To Scour or not to Scour? A Galling question....

2018 was off to a good start as soon as I unloaded my van in preparation for the Sturt Summer School. I had a full class of students eager to learn the basics of natural dyeing and then to progress to mordant printing.

One of the most important aspects of all dyeing is the preparation of the cloth beforehand.  All too often we are in such a hurry, we misinterpret 'scouring' to mean "a quick rinse or wash in the washing machine".  Whilst any preparation has to be better than nothing on store-bought fabric, failure to take the time to ensure the fabric is free from grease, oils, dirt and sizing will result in patchy and uneven dyeing, leading to disappointment and waste of time and materials.

Below is a photo of already-whiter-than-white PFP (Prepared for Printing) linen tea-towels that I buy to print on with pigments. The water-based printing emulsion is mixed with concentrated fabric pigments which are screen-printed with a design. Once perfectly dry, the tea-towels are heat-set to bond the resin-based print-paste to the fabric.  It will only ever sit on the surface of the fabric, not inside the fibres as in dyeing.

However, in order to dye these tea-towels (in either natural or synthetic dyes) they must be scoured thoroughly first.  I figured not much would happen but at least I was doing a practical demonstration of the scouring process to the students, most of whom were beginners. 

Was I wrong!! The photo below shows the water that the 5 teatowels were scoured in - can you believe the colour of it - almost looks like a dye itself!!! After this photo was taken I started the process again and scoured the tea-towels a second time. The second lot of scouring water was paler than the first, but not entirely clean.  Given that each scouring should take around 2 hours, we rinsed them and went onto Galling the linen in a Gall Nut soak before we could mordant them the following day. This demonstration clearly shows that whilst the linen tea-towels may be PFP, they are not PFD (Prepared for Dyeing). This is an important distinction if you are buying fabric from a wholesaler to dye with.

Scouring water from the white linen tea-towels

Another important process in fibre preparation for immerse dyeing that is commonly omitted for cotton is the galling or tanning of the fabric or fibre before dyeing. This process literally 'tans' the cloth so that the mordant will attach more readily to the fibre, which in turn attracts the dye. I must admit that I have been a culprit in the past, but Joy Boutrup and Catharine Ellis converted me to galling  cotton when I attended a two week intensive course with them back in 2013. Galling can be done with a number of different plants but I prefer to use the Gall Nut method as it is fairly colourless.

I set up several experiments using store-bought tabby weave cotton fabric;  fabric that had been untreated and unwashed; fabric that had been unwashed, unscoured but mordanted in alum;  fabric that had been scoured and mordanted in alum; fabric that had been scoured and mordanted in Symplocos; and fabric that had been scoured, tanned in Gall Nut and then mordanted in Symplocos. We then dyed the pieces of fabric in a Weld extract dyebath for one hour and observed the differences between them once the samples had been washed, dried and ironed. 

The richest colour and most evenly dyed sample was, not surprisingly, the one that had been scoured, tanned and mordanted in Symplocos.  About one shade behind were the scoured and mordanted samples and the cloth that had been neither washed, scoured nor mordanted was the worst dyed sample of the lot. The differences were easily seen by eye, however did not really show up on camera, hence no photos.

In theory we should also have done a test that included a step with Turkey Red oil for the cotton, but in a 4-day workshop this was unfortunately one step too many!

In my next post I will show some examples of what the student's achieved in the four days, or if you are on Instagram I have posted a few of them @julierydertextiles.

Selamat tinggal

As you read this blog, I will either be on my way to KLIA airport to catch my flight home, stuck in a plane, or already back in Canberra after my three-months residency at  Rimbun Dahan.  So....I am making this post a huge textile-related one full of colour, natural dyeing and excursions out of the kampung!

