home, we lurk around indigo vats a lot getting our work done up in Bagru.
After last years winter season and huge orders and even more huge headaches with timeliness and quality control we have been itching to find a solution.
Earlier this year I went up to Delhi to the AIACA Greenmark launch and after a number on conversations, invitations and arriving home to pass the stories onto to Praveen, he said "Right that's it- we'll make a colour unit"
Only to need to say to once and we are off and running.
we're converting all our mucking around, our research and our new education into a workable system to use natural dye on a production scale for our workshop.
Rather exciting.

 Going to need a bigger tree to hang it all out in,
working on a reed bed water recycling unit for home, been itching to make one of these since Zac was born...28 years or so. In those days illegal I Gresford, now times are different and I live in India it will be the bees' knees!
Next will be working on solar for hot water, and solutions to cut heating costs for our dye pots.
Fun part is samples and experiments.
Why?
Are we nuts? so much effort, and expense getting it up and going...
We have avoided chemical dyes for a long time, the filth we see here just with their dispasal would put anyone off, let alone all you don't see with their manufacture.
we have tried to limit our colours to traditional dyes and block print.
Blockprint uses a synthetic binder, the one we buy is water based and solvent free, but really on the dodgy side if you think about it for too long.
Blockprinting water is minimal for clear up, and residue is little....  it is not good enough but as good as we can do at the moment.
we do have a lead on a binder produced by a GOTS certified group and a few ideas to experiment with for mordents, and resists and over dyeing printing.
Also going to trial a table doing batik....
tricky, want to do better, working on it.

Waste? you've seen my compulsion to stitch waste into things, cotton that is too small to use is going into the compost heap.
Just starting one to see if silk offcuts can be composted as well- they are brightly coloured and I hate to think about the dyes used to do that but good compost is a small miracle and can clean and lock up a lot of nasties and it could go onto shade trees etc.
kitchen scarps go home to the chooks....

We are making all types of cloth bags and trying to get staff to remember them when they go shopping so the can say no to plastic!!
A bit of nagging on my part helps.

A bit of thinking and planning all these things are possible, an effort in your world just working on what is in front of you and think of the major changes it would bring to our world.
Got to give it a go!

This is a random picture from the Alhambra, so looking forward to next year's "Moorish Delights of Andalusia and Morocco" the tiling always makes me gasp and I have been reading a little on how spectacular the maths is that goes with it- patterns and repeating and permutations- nerd stuff but I just want to see if I can spot the myriad of variations.

good excuse to walk around and drool.

 

I am settling down again, old lady insomnia some nights and I can be quite rabid, thinking about how and what to do next.

It is exciting but exhausting...practicing sleeping through the night.

So much to do

such fun to be in that situation.