Sunsets around the world

Tonight, while driving to pick up LA, there was a golden-red sunset in the west.  One of those that we described in Swedish as 'the sky is on fire" (himmelen står i brand). It made me think of other amazing sunsets I have seen around the world, and how amazing it is that a fireball far away affects our colors and emotions so much.  So, here is a trip around the world in sunsets:

 
Brazil, near Itaiaia National Park, between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, sunset on thunderclouds in the rainforest.


Costa Rica, over Palo Verde marshlands in early spring.


Sunset over Stockholm in September, Sweden (of course)


Chicago sunset, in Illinois, USA, out on Lake Michigan. A hot day in August.


Sourland Mountains, New Jersey, USA, with oaks and ash trees in the foreground.  Home. 

Green, brown, yellow and purple...

For the first time in my adult life I have tried to dye something, and it came out great!

 I have memories of dyeing a cotton scarf at a camp when I was maybe 12. The plant we used as dye was birch branches and aspen leaves. The people that used aspen got these really nice yellow scarves. We that were stuck with the birch got dirty light-green to beige scarves that looked old and worn... It was a major disappointment, especially since I had asked for permission to use the aspen, and the camp leaders said - no, we will split all groups in two parts, and you can't be in the other group. Why not? No idea. Probably some kind of semi-I-will-show-the-kids-I-have-the-power scheme.

Anyway, since then I have not dyed anything with natural colors that I can remember, and I am not counting stains from tomato sauce, blueberry jam, wine, or coffee on my shirts. In early summer I bought some undyed white silk scarves, white cotton yarn, and cleaned wool rowing (basically unspun naturally white wool). We got some books, and read and learned. The materials have to be pretreated with alum, a chemical, so the dye takes better, so I did that.

 Now, what to use as dye? I knew I wanted to make different colors, and base it on all natural, things I had at home.

The first batch was red onion skins. Who knew that red onion can give green colors!? Surprise! The colors showed in the book didn't really match what I got, and that is probably due to the chemistry of our well water. I also dyed some filter paper in this batch.
 
Second batch, coffee... Old coffee grains, cooked up again, filtered off, and then used as a dye bath. I think my coffee was pretty weak, so it became a light brown.
Third batch, yipeee, Turmeric! From the spice cabinet. What a color! Bright orange!!! Like, like, I don't know what. A living, deep orange.
Final fourth batch was a little test. Sometimes we have fresh blueberries from the store that go bad (=mold) in the fridge, so I had saved up a bag of them in our freezer. I cooked the berries down, filtered them, and then used the blueberry juice as a dye bath for 4 days. I had put the textiles and the dye liquid into an old orange juice bottle. Unfortunately I screwed on the top tight and left it out in the sun - after 4 days the bottle was ready to explode. Fermentation! :) Nothing got destroyed, and the colors of light purples are gorgeous.

The dyed wool and cotton yarn is now in Baltimore in AREA's artsy hands, to be used in some creative work. I can't wait to see what she will do with it.

What I learned?

• Always treat your fibers with mordant, then the colors will be better. 
• Don't hang the finished textiles for too long in the sun or they will become sunbleached. 
• Do not make fermented blueberry juice. 
• Big-mouthed orange juice plastic bottles are great for long-term dyeing.  No risk that an animal will drink it and you can shake it a lot to distribute the liquid well. 

Philadelphia Flower Show - expectations and omissions

Yesterday my friend JL and I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show, this annual, glorious, giant event of artificially designed horticultural plants and gardens. This was probably my 5th visit, and I am getting used to the feel now.

The show is divided up into three parts, broadly speaking.  The first part, where you enter the show, are giant installations focused on some theme, this year it was 'Britain, Brilliant'.  Don't ask me how Britain is brilliant, I have no idea who came up with that non-brilliant slogan.  Anyway, there was a giant Big Ben clock, the gates to Kensington or Buckingham palace, things associated to London Fog, spring bulbs, royal crowns, and red and purple.



In my humble opinion, this year's theme was a total miss.  I don't think these designers even know much about Britain.  And Britain isn't just London and its vicinities.  Where were the rolling hills, the hedgerows, the fossil-rich cliffs along the English Channel, the little tiny front gardens, where were Kew Gardens and their greenhouses, where were the amazing British botanists of times past (Hooker, to name just one).  Instead it was gold, crowns, red, and some stone castles.