My last week here got off to a great start when I organised an appointment to visit  the Institute Kraf Negara at Rawang, which is about half an hour's drive from Rimbun Dahan.  I had been trying to organise a visit for several months, and finally made a time to suit everyone.  Angela was intrigued to visit as well, so we had a couple of hours touring the IKN campus with the Director and several textiles staff.  You can find out more from their website if you click on the link above, but basically IKN is funded to teach students aged between 18-25 technical skills and design in the areas of weaving, batik, ceramics, metalwork,woodwork and rattan and bamboo. It is a 2-year course offering both Certificate and Diploma qualifications, and focuses on the students becoming self employed as craftspeople.

The entrance of IKN in Rawang with inspirational surroundings

The campus is quite large and all 400+ students live-in, so there are no external distractions for them!

Their ceremonial drums and painted walls to the left provide a lively and colourful environment.

The first workshop we visited was the weaving area where they teach songket and ikat weaving as well as dyeing with natural and synthetic dyes.  Here you can see one student has started painting her warp with Remazol dyes for weaving.  The warps are spread out onto the floor on plastic and sectioned off - on the right is a small portion for colour testing and on the left her marine-inspired painting.  These warps were about 3-4m long in total.

Preparing painted warps for weaving

Once the warp has been painted and the dyes are fixed, the warp is threaded onto the loom in order to begin weaving.

Weaving the painted warp; and students plotting their designs onto graph paper on the floor

 Beginners may design and weave songket panels that will later be framed as wall pieces; whereas more experienced students will dye threads for weaving metres of fabric for wearables such as selandang (shawls) or kain sarung (sarong) or fabrics for shoes and bags or products for the home.

A selendang woven with natural dyes  and metallic thread

The long selendang above was dyed with Mangrove Bark and lime. Below is another example of naturally dyed songket, however my photo does not really do the subtle colours justice.

Next we were taken on a tour of the batik workshops.  Some students were busy preparing fabrics for the semi-finals of the  Piala Seri Endon batik competition, so I can't show you those, but here are photos of the facilities and other work.  A friend of mine, Eddie Yap, is one of the judges of the PSE and will be giving a talk about his work at the Muzium Textil Negara on Thursday 31st October. 

Batik is one of the popular workshops so the facilities are great, with a portable gas burner for each student to heat the wax for their tjanting. 

Rows of adjustable stretchers for silk batik, with stretched fabric on the right.

The tjanting is used for batik tulis, or hand-drawn batik, whereas the cap is used for block printing repeating designs, and is done on a solid surface rather than the stretchers. Here is an example of preparatory dye-testing with Remazol dyes.  Each student must develop their own colour palette and keep detailed recipe books of the dyes they mix so that the colours can be repeated again.

Example of a student colour palette using Remazols.

Angela and I also went to the Gallery space where the examples of final work by students was showing.  I cannot show you photos of those on this public blog (great songket shoes and bags!), but I CAN show you a photo of this silk batik tulis sarong that I bought at the exhibition painted with Remazol dyes. Again, the colours may not look quite right on this blog but they all work together well.

Here is a small detail of this beautifully coloured and finely drawn batik. 

And here is a stunning example of batik tulis dyed with natural dyes from the Batik Workshop. This cloth was about 4 metres long and also incorporated shibori techniques into the background.

Hand-drawn batik using natural dyes

IKN has produced its own series of craft books including this one for Natural Dyes.  Unfortunately for most of you, it is only in Bahasa Malayu, which means I have either got to continue with  language classes or wear out Google Translate!  

Actually, I have already decided to continue on with Bahasa next year as I don't want to lose the (limited) vocabulary I have acquired since I started learning with Cigku Zahara before I left Canberra. Although many Malaysians speak English, especially in KL, in the kampung even a limited grasp of basic language skills will redeem you in the eyes of the locals and also help you out enormously. (That's if they talk a bit slower so my ears can differentiate between words!) At least I have received smiles and brownie points for trying....!

