One thing I have always done with this blog is to limit it, to only talk about work, or things that closely resemble work. This year I’d like to share more than just work. I want to share personal projects, personal discoveries and dreams, and to not just limit the blog to things I make for sale.

My reason behind this is that every experience we have shapes who we are, and the things that we create. By only sharing work, I’m forcing myself to work inside such a rigid framework that it can be very hard to break out of – and I end up sharing nothing at all. Some of the things that shape my work never have their story told, and I’d like to share them.

Anyone who follows me on instagram knows that I am a huge knitter. I love it. Being able to knit has opened up a whole new world of fashion for me. The action of knitting, the patterns, the yarn have all combined to give me a new appreciation of clothing, fibres, textiles; and I’ve also gained new viewpoints on what fashion is, what sustainability is, and how this speaks to the environment. It’s changed my wider outlook on society as a whole, and has made me consider things like the economics of the wool industry, China, India, wages, animal rights, and the list goes on.

I also sew (obviously!), and I really love making my own clothes. There’s so much I don’t know, but I’d like to share those personal projects here as well. I don’t intend on ever designing or selling my own line of clothes, I’m just a dabbler, and I like well made simple outfits – stuff I rarely find at the shops. I also like to think about where my clothes came from – were the workers paid sufficiently? Do they have to work 12 hours a day to feed their family? Is the dye house taking environmental precautions? Where was it made? Do children work in the factory – etc. It seems much easier to circumnavigate these issues if i make as much as I can myself.

Gardening. As an adult I have been wanting to grow my own food for awhile – but as a renter I put it off. Whenever I began a garden we would inevitably end up having to move, and the loss was always such a downer that I vowed to not do it again until we owned our own home. Last October we found out that our landlords are quite happy living overseas thanks very much and don’t intend on moving back for at least a few more years – so we have some sort of permanence before we can buy something permanent!

So I started a garden. And I LOVE it. I’d go so far as to say it has become an obsession. It began as one garden bed (albeit a large one), and has grown in size and now encompasses 4 more raised beds, and 4 more garden beds. Yikes! It’s producing lots of veggies, and i think we will have more than we can eat. I hope to store some of it for over the winter, I need to learn about root cellars. So prepare yourselves to see my love of all things plant.

These are just some of the things I hope to share more of in 2016. I’m already dubbing this year “the year of personal projects”. I really plan on focusing a lot of energy making things for the joy of it, hopefully at a ratio of “one for me, one for you.”

I picked up the 3 strongest looking plants and have chosen a place in my front yard as their new home.

They are going to be separate to the rest of my dye garden, but this will actually be a good thing because they need half shade, and my main dye garden is going to be in full sun.

I started digging out a ruined garden bed in the front yard yesterday, and planted the Indigo with a few lillies nearby, as I just had some bulbs arrive as well. Lillies are one of my favourite flowers so I can’t wait for them to bloom! My jonquil garden is beginning to bloom in the bed next to where the Indigo is, so once the Indigo flowers as well in September my front yard will be a feast for sore eyes!

I think I will also plant some snap dragons and cottage flowers around the Indigo as well, to fill the bed up. Whatever I can find that will tolerate a bit of shade.

I’m also finally getting round to digging out the proper dye garden bed in the back yard. Since I’ve injured my shoulder (no idea how!) I’m hiring someone to rip out all the rubbish that is in it and then doing the rest myself. So hopefully in a few weeks I’ll have some lovely pictures of a dirt filled bed!

It’s funny, I’ve never been much of a gardener before I lived in the house we live in now. But looking out the window at my flowers, and going and inspecting them every day makes me think that now I wont be able to live without a garden!

Ok so most of these photos are of my flower garden. I can’t help it, it’s so pretty!!

Sadly it is not to be for a few weeks I imagine as I have other work that must be attended to first, but this is good in a way as it will allow me to really centre my thoughts on what I want to achieve with natural dyes, and where I want to begin. I will also have time to thoroughly devour this book. Look at these pictures! Amazing!

Speaking of beginning, I have been surveying my overgrown grass filled garden beds (previous tenants damn you!!) and have chosen this spot for my dye garden. You can see (below) that I’ve tried to kill off some of the grass and then just stopped. Well that is because a family of not so friendly European wasps is living next to that very last spindly gum tree on the right, so I am waiting for them to die in the cold weather before i destroy their nest and search out their eggs for destruction. This sounds very calculated and evil of me I know, but well, I don’t like wasps. They seem to be quite prolific around the suburb I live in too, and I’d like to at the very least partially eliminate them from my yard.

Then I will have to clear most of the grass before I prep the bed lasagna style for planting in spring. It frustrates me immensely that I have begun to take an interest in growing my own dyes right smack bang at the wrong time of the year!

Rita Buchanen’s book is also very interesting and is more gardening focused, I think I will rely on it quite a bit when I am planting. It’s already helped me choose my garden location, since most of the things I am planning on planting require full sun.

The biggest plus to the position of my dye garden is that just to the left of it (out of frame) lies the windows of my studio and a door straight onto the garden. So when I am actually working inside I will be able to look out at all that I have grown. What a feeling that will be.