Herb of the Year- Hops

Hops would not be the first thing to come to mind when you think of herbs, but this is 2018 "herb of the year" so my Herb Society's first meeting of the year was to begin to learn all it's secrets.
A side from imparting a bitter & tangy flavor to beer, hops has a rich tradition in medical use, mainly for anxiety, sleeplessness and poor digestion.
Hops tea is recommended as a mild sedative and remedy for insomnia. A pillow filled with hops was used to encourage sleep.

Hops are the cone like, fruit bodies (strobilles) of the plant, a large vine, the female vine is the one that produce the flowers.

These were from last fall, they are so cute!
In the manufacturing, the hops extract is used in skin creams & lotions.
At our meeting we made hops flower toner! Very refreshing this time of year with the dry houses. Here's a simple recipe to make your own.

1/3 cup of hop flowers

1/2 cup of boiling water
1 teaspoon witch hazel.
Pour boiling water over the flowers, let seep a half hour.

Strain out flowers, let hop infused water cool, add the witch hazel.

Dab the hop tea with a cotton ball onto a clean face for a nice facial toner. Store in tightly caped bottle in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

In our research it talked about the leave and flower heads had been used to produce a brown dye.

So I simmered some flowers and added alum mordanted wool to the pot,
this is the color I got, it's a little deeper yellow than the picture shows, the color looks like the delicate flowers.
I had a hard time getting a correct color picture.

Dyeing with Poinsettia flowers

The holidays were over and it was time to see what colors could be coaxed from my red poinsettia.

I laid them out on silk and wool (all premordanted with alum and cream of tarter).

Some of the red brackets I froze a few days ahead of time, I laid them out on silk. The dyes started coming out immediately.
Some I rolled up around narrow PVC pipe.
(not a great idea as the writing from the pipe printed on the fabric.

Some I bundled how I normally do. Some I dipped in iron water before bundling. I tried many different methods including spraying them with vinegar.

I lit a fire in my studio and put a large pot of bundles on to steam.

Steamed some of them a few hours then left them over night. Some of the silks with the frozen flowers I just left bundled placing them under a heavy bucket of water to process. I left them all a week before I washed them out.

These have been washed but are still wet.

The wool: the red brackets became dark green and the leaves yellow.
The colors remind me of how red maple leaves in the fall print.

This silk I believe I sprayed with vinegar. When it dried it wasn't quite so red, darn.

 

Silks with the frozen red brackets. I believe the one on the left was sprayed with vinegar. I didn't do well labeling them.

The collection.

Tuesday night as I drove home from Herb Society, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a Meteor falling from the sky!!
At first I thought it must be fireworks with the red glow, but no it was a meteor, when I got home the internet was lit up with people and cameras who saw it.
Last night I "recorded" it for my moon journal quilt. The background I indigo dyed with a resist moon, I hand stitched in meteor's path, the moon beams and crystal stars, with the meteor itself being a piece of mica I collected from the Black Hills of South Dakota.
(This is setting on an antique quilt for the picture).

Another journal piece I made from this summer's eclipse!

 

     They both will be added to the journal quilt. My first stitched moon recorded was in 2010. No plans yet to stitch it all together, I'll just keep stitching more blocks!

Mother Nature Weaving under the Super Moon

Who could ask for more from the moon, Full Wolf Super Moon to start the New year
with another full moon to end the month!

Early morning I went out, clear and cold, the moon just above our tree tops!

The solar lights on my loom twinkling.

And later in the morning with record snowfall and lots more to come I
bundled up and out I went to enjoy the world.

I didn't do well on my earth loom last year, but Mother Nature did
wonderfully!

Miss Bittersweet wound herself all through the warp, and Mother Nature filled it with
clouds of snow. It looks perfect.

Close up you may be able to see how well the indigo wool held up through the long hot summer.
Also under the snow the "dyers coreopsis" held it's color too!
(not the cream wool, not sure what that was)
My loom faces south so it gets sun all day.

My dyers garden asleep under the snow.
We have another big snow storm coming in with bitter cold, perfect weather for hand quilting!