This book  helped me enormously with the technical words for some of the mordants, auxiliaries and plants that are used in Malaysia, so I could now show a recipe to one of the staff and they could understand what I needed to buy.  For example, the word lime could mean the lime fruit, the lime colour, slaked lime, lime for whitewashing walls etc etc... you get my drift...and Google Translate does not do the job in this instance. So I finally learnt the difference between kapur sirih, kapur dinding, and kapur simen....all variations of lime (calcium carbonate or calcium hydroxide) used in some natural dye processes.

It also gave me new information about trying other plants to extract colour from that grow in the Rimbun Dahan gardens, along with recipes. Obviously, I have not translated the whole book yet, but a couple of days sitting down with it helped spur on a renewed frenzy of dye experiments.

So, going back to a plant I have tried before, the Pinang palm.  There are actually two species that grown in the taman sari here - the Areca catechu, which is the source of the betel nut chewed with quid that stains the teeth red; and another variety which Angela does not know the name of.  In my first experiments I was using the unknown species and mistakenly thought it was Areca catechu. 

Fruit from the Areca sp. (?)  on the left,; Areca catechu on the right.

The fruits drop to the ground  from the very tall, slender Pinang palms and at the right stage you can peel off the flesh to reveal a very thick, fibrous husk which must also be taken off to get to the nut.

This is the smaller Areca catechu  once the flesh has been peeled off with its fibrous coating.

After the fibrous matter is pulled off the nut is accessible.  However, there is another hard protective shell around it, so this is where a sturdy hammer comes in handy! Bashing Areca nuts can be very therapeutic, I've discovered....!

My stash of Betel nuts, some still have a thin layer of husk clinging to them.

Once you crack open the hard outer coating, this is what the nut looks like inside, quite striated and marbelled. 

Inside the Areca catechu nut.

Obviously if you were intending to chew these with quid or use them for ceremony (such as a wedding) you would not be bashing them open with a hammer, as they need to be prepared aesthetically and sliced thinly to accompany the rest of the 'quid' - a Betel leaf (Piper betel), slice of Areca catechu, a little kapur sirih, and sometimes some gambir and/or tobacco.  Occasionally some spices are also included - many Asian countries have their own version and recipes for Betel quid.

Phew - a lot of hard work to get my dyestuff.  If you looked at the Betel quid recipe above, what I was trying to do in my dyepot was replicate the quid recipe (minus the tobacco of course!) in order to see if I could obtain the red staining that is a giveaway on the teeth of Betel chewers.  I tried both species of Pinang palm again, and the best results came from the larger (unknown) species.

Silks and cottons dyed with Areca sp. using Symplocos mordant.

I had a huge dyepot of rich strong colour, but the hard part was actually trying to get it to dye evenly this time as opposed to the first time when I only dyed with the nut itself.  In the "mix" I used you can see the dye start to separate out into visible particles, so I had to keep trying to stir my fabrics endlessly until I got tired of that and took them out anyway.  The times for these varied between 15 minutes and half an hour. I also wondered whether saliva added to the chemical mix of Betel chewing to produce a different colour, so I did a few small experiments, observed the changes and painted  test squares onto watercolour paper.

Sample  with saliva  is the 3rd from the left.

Although this is not an empirical or scientific study, the sample of dyestuff with saliva showed no or little separation of colour and seemed to have more of an orange tint rather than brown. Not sure if you can tell from the   resolution of these blog pictures but take my word for it.  Even so, I was not going to sit there spitting into a dye pot in order to test my theory on pieces of fabric....

And hot off the press!!.......As I have been sitting here in the studio writing this post, a big insect thingy has been flapping around my head.  I have been so absorbed in finishing this entry that when I finally got up to take a photo of the paper samples above I realised this is what was flying around.....

One of the wasps that featured a few weeks ago!!...or is it???