The throne from the War of the Roses?

The second part are smaller installations of gardens from invited groups and companies and also a large area where amateurs bring in their best and most fantastic specimens of plant cultivars, and then compete against each other in different classes.  For example: "Best cactus", "Cymbidium orchid", 'Hanging fern", or "Miniature plant". Each category is judged and they give out awards, 1st prize, 2nd prize, etc.  It is fun to see these plants, but it is just like a dog show.  People pamper their plants, brush the hairs on the cactus, and obviously treat their plants with lots of nutrients, hormones, light or darkness, to get them to behave and look their best on their big day.


The succulent winners. 


A basket case design.
In this area are also the floral arrangements and botanical art made with pressed plants.  This year all art had to do with royalty.  I wonder how school children in the Republic of the United States feel about making a royal crown out of pressed flowers for display at an American show?  Maybe I am the only one that finds this strange?  The total obsession with royalty in this republic, in this day and age? 

The Philadelphia Horticultural Society, who are the ones that arrange this show, seems to be stuck in a previous century where ladies that had nothing better to do tended their roses and potted their geraniums.  Ok, maybe that is a bit harsh, but that is a feeling I get.  Conspicuously absent from the show (except from the commercial booths) was any displays that focused on the whole home-gardening and home-growing trend that is huge in USA right now. How to grow your own veggies, how to make your own food, how to be more sustainable, how to have gardens that can manage climate stress, storms, heaps of heavy snow in the winter, invasive species, native species, wildlife habitats, and so on.


This species is classified as an invasive species.  I doubt many knew that. 

Instead there are exhibits that are empty when it comes to ideas and messages.  Many exhibits felt like (as usual) "OK, lets put something yellow over there, and some red here, and then some rocks, and then we need something whimsical and a blue light, and some funky garden chair".  Nothing really designed.  No plants that go together.  Sarracenia next to daffodils?  Give me a break!  They would NEVER survive together, nor flower at the same time.  Everything is planted in straight rows, equally distant from each other, and it is the same plants over and over. Totally unnatural.  Where are the true designers?  Where are the people that understand plants' requirements, understand that simplicity and clear lines and naturalities are better than rainbow mess of botanical chaos?  Oh, it is so depressing.  And then the old ladies say 'oh-ah', and love it, and I think - well, this would never work in real life.


Spraypainted plants, plastic fence ties, and shredded paper.  Why?  What is the idea?  What does this mean?  It just looks ugly. It looks like spraypainted plants with plastic fence ties and shredded paper strips.


The hodgepodge table.

I have this idea that artists first come up with an idea and then the thing is how you present this idea, this message to the world.  How to you communicate via your art, communicate feelings, needs, information, thoughts...  Landscapers and horticulturalists also like to see themselves as artists of living things, they design, 'paint with flower colors', create beauty.  But the message or idea in these exhibits were totally lacking.  I have no idea what they wanted to say.  Many times there were no statement or not even a sign on who had created an exhibit either.  It just turns into a giant hodgepodge (a name that was used for one exhibit, in fact, very appropriate).

And many florists and garden designers seem to think that just throwing some glitter, neon plastic, or metallic beads into something makes it instantaneously better.  It doesn't.  It makes it look cheap. It makes it look like the designer went to Michael's craft store during their sale.

One great exception to this disappointment was Bartram's garden by the students from The Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades, who always have great exhibits. They put their exhibit, about 18th century plant exchanges between England and USA, in a great historical perspective and both educated and enjoyed the viewer.  Wonderful!


The final area, in the back, are hundreds of small booths from commercial sellers of horticultural products.  From jewelry to cut flowers, deck furniture to best cutter to cut up the tree that fell in the superstorm, seed packets and bulbs, and lots of items designed with garden themes.  This area was a lot of fun, and actually, this is where the modernization is taking place. 

OK, and now over to some interesting things we saw:

Michael Michaud's Botanical Jewelry


A lamp made by puzzle-piece shaped vinyl, by Infinity Lightning.  Really cool, and comes in many colors and shapes. 


Fantastic handmade clay tiles made by pressing live plants onto the surface.  Here is a fantastically beautiful weed, a thistle. The tiles are made by Symmetry Tile Works (Epping, NH)


This was probably the most beautiful thing, a simple line of birches.  

More things we saw will come in a later blogpost on new trends in the plant world...

PS.  My husband asked me yesterday 'since you are so upset and annoyed with this show, why do you keep on going?".  Well, because there are little gems here and there, and it is good to see bad stuff so you can identify the good stuff.  And also, so I can write about it, and hope that the Philadelphia Horticultural Society at some point decide to enter real time, with real world issues, and not just live in some romantic past with princesses, perfect lawns, and rich people's gardens. There is still hope!

Would I would like to see is a theme like 'Gardening and Climate Change - Plants under the weather', or 'Urban Gardening, plants for food and soul', or at least one little installation garden that is a little bit different and unexpected.  How about a garden just in blue or white, a garden just with dead plants, a garden based on Japan, a garden that looks real and is doable, a garden for tired parents and happy kids, a garden for touching plants and smelling them (there was one like that a few years back, it was great), or simply, 'McMansion gardens for sustainability and survival' (hehe!)).

So, dear PHS members, if you read this, please do something... try to shake the dinosaur skin and pearl necklaces off your bodies and do something different.  Just inviting school kids to grow geraniums is not really doing it...  even if it is a good first step.  Oh, and invite the person that made this garden to your show.  (Wij Gardens, a must-visit)

Click on a photo to get to the photo stream with more photos. 

American Craft Council Show in Baltimore, the good stuff

It all started with that I went to the Philadelphia Craft Show about two years ago and met the quilting artist Erin Wilson, whose work I love.  PP bought a little piece of her work for me (thanks) and from there it went down hill (which is a good thing!).  We saw her work again in May in Morven in Princeton, with several new pieces, including a quilt in green, browns, and reds that I am now the happy owner of!  I look at it every day. Here is a piece of it as a taste for you all.

And now Erin was exhibiting her new work again in Baltimore, at the American Craft Council Show.  I really have been pulled into the craft world through that first visit in Philadelphia. (Well, we also went to Baltimore to feed AREA who is in art school there :)

So, the American Craft Council Show is a giant thing, with maybe a thousand selected exhibitors. Everybody that is someone in the craft's world in the US is apparently there.   Everything is small-scale, handmade, and based on craft techniques.  Not everything has to be utilitarian, but I think the idea is that it has to be built on the idea of crafts in the past.  I am not sure, and I think the Craft Council isn't really sure either, because some things that I expected to see at this show are totally lacking.  More on that later some other time.  Now on to the good stuff.

Two new amazing quilts by Erin Wilson.  The white one reminds me of winter and fog...  What do you see?

I love the felt art by Danielle Gori-Montanelli. She cuts and glues felt together as legos, licorice pieces, flowers, rocks, and all kinds of other fantastic things.  Chocolate too!

Gayla Lee's glass pieces were fascinating. 

And this photo is for EH, look a bowl with painted geraniums! The bowls are made by Sherwood Forest Design. I think this was the only painted wooden bowls I saw there.  There was plenty of turned bowls in plain wood, but not much in this 'old-country' style.

This I like!  Michael Michaud takes nature's designs, mostly botanical, and cast jewelry pieces out of them.  I own several and love them!  Actually, right now when I write this I am wearing his lilac flower ear rings.

And here is my new find!  Andrea Haffner's designs, jewelry with natural twists and turns.  She collects natural objects, mostly plants, dries them them embeddes them in resin inside small metal boxes.  It is all handmade, unique, fantastic and gorgeous.I bought one of her small pendants, a darkblue box with a tiny mussel and three pearls inside, like a piece of a moonlit beach. [images from Andrea Haffner, used with permission]

There were many more interesting things to see, but I was running out of battery in my camera.  If you want to explore some more things we liked, check out: 

 Bryan Hopkins, Functional and Dysfunctional Porcelain

Robert Woldow, glass

Deborah and Richard Bloom, obsidian windchimes

Holly Tornheim, wood carvings

Liz Alpert Fay, hooked rugs and much more

Wendy Stevens, metal handbags

Laura Baring-Gould Studios, bronze sculptures

JAK designs and their tulip scarves

The not so great stuff gets a separate blog post at some other time, maybe, maybe not.  We will see.

Color.... dyes from our food

There is a great little article in a New York Times issue about how to use food scraps to dye shirts and towels with onions, cabbage, curry or whatever is left over in the kitchen.  Fascinating. An earlier article talk about dye plants available in the garden. such as marigolds, Oxalis, and madder (Rubia, which of course makes red).

The article ends with these words, which I like a lot:

Will these gorgeous new hues be permanent? Short answer: who knows? If it’s any consolation, on a celestial scale, nothing lasts. Cosmologists suggest the universe has passed through its own dye bath over the eons, shifting from bluish to reddish.

How often do you see the physical phenomenon of red shift being mentioned in a craft article? :) Nice.

Now I want to go out and boil up lots of weeds, but it is winter...

if the trains come...

Yell-low line, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

... then you have to yell before you become low on the track - look here to get it...

Favorite artist: Erin Wilson, quilting queen

An artist grows in Brooklyn and her name is Erin Wilson.  We saw her work for the first time at the Philadelphia Craft Show in 2011, where her large quilts of tiny, tiny pieces of handdyed, stitched pieces of fabric caught my attention and drew me in.  I love them!  The photo above is borrowed from her website, and shows one piece of a much larger quilt.  The patterns, geometric, but also natural and slightly random invokes fantasy, imagery, and emotions in a way that no textile work ever has before for me.  Here you have architecture, geology, interior designs, sailing, machines, factories, trees, shapes, and tepees, all at once - and what one person sees is not the same as the next.  Simply wonderful!  Expensive too, so I never thought I would own any of her work. (photo above, copyright Erin Wilson)

After we came home from the Philadelphia show, my husband gave me a package and in it was, you guessed it, one of her miniquilts, a 2 x 2 block mounted neatly on a wood frame for hanging on the wall.  Here it is!  What do you see?  I love it and it is now at home in our newly renovated guestroom/office.  This is really creativity at its best.  Thank you Erin for sharing this with us.

 

And then, right after Christmas we got a little brown package in the mail.  Hmm, we thought, wonder what this is.  Erin sent us a quilted tree ornament, just like that!  What an incredibly wonderful surprise!!!  When I see this I think about the power of red love, how it cracks through hard rocks and layers. Others might see the Washington Monument at sunrise, or a rocket at the Florida seashore... the impressions and feelings and interpretations are endless.

Dear Erin, Thank You so much for sharing your work and love for fabric with us.  You are absolutely amazing! We love your work and will buy more of it, promise.  Looking at these quilts make me so happy!

 (Now, go over and visit her website and GET LOST IN COLOR AND SHAPES)

looking in...

morning glory studies, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

... into the center of a morning glory (blomman för dagen).

Ipomoea (Convolvulaceae)

morgning glories, Ipomoea (Convolvulaceae), originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Our morning glories [blomman för dagen], self-seeded weeds in our vegetable garden, are especially gorgeous this year. Well, we will see how great they look after the storm.

A Swedish flower?

Curls, originally uploaded by mycologie.

Color-wise certainly.

Not what I expected

blurry, like a painting, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

...but still really nice. This is what happens when you take a photo of a stained glass window at low light and have a slightly shaky hand. You get a photo that looks like it was painted in oil, blurry by design. The window is in the Princeton University Cathedral.

Rainbow laundry

clothes pins, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

This photo from KV's laundry rack in their backyard in Sweden was just selected as Sweden picture of the Day by the Swedish government. Fun!

Report from spring: Philadelphia Flower Show 2011 (LP = Long Post)

Before I left for Costa Rica I managed to squeeze in a daytrip to the annual, international, famous, fashionable, and extravagant Philadelphia Flower Show to check out what is going on in the world of horticulture and gardening.

 These shows have three components.  Two are competitions, one are large or small installations of gardens or other plant-themed exhibits, flower arrangements, themes, and so on.  The other competition is which can grow the largest Hoya with the most green leaves, largest Christmas cactus in perfect symmetry, or smallest rock garden (and so on, in perpetuity).  I am sure they have at least 200 classes you can compete in.  Only the best plants are shown, so there must be a lot of weeding done by the judges among the submissions early on.

The last part, is a giant area with vendors selling everything that have to do with flowers - tools, seeds, knick-knacks, salad dressings, ugly garden decorations, deer fencing, super cutters, and water hose attachments. Yes, I did spend some money, mostly on seeds :)  Strange, there are really no books for sale here, which makes no sense to me.

This year's theme was Springtime in Paris, which was followed by some, but not all exhibitors.  In fact, the winner of Best in Show for major exhibits showcased a fishing cabin in a bayou in Louisiana (OK, that is kind of French, but neither spring nor Paris).  Outside it was freezing, and inside the convention center it was flowers, flowers, flowers.  And people, thousands. Here are some personal reflections on this type of living botanical art (and science).

Making a flower arrangement inspired by a dress?  No problem.

We are having a ball!

This painting is 'painted' with only pressed plants.

A touch-feel garden table for blind people - horticultural therapy in action and a wonderful thing for all.

 

And the winner is.....  this!  Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades did a great job, but it is too clean!  Make it look worn and old and more real... that would have been even more charming.  But I realize that control over dirt might be something many horticultural people love, so the cleaner the better in their minds....

These handmade glass vases were nice and are for hanging on a wall.

The 'Paris Underground' flower design contest was interesting in its macabre combination of skulls, metals, blood and flowers.  National Geographic just had an article on the catacombs under Paris, and what they do and did with all those bones....

A bit overdone and overwrought?  Nah, this is America. No wait, it is Paris, right!

Something pink for all the girls and ladies.  I have no idea what this was inspired by.  Often when I go to these shows I wish the designers used less of everything.  It often turns into a mishmash of large and colorful plants, but not particularly beautiful. Just like many American Christmas trees - more color, larger is better...

This got many ohs and ahs by the flower ladies.  I didn't like it at all (that is why I took a photo of it!). Why throw cheap junkglitterish from China onto nice flowers?  This is just like when they spraypaint little living cedar trees with glitter and sell them in the stores at Christmas.  Come on, fake is not better. (more examples, here and here). It looks so cheap, don't they get that?

Next time, bring a flower to a friend.

Now this was cool and different.  You get some junk and garbage together, some cutting tools, and a spotlight, and whips, and you have created a can-can girls out of cans. Michael Bruce had four installations and they were all fantastic and unusual. Innovative and wonderful.

This I loved and it was made by Groundswell, a company not far from where we live.  A fake tree allee, supposedly from Monet's garden, but reinterpreted as cedar trunks standing in water with blue fake waterlily leaves, red gold fishes, and dripping water from the tree branches and leaves above.  Creative and very different.  And very dark, too dark to get good photos. 

What are the daffodils doing out in the Pine Barrens when you are camping?  Did you plant them there last year and then came back to camp at the same spot just to look at some Narcissus? Even the pine needles on the old army tent were over-arranged, probably with tweezers.  Come on! Garden designers are sometimes so crazy about the colors that they put together plants based on their colors, not on where they can or should grow.  Many landscape architecture students know very little about plants, and design with 'red bush, 2 feet tall', instead of knowing the plants and their natural shapes and forms and environmental requirements.  Oh, there was a tiny pond in this sandy pineforest exhibit too, about one-two square meter, and guess what - there was a fishing rod rigged up by it.  Fish in a tiny pond like that in the pine barrens?  The pink ladies loved the whole thing - so romantic... I didn't.

La Vie en Rose - is this conceptual flower art?  This didn't do much for me, but kind of cool.

This was inspired by the movie An American in Paris. I don't know what it represents, I guess I have to watch the movie again. Skirts and legs maybe?

Superpredictable and ugly. Keep it more simple.

Now this kind of overdone coloring on the design palette I can understand, because this is supposed to be a Parisian Florist Shop.  You go here to pick out a few select colored things to bring home from a vast variety of colors, shapes, and scents.

Carousel animal made from flowers. What do you think? Any opinions?

All my show photos are here if you want to see more.