.rabbitbrush dye.

 I've wanted to make a natural dye with rabbitbrush for the past few years. I took an online course from Aaron Sanders Head last summer and learned a lot about the natural dye process, but I hadn't explored beyond indigo and turmeric. I went kayaking in Grant County and noticed a ton of rabbitbrush, so collected blooms and knew it was the time to finally try it! I can't believe the results! 

Rubber Rabbitbrush is a native plant in the Shrub-Steppe that blooms in the early fall. I love it for its vibrant yellow blooms. You can tell time by the plants of the Shrub-Steppe. I know fall is here when the yellow blooms of rabbitbrush appear. I had heard they produce a natural dye, but there wasn't much information online. I found a digital pdf that mentioned it was a common plant to use for dye with indigenous groups living in shrub-steppe landscapes. I found one post about rabbitbrush dyeing, but it didn't have much information. The sparse information gave me enough curiosity to try it. 

I used two yards of cotton fabric. I didn't have soda ash, so I opted for a hot second wash in the washer. All sources highly recommended scouring the fabric. I then used aluminum acetate to mordant. I finished the process with a chalk bath. While the fabric was soaking, I started to simmer the rabbitbrush blooms in another pot. Most sources recommend boiling for an hour. I think I was a little over an hour. Then I introduced the mordant fabric and left it in the hot water. I immediately saw the color. After an hour, it was already a decent shade of yellow, but knowing it would fade, I left it overnight and am so happy with the final color. 

The first picture is the dye after an hour. The second, after an overnight soak. With the final color below! I was honestly shocked to see such vibrant color come from the blooms. Plants are amazing! 

.holding on until it fades.

    It might feel like I keep posting the same pictures, but this spring I can't seems to shake the awe and wonder of walking the vibrant foothills. I know this season is short. The heat was late to arrive this year, but it's here and increasing by the day, which means the vibrant yellows and purples will soon disappear until next spring. There are more blooms to come in the shrub-steppe, the bitterbrush is emerging and the buckwheat and rabbitbrush are still to come, but it's the balsamroot and lupine that kickoff the season. They're still here. I find myself walking the same path a few times a week, attentively observing the rhythm of blooms. Last night I could tell the blooms were fading away. There are still brilliant arrangements in small pockets, so I'm holding on while it's here. I've been thinking a lot about the beauty/vibrancy of the native plants. I wonder if the beauty is magnified by the limitations. The fragility of this moment. The miracle that all the elements come together to allow this tiny season to exist. The contrast of muted arid lands that make these bloom feel so shockingly joyful. I think it is the tenderness, the softness of these weeks. So often it's the time that gives the highest value but there's so much to learn from the seasons of nature. To appreciate and be fully present to this moment. How can I bring this understanding to my day to day life? How can I practice deeper presence and release the need to attach value and time? I'm working on jewelry regularly again. It feels good to have constant studio time. My jewelry practice is a reflection/expression/journal of where the inner and outer world intersect/combine, so it makes sense that my current pieces are influenced by the shapes and teachings of the spring, the vibrancy of tenderness. 

.may first.

It's May and finally the blooms have arrived. The balsamroot is in full bloom, the purple alpine lupine is here and even the bitterbrush is growing new leaves, soon to bloom its delicate butter colored blooms. The spring in the shrub-steppe is such a shocking time, a brief moment of lavish color before it all goes brown, muted again. It makes you pay attention and be present for the beauty of the season. 

.deep lake.

This weekend I explored a new lake in Grant County, Deep Lake. I first saw this long and isolated lake a few years ago on a hike and always wanted to come back because, without a boat or kayak, it's mostly inaccessible. Deep lake is located at the end of the road inside the Dry Fall State Park, so it's a super interesting geological area. 

The lake is mostly accessed for fishing, and as the official season doesn't start until the end of the month, I arrived at no one at the lake. It was amazingly quiet and calm. The lake is bordered to the left with gigantic towering basalt columns that look like sculptures in some places and almost as if they had a raku pottery finish in others, with their layers of colors white, cream, beige, and black. It was a magical place in the landscape, vastness, and isolation. I paddled the entire lake. With the curving perimeter, the lake slowly revealed itself as I went. At one point toward the top of the lake, I found an alcove/cave that offered such a beautiful reflection of the rippling water waves and light. 

The silence was immersive except for the birdsong of swallows, who make their home in the rock wall. As I paddled up the lake, hugging the lake's rock edge, the swallows would leave their homes, erupting in song and circling in a frenzy before flying off further or waiting for me to be far enough away to return home. 

.t h i r t y n i n e.

 

 

I took a quick one-night solo camp trip to celebrate the beginning of my 39th year. I ventured to a new place, not far, but somewhere I've not been before, although it is on maybe my favorite stretch of highway in Central Washington between Coulee City and Grand Coulee. The landscape is just awe-inspiring. Surrounded by basalt rock formations and Banks Lake, rabbitbrush covers the land, along with dunes, and the entrance to the park has towering mullein that looks mystical in its striking height. 

I kayaked on the lake but hit a bit of a storm, so I already have plans to return to explore more. The rain stopped in the evening enough for a walk around. You can see the golden glow of the sunset in the pictures. I've been reading Osho, and he talks about the miracle of joy, not to take it for granted or fear it. I walked the campground with a mantra of "I'm grateful for the miracle of joy and connection." 

It has been a year of reconnecting - with myself and the people from whom I've disconnected. I'm so grateful for those moments over the past year. I'm open to what comes this year. I think that's my word for my 39th year - OPEN. It feels symbolic in some weird way, the last year before a new decade. I want to stay open to it all. 

.sunday explorations.

I explored a new part of Central Washington this weekend. There's something about being totally immersed/absorbed in land so vast that scale and distance is totally distorted and you feel like you've been swallowed by it all. Walking through the vast fields of grass and basalt columns, you can't help but be totally transported into a new reality, for a moment. 

It's so vast and there's so little that I could see or know. It made me think about perspective and our lived experience, how this world is so much bigger - wider- and deeper than I'll ever know. How can I from my tiny corner of experience zoom out to see more - to take more in - to live from a bigger place? It was such a perspective shift and on a beautiful full sun day after such a long dark winter. 

.rabbitbrush in the snow.

 

Seasons always bring new eyes. I went on a walk after a snowstorm this weekend. Despite the countless times I've walked a path or taken in a view, a new season always makes it feel renewed. The snow-covered foothills seem to transform the dull yellow/golden grasses of October to a luminous hue in contrast to the crisp white palette. As I made my way, climbing up the foothills, there, barely peeking out of the fresh heavy snow, slowly emerging was my favorite, rabbitbrush. A shrub-steppe native that brilliantly radiates in the scorching dry day of summers and still manages to persisting in 20-degree snowy inches. 

What are you noticing in this new season?