The saturation of the back harbour trail is slowly bumping up…truly a balm for this colour junkie. What a strange thing that these refracted light rays can make us want to dance, or alternatively, pull the blankets over our heads until the sun reappears. As I breathe in the sun drenched yellows from the forsythias, the spring green foliage from the lupins, with their campaign promises of purples and pinks, and the sky’s other worldly blue, I realize that colour is what has guided me through my life.

When I was 11 years old, my parents came to visit my two brothers and I at summer camp. They had teased us in a letter that they had a big surprise for us. The news? They had bought a colour TV. The most interesting thing about this memory is that it became a memory. Our brains hold on to the events that most impress us. This transition from black and white to colour made the cut. Now I understand why.

Colour, in nature, architecture, clothing, everywhere and anywhere, is the food that feeds me. In my early childhood I lived in Montreal in a house with a red door on a street with other colourful doors. The street was my world and I Ioved it. My days were spent with a gaggle of children cruising up and down Dornal avenue on my CCM bike, tassels on the handle bars and a hockey card in the spokes to simulate the sound of a motor. When the sun was setting, it was that red door that was always there to welcome me home.

When I was nine we moved to a Toronto neighbourhood, built in the 1950s. It was filled with beige brick houses. While I have many happy memories there, particularly of my time spent in the two Maple trees in our front yard, I also remember thinking, I gotta get out of here. By the age of ten I was taking public transportation downtown, drawn to where the colour was.

Colour eventually led me to move to Marblehead, Massachusetts, a town that looks like you have stepped inside a fairy tale. It was there that that I met Tony.

Years later, a photo of the bright red, iconic, Adam’s and Knickle buildings, led us to Lunenburg, whose beautiful painted homes, walking trails, harbour, and light angles, sustain me and inspire me to put some of that colour back into the world.

I have been dyeing my own fabric for decades, mostly because I haven’t been able to find the colours that exist in my mind. To be perfectly honest, I don’t enjoy dyeing with synthetic dyes. The end result has been worth it to me, but my inner voice is always threatening to quit. Natural dyes, on the other hand, are a complete joy for me. From the gathering of flowers, the making of the dyes, the floral and woodsy smells, and the mystery of what colours I will achieve, I am happy from start to finish. Natural dyeing is infinitely more time consuming than synthetic dyeing and factoring that cost into my work has been an issue, but this year has been a turning point. I am slowly working towards only natural dyeing.

Life is simply too short to be doing something I don’t enjoy. The connection that this ancient craft gives me to the natural world, is priceless.

To get to this decision, I had to become comfortable with the fact that I am doing this for myself. When I stand at a market, or when people visit me in my studio, what they see is colour, not how the colour got there. I do try to explain my process, but what is very exciting to me can be quite boring to someone who just wants to admire a pretty hat. I try to be mindful of boring colour rants, but sometimes my enthusiasm gets the better of me. Apologies if you have unwittingly been held captive by an unsolicited lecture on natural dyes.

I have shared three photos of three different naturally dyed scarves on my loom. There will be one more before the warp is used up. I’m so excited to finish these. You may be happy to hear that I am starting to imagine handwoven hats. Up till this point, the idea of cutting into the fabric I am making has felt perilous, but I think I will get there. Right now I’m enjoying something that doesn’t produce fabric scrap.

What to do with my fabric scraps is always a question. My latest strategy has been to sew two squares, cut from old sheets together, leaving a small opening. As I sew, knit, weave and spin, I stuff the tiniest of the scraps into the pillow and when it is filled, I make a pretty pillow case. The squares in the centre of these pillows were my first handwoven projects, both made from hand spun yarn. I love how putting a frame around them turns them into a piece of art. They are being well used in the evenings…..

…as I end my days curled up on the couch, knitting a sweater. This motif is what happens when you can’t get your nose out of old weaving books. Knitting meets weaving. It was bound to happen.

Well, that’s all I have to share with you for now. As always, thank you for spending some time with me.

xoxo

Anna