more than twice the price

there is a way of looking at the true cost of a thing 

that takes into consideration the cost of every aspect of what it took to bring it into being, not just the materials and labour 

a  factoring in of the cost of the education or life experiences required to develop the idea

or the same in reference to inventing/developing the raw materials

the cost of building the roadways or rail tracks to deliver the finished product, not just the cost of the actual transport

but another way of looking at the true cost of a thing is to also consider the price you will pay to make use of the thing you acquire - the cost of the time it will take you to read the book you just bought

or to buy the bookcase you'll need to store it

this week I discovered the true cost of one of my favourite things to do in my art practice - collect materials to make paint, ink and dye in a bid to bring "local colour"  into the materials I use in my work 

during my recent travels to the Yukon and Oregon there was an abundance of natural materials available in the landscape that I could use in making art

acorns, whole plus already separated caps

bark from the Madrone or "Arbutus" tree

dried rosehips

wild yarrow

swan feathers

oak galls

in less than an hour one afternoon at the farm I gathered enough acorn caps and madrone bark to fill a large brown paper bag

last week I decided to get busy with them

five days later I finally finished tagging and photographing a good sized collection of fibres dyed with natural dyes of my own making

and what a long, drawn-out messy business it was

a friend asked me the other night why I found it messy

I had to think for a minute and as I typed my response I began to laugh... no bloody wonder I found it to be messy...

I seem to like to work in a manner where I do everything all at once so...  as I was working with silk, cotton and wool fibres I needed two different mordants, one a hot process, the other a mix of cold and hot

and then there were three different dyes to prepare... acorn cap silver grey, a golden madrone, and the pinky-gold rose hip

plus some acorn cap silver grey ink

and why not a lake pigment with the madrone dye so I could make watercolour paint

 since there was a large quantity of good strong dye what about tossing in a few pieces of linen cloth?

what about making some in to greyed threads done with an iron-water dip 

a messy business?

well, fair enough

this was the also the first time I've worked through the dyeing process properly: weighing the dyestuff and threads, doing a proper mordant, preparing samples, recording method and so on

a lot of work but such good results

below is the acorn cap silver grey dyed fibres

from left: wool (from "Jack" the sheep), twisted silk, and four different white/off-white DMC 6 stranded embroidery threads

these were all dipped in iron water the day after they were dyed

the fibres below are the madrone dye with an iron-water dip the day after

the top four are the same DMC embroidery threads, again in base colours of white or off-white, the bottom hank is silk

and this last group is a second set of madrone, left in their beautiful golden state, no iron

from left: Jack's wool, two skeins of silk (one left in the dye much longer than the other) and four of the same DMC threads as the other two groups

I love the colour variations using different base colours gives

(the ones I used were "Blanc", 3865, 822, 644 and 648)

after they were all twisted into skeins I labelled each and then wrote the methods used in my dye journal and added samples of each

nice to have that record should I want to do this again...

it just won't be for a very long time!

it took less than an hour to gather the materials and approx. 50 hours to do all of the preparation, make the dyes and mordants and then do all the finishing work once the fibres were coloured

 the true cost