My dear friend Annalie Young who is a very talented photographer maintains a blog here where she showcases her work; wedding, personal as well as some really great creative stuff (well, it's all creative), like this week's advent calendar which she made herself from her personal stash of origami paper.  I love that her blog is full of beautiful images of varying nature, all of which belong to her.  Right now my fave is this diptych of a cow she met in the Netherlands at the beginning of the year. 

Tomorrow I will have an outside installation as part of journees des bons voisins on St. Viateur West.  Artists and other participants each occupy a parking space between Jeanne-Mance and St. Urbain.  Mine will have a participatory installation in it, kind of like Traces, with a twist.  Come visit between 11 and 8.



Here is the text from their website to give you an idea of what it's all about:

Following the highly successful 2010 edition, ruePublique, formerly Car Free Mile-End, will once again organize les Journées des bons voisins on St Viateur West.  The third and final event of the summer will take place Sunday, September 18th, from 11 am to 8 pm. The main objective is to celebrate the best aspects of enhanced public space, as well as to promote Mile-End’s strengths: sense of community, creativity and conviviality.

The programming will include bike repair workshops, music, yoga in the street, kiosks animated by community groups, youth and physical activities organized by the YMCA, public art, as well as participation by local merchants.

       

My most recent eco-colour adventure included an epic bike ride with the hubby.  Epic, since it resulted in us getting lost in Montreal...or off Montreal rather.  We thought we were in Verdun, and when we asked for directions for the city centre of Verdun (for eats) we were given directions off the island--Nuns Island.  We were pretty amazed that we ended up on another island without knowing it.  It was a long ride to say the least.

On this island was a large patch of dark red leafy plants which I decided would be included in my next cold-bundle, along with some yellow onion skins we have been collecting during meal making.  I wrapped the two in dry mordanted silk, wet it and then sat it in a shallow pool of brazilwood dye-stock-solution for a week.  This morning I unwrapped it and VOILA!  Happy day.

Happy Janna

From the marche to the jars, I'm loving all the stages of canning.  This past weekend we did tomatoes.  Here are some of my photos from the process,  and bellow the tomato canning assembly line.

I'm so happy living in Montreal, only a couple of blocks from Marche Jean Talon.  So much culture, and so much colour this time of year.

Some lovely ladies in my life have recently inspired me to revisit natural dyeing.  While  visiting the great white north my friend Sasha gave me one her wonderful indigo dyed silk scarves (which I wore all summer and decided I needed more in various colours) and  I finally got to see Marja's eco-printed silk garments in person.  She has been keeping me inspired all year with photos of her new adventures in eco-printing, a technique which master-dyer India Flint has recently published a book about, Eco Colour (a really great book!).

So when I returned to Vancouver for my long awaited month long vacation I began experimenting with this new technique.  Oh what fun it is!  Seriously, of all the techniques I've experimented with recently eco-printing has made me the most excited.  The process is simple and yet varied so you can get really creative, and the results are always unpredictable and exquisite.  Each scarf has little details which change in different light sources (a characteristic of naturally dyed fabrics), so sadly it's really hard to capture these intricacies in photos.  Above are a small selection of ones whose beauty were captured half-decently.

Click on the photos for individual stories.

xo Janna