I had written earlier about wanting to try working with woad. I had very much liked dyeing paper with indigo but woad, or pastel as it's known round this way seems rather exciting. In my usual fashion however, I bought the woad pigment and the left it sitting there in the large pile of stuff-waiting-to-be-done.
In the meantime I attempted to dye some silk paper, shibori style with red cabbage. Too purple, too vivid, and not very light fast. Next, not wanting to waste the sage bush prunings from the garden I made a dyebath from those. This is more like it. It dyed the silk paper a beautiful, subtle grey-green. Instead of scrunching and folding the paper, I stuck it with masking tape to some acid free paper before dunking. Once it had dried I could then easily put it through the typewriter*
Whoosh! Fast forward a few weeks and a request for some bookmarks. I thought woad might be good for these given the local connection, so made up the dye stock and using some lovely deckled edged, recycled paper, a lot of trial, error and swearing I devised a great method of dip dye. I found out that indigo works much quicker than woad and I needed to keep the paper immersed and still for quite a while. Not to mention trying to keep the temperature up, not allowing it to dip below about 30°C.
I got a large and narrow 500ml/1pt jam jar with a screw lid to make up the dye bath and by making a bain marie with a large pan I could keep the temperature up. I dampened the bookmarks very slightly first just using a water spray to help the dye to bleed. I found if I soaked them completely in water they buckled and warped too much. I put paper clips at the top of the bookmarks and straightened out the ends of some others to make little hooks that fitted snugly over the side of the jar lip. I could then immerse 3 at a time, put the lid on and leave them for about 15 minutes, topping up the pan with hot water if necessary.
Once dipped I flattened them between sheets of kitchen paper under a heavy board to dry, before finally typing on them. My latest (literary) crushes are Jacques Prévert big time, Baudelaire and Apollinaire in smaller doses. I am SO over Beckett. For now.
I certainly prefer the woad results over the indigo. The colour is more delicate with an airiness, even fragility to it. It reminds me of blackbird eggs or perhaps even something imperceptible, like lying on your back in a gentle breeze looking at the sky ~ a favourite past time of mine.
I've now bought a packet of woad seeds, this climate here was made for growing the plants.
* If like me you're a typewriter geek, the one I'm using is a beautiful, classic Olivetti Lettera 22 that was found in a Marseille secondhand shop for next-to-nothing. The type is tiny, the alignment and the typebar letters are all wonky, which I love, as I love the loud clackety-clack and ting noises it makes.