I apologise for the bad photo but this wasp was on the move and I couldn't get it to stay still long enough.  It is now resting on the light above my head so I am typing this inside my mosquito net now.  Now, if you have been really reading this blog (ha ha!) you will notice that the banding on this Vespa sp. is on the middle segment,  and according to my research this, together with the head shape leads me to believe that this is a Vespa tropica,  the Greater Banded Hornet.  The hornets that had made the huge nest in between the trees on the driveway (featured a few weeks ago) were identified by myself and 2 musicians as Vesper affinis, the Lesser Banded Hornet,  as we all thought the banding was on the first segment of the thorax. Did we make a mistake??? Well, I can't tell you because the nest was burnt a few weeks ago in the interest of the safety of the gardeners and anyone else walking around outside. Help!!!!...the hornet just flew into my net, providing me with an excellent photo opportunity.

Vespa tropica...Greater Banded Hornet....whatever...get me outta here!

A quick look at this website confirms it for me. A Greater Banded Hornet. I will leave the studio now and continue writing from upstairs.......

Another unusual fruit I have tried dyeing with is the Pulasan, or Nephrelium mutabile, a tropical fruit closely allied with the rambutan but without the 'hairy' exterior.

These are unripe but I tried them anyway and got an interesting shade of yellow.

And here is a final shot of my naturally dyed fabrics from Rimbun Dahan before I pack them away in my suitcase for the long journey home.  I had to origami these to all fit into the one frame and you possibly cannot see the depth and variation in these fabrics online, but I am really looking forward to working on them for new body of work about Rimbun Dahan next year.

A variety of silks and cottons all dyed with the plants from Rimbun Dahan.

So.....I have come to the end of a wonderful experience.  Thank you so much for joining me along the way through reading this blog.  Your emails and comments to me have kept me in touch with home, and I hope through the blog you have become inspired to travel to Malaysia or further afield; to try natural dyeing, or to start learning a new language.  

I take this opportunity to publicly thank Asialink and artsACT for this experience to live in Malaysia for three months; to immerse myself in a new language and learn first hand about another culture; to become involved with the women and locals from this kampung, and to learn more about myself as an artist along the way. I would also like to thank Angela and Hijjas Kasturi, whose generosity in providing artist accommodation, advice and support to Asialink recipients, as well as their own Artist in Residence program,  is overwhelming; to their daughter Bilqis, and their many friendly staff who have gone out of their way to ensure the artists here have the support they need to get the most out of their time here.  

And lastly a big thank you to the wonderful artists I have met whilst at Rimbun Dahan - Caloy; Claire, Sean and kids; Sabri; Caitlin and Gabe; and Soufiane.  Thanks guys for the great times we have shared together.

Oh...and can't forget...Thanks Warung Selera Ria for makanan benar-benar lazat!!! I'll miss you......I'll even miss my best friend, Santan.....

Yep, as close as ever, especially when the thunder rumbles!

After three months, I still have trouble getting him out of the studio at night.......

selamat tinggal Rimbun Dahan

Stay tuned for the next post...at the opening of my solo exhibition on 29th November at Narek Galleries in Tanja.

Until then...

Julie

Warna-warna Malaysia!

Colours of Malaysia! 
We had a public holiday for Malaysia Day last week and I spent the whole day dyeing fabrics from several of the plants I had previously tested.

Natural dyes from the RImbun Dahan garden

If you have been following the blog you will know that I have been testing two different types of alum mordants - Potassium aluminium sulphate and Symplocos, a plant bio-accumulator of aluminium. As you can see from the above photo, there are doubles of each fabric type in each colour in the front row. As I had never used the Symplocos before I was really testing it for my own peace of mind to see how it mustered up against PAS. My results above show there is absolutely no difference between the pairs of samples to the naked eye. The fabrics in the back row are more naturally-dyed swatches not included in the tests. During my last month here I will continue dyeing fabrics that will eventually be used for Rimbun-inspired artworks.

I have also been sketching an painting some of the unusual flora in the taman sari

However, for colour you just can't get any better than an art opening, and in particular the opening of the Art Expo Malaysia 2013. Now in its seventh year, it showcases hundreds of artists from all over the world (except Australia) and this year included works by Picasso, Miro, Yayoi Kusama and Damien Hirst to name a few.

Filipino artist Carlo Gernale and I at the VIP Preview 

I was lucky enough to be invited to the VIP Preview opening through Carlo's friend, Malaysian artist Seah Ze Lin, who had work in the g13 Gallery stand.  Zelin also shows work at Taksu Gallery.

Zelin and his wife in front of his work at g13 gallery stand.

I have to say that my eyes were constantly diverted from the artworks by the colourful and artrageously dressed crowd! However I was inspired by several artists work and the 'bucket men' gouaches by Jui-Pin Chang were drawing a steady crowd.  This one caught my eye for obvious reasons....

Jui-Pin Chan's rendition of Australian $100 note, gouache on P-Tex.

Prior to the opening we were invited to eat at the cutest little cafe in Kuala Lumpur, poco homemade.

poco homemade

This Japanese-inspired cafe is owned by Zelin's wife who makes all the delicious cakes, as well as the quirky artwork and bowerbird collections inside.  I felt like I was back in Gertrude Street, Melbourne or in the Lonsdale Street Traders in Canberra. But better food!

Ice's artworks adorn the walls along with eclectic secondhand treasures.

What better way to finish off this week's blog than with the illuminating display of lanterns at Rimbun Dahan to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. The children lead a colourful procession while we sat and ate mooncakes.

Colourful animal lanterns resting beneath the feet of a well-known Australian artist incognito

Happy Mid-Autumn Moon Festival!

Next week I will be travelling to other parts of Malaysia and hoping to find a trace of missing textile designer and entrepreneur Jim Thompson in the Cameron Highlands.

Sehingga minggu depan,

Julie

The Halfway Point

I have now reached the half-way point in my residency and I can't believe how quickly time has flown.
The other artists and I have been enjoying each other's company on trips to the local night markets, a lunch at the "big house"with Hijjas, and impromptu artist talks in each of our studios.  Here is a photo I took at the night markets of some quirky beans called  petai  or stink beans.

 Rows of petai (Parkia speciosa)

These stink beans are best combined with other strong flavours such as garlic, chill or belacan.

I was in KL for two days this week to attend a talk at the Muzium Textil Negara by Eddie Yap, a batik and shibori artist and one of the judges for this years Piala Seri Endon batik design competition.

After living the quiet life in rural Jalan Kuang, KL seemed like complete chaos - construction works going on everywhere, traffic, haze, tikus, and the ubiquitous golden arches.  So not like our wonderful warung across the road from us at Rimbun Dahan (see previous posts).

At the Bukit Bintang junction, KL.

Unfortunately Eddie's presentation had to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances, so I missed meeting and talking to members of the Sahabat Textile group.  Instead I had another look around the Muzium and photographed this example of batik coloured with the natural dyes from "pearl water, mangrove bark, rambutan skin and mangosteen skin".

I could not find a credit for the maker of this naturally-dyed ensemble.

I also had dinner with two well-known locals who both collect songket (amongst other textiles and objects). Datin Noor Azlina Yunus also happens to be the author of two amazing textile books - 'Songket Revolution' (ISBN 9789834439804) and 'Malaysian Batik: Reinventing a Tradition' (ISBN-10: 080484264), for those who wish to find out more about these Malaysian textiles. 

And of course, when in KL.....the way to relax those tired feet is to get them massaged by fish!

Not for the ticklish!

I was glad to get back to Rimbun Dahan as I have plenty of work to be getting on with. I have just mordanted several metres of plain silk with two different mordants: Symplocos and Potassium Aluminium Sulphate.  Although these are both aluminium mordants, the Symplocos is derived from a plant that grows in Indonesia and is a natural bio-accumulator of aluminium.  I am testing to see whether it provides a stronger colour once dyed in comparison to the PAS. The Symplocos comes in ground form and I boiled it up in rainwater for half an hour before mordanting the fabric in it.

Preparing the Symplocos for mordanting fabric

After boiling for half an hour the Symplocos falls to the bottom of the pot and you can then add your fabric.  In future I will put the Symplocos into a dye-bag like I do with other vegetable matter as it is hard to get the little gritty bits off your fabric even after several rinses. The Symplocos turns the fabrics a shade of yellow, which indicates the fabric is mordanted.  This will disappear once dyed, and does not interact with the colour produced by your dyebath. 

My first samples are dyed with areca nuts, the fruit of the Pinang palm tree, Areca catechu, which grows in Angela's taman sari (vege garden).These are very important in many Asian cultures, as they are chewed with betel leaf and lime. According to Wikipedia the extract also has antidepressant properties in rodents....know wonder our tikus here are so lively!

The nut itself is found inside a fleshy orange/red fruit, and is incredibly hard to crack open.  Here is my dyepot showing the colour coming from the nuts inside the dye-bag.  They look like segments of orange the way I have broken them but they are really very hard.

Areca nuts boiled for an hour in rain water. A white piece of silk to show true colour.

Here are my first samples dyed with Areca nuts, not yet dry.

Although they are still wet, the difference between the two mordants on the same fabric type is not glaringly obvious, so I will post my results and findings next week.

 sehingga minggu depan,

 Julie

Histories...and mysteries Part 2

If this is "Histories and Mysteries, Part 2" then where is Part 1??? Good question.  Last week I was showing someone my blog and realised that my post of 18th August had completely disappeared.  No, I didn't do anything to it 'by mistake'.  So I googled the problem and apparently it has happened to quite a few bloggers, some even losing their whole blog overnight!  Anyway, I guess it reinforces the good practice of saving the blog elsewhere each time you post. So that post is History - where it has gone to is a Mystery - and we'll leave it at that. Did anyone notice...?

What have I been up to this week then? I have had some good chats with Angela about the plants at Rimbun Dahan and found this pile of books by my door the other day.

6 Volumes (+1 index)  and The Curiosity Cabinet of the Ambonese Herbal

Wow! You can't see how thick each of these volumes are but they run to around 600 pages each, with fabulous illustrations inside.  These have just been published in English last year, and the sub title is "Being a Description of the Most Noteworthy Trees, Shrubs, Herbs, Land -and Water- Plants Which Are Found in Amboina and the Surrounding Islands According to their Shape, Various Names, Cultivation, and Use: Together with Several Insects and Animals." Whew! Not only do I need more hours in the day, but a couple more pairs of eyes to read with.

Angela also invited me to view her collection of songket.  Briefly, a songket is a textile in the brocade family. Handwoven in cotton or silk, (and traditionally using naturally-dyed fibre) it is intricately patterned with gold or silver threads, giving it a shimmering effect, and is therefore a luxury fabric used for ceremony as sarong, shoulder cloths or head ties. Of course it is much more than this description, with many books written on the subject (yes, I have been lent those as well!!).  So enough of my prattle, here is the eye-candy....

One of the beautifully woven textiles (reverse side).

And another one showing both front and back of the songket

   An unusual design, and we found some slight variations throughout the cloth
which emphasises it's hand-made qualities.

An intricate clasp on the edge of this heavily embellished songket.

Hopefully these beautiful textiles will encourage you to find out some more about songket.

On Saturday, Angela showed about 30 architecture students and lecturers from the Politeknik Sultan Idris Shah around Rimbun Dahan.  They spent a few hours walking around the landscaped garden, looking at the traditional and contemporary buildings on site and listening to artist talks.

The group from the PSIS outside my studio after artist talk.

Luckily I have been working hard and had a few things to show them;  talked about my concepts and my design philosophies, and managed to give the Canberra Centenary a plug too!

Almost finished 2 large pieces, some drawings and works on paper, and dye samples.

If you read my last post you will know we have hit a rainy patch here at Rimbun Dahan, and I have found another good thing to do in the rain - collect fresh rainwater for my dyepots! This saves me from having to figure out how hard the water is here, which will affect my Symplocos mordant process - bonus. 

For those of you that are more interested in the fauna and flora I have managed a few photos for you as well. I found this large insect one morning, covered in dust and fluff on my studio floor.  I saved it's life....then by chance I was flipping through one of Angela's books and found out what it was.......

Rhynchophorus ferrugineus  - the Red Palm Weevil - about 4-5cm long

Uh oh!  I was concerned that perhaps I shouldn't have saved it after all.  This striking fellow is a major pest in commercial palm plantations.  Fortunately Rimbun Dahan is not one of those. Who would have thought such a pest could be so beautiful?  

Here is an interesting plant I am sampling for dyes.  It is a Bunga telang  in Malay, or Clitoria ternatea.  The flower is used as colouring for a rice dish, nasi kerabu, and kuih tai bai, a small cake. 

There weren't that many flowers on Angela's vine, but I am sampling the leaves and seed pods in my dyepots.

Well, that's all for this week.  Feel free to ask questions or comment below.

Sehingga minggu depan,

Julie

It's raining cats and dogs (and rats, and bats....)

Well, it's rained twice this week, once for three days and the other for four...sorry! couldn't resist bringing out that old Irish joke.  Yes, the rain has dampened a lot of planned outdoor activities such as collecting new dyestuffs, swimming in our lovely pool and getting out into the garden, but Rimbun Dahan is still beautiful in the rain.

View from my studio across the fish pond

And there is actually nothing better than hearing the rain pouring down, listening to Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.2 to accompany the thunderous drama outside,  and stitching quietly. However, during the brief periods of respite I did manage to snap a few gorgeous things on my camera.

Walking past the pool, I spied this perfect contrast

and one of the many colourful dragonflies that inhabit the gardens

As promised last week, I also have photos of some initial dye tests done with some palm seeds and mangosteen skins on my pre-mordanted sample fabrics.  The different coloured stripes on the long pieces of fabric show the 8 different mordants I have used to see what colours they will give me from one dyepot. A great thing to be getting on with whilst it is raining.

Using Madagasca palm nut windfalls

The small square sample pieces have also been mordanted with Symplocos which was delivered this week. Symplocos is a plant that is a bio-accumulator of aluminium, not a man made chemical, so I will be testing its efficacy against the usual Potassium aluminium sulphate and/or aluminium acetate.  Unfortunately I thought it would be easy to buy a lot of mordants here, hence didn't bring much with me, so maybe have to order some in.

Mangosteen skins

The colour of the mangosteen skin dyebath

The mangosteen skins gave a wonderful dyebath colour that didn't translate onto the fabric itself.  I am not surprised but I also did not have many skins.  I also read that a local artist prepares his mangosteen bath for 12 hours.....I will still not hold my breath (and those of you into natural dyeing will know why) but I am willing to give it another go.  Of course, just getting the colour to take does not mean it will be light or colour fast......I have got a few excursions planned in the next couple of weeks to local dyers and craftspeople...stay tuned. I have also finished stitching the large cloth I was working on last week.

So, what else can you do in the rain? On Thursday night, the Rimbun Dahan resident artists all went to the Taksu Gallery for the opening of "Water" a 4-person exhibition that includes current RD resident Sabri Idrus. I was also quietly celebrating the fact that I have been at Rimbun Dahan for exactly one month. I met a few other Malaysian artists as well as award-winning film maker U-Wei Haji Saari, who will be in Canberra soon with his film 'Hanyut', based on Joseph Conrad's novel, at the Canberra International Film Festival.  Canberrans, take note.

Myself, Sabri Idrus and Filipino artist Carlo Gernale in front of Sabri's work.

And speaking of Galleries, Rimbun Dahan has its own magnificent underground gallery that is designed around a central atrium, lit from an open landscaped turning circle in the driveway in front of the house. Too large to show it all here, but also a very impressive collection of contemporary Asian and Australian art.

The other thing you can still do in the rain is make a dash for it across the road and have lunch! Carlo and I eat a meal together nearly every day at our favourite local Warung outside the front gