Dyed and eaten

On Saturday 6 June I went to an indigo dyeing workshop run by Anna & Juan (who are really Luzius and Josefina).

I had great fun chatting to the other five women there, and thankfully everyone had great English so they were able to run the workshop without me getting totally lost.

We went through the history of blue dyes, the plants that produce indigo and other less useful dyes, and how to extract the pigment from the plant and make it water soluble. We then went through the process of activating a dyeing tank - surprisingly smelly! - and folding our pieces of cotton and silk to create dyed and undyed areas.


First try, fabric folded up accordion-fashion into a thin strip and then folded again, held with a clothes peg.

Folded into a strip as before, then into triangles, held with a long thin clip.

Long thin strip folded in half and rolled, held with two elastic bands.

And finally the big one! A large piece of silk, folded into a strip and then into squares like the first piece, with two pieces of wood clamped with two clips covering the centre.

The venue was pretty interesting too, with a metalworking workshop amongst other things.

We also had the year's first home-grown salad - Swiss chard, mustard leaves, spicy mixed leaves and radishes all grown on the balcony!

And the pumpkins look like they're trying to take over the world.

Shisotastic

Normally, my attempts to grow shiso go something like this.

These are the seeds I got from a UK supplier, whose salad seeds have done really well.

Seeds from a 100 yen shop. (Yes, they do sell just about everything.) Doing a little better.

And then, in a class of their own, the Japan Agriculture co-op seeds that Dawn brought me.

Look at that carpet!

There were so many in the self-watering pot (which clued me in to how much water they wanted) that I divided them into several other pots - some terracotta ones and bigger self-watering ones.

I'm so delighted to see the seedlings, I don't want to waste any... I got some trays and picked some out from the big box but didn't even make a dent after taking out over 50...

The pumpkins are bigger every time I look.

And the salad leaves at the back look ready for harvest! The radishes in the front are nearly there too.

There's a little visitor on my mint, but I'll leave him be.

We saw the "After Eight" chocolate mint last year in the Bern botanical gardens, and looked for one for ages but couldn't find seeds, only live plants that we couldn't order by post to Switzerland. But one finally turned up in the local garden centre!

It was in a bit of a sorry state, and very root-bound. Some of the roots weren't sure if they were roots or branches, they were above ground and developing leaves.

It's now been cleaned up, split up and planted in three separate pots, so fingers crossed it does well. It smells amazing. ^__^

I also repotted the lavender, which is looking good, and the jade plant cuttings, and moved the Ikea tomato and basil and pepper and thyme plants into their grow bags. More to do, but need to get this week's exam out of the way first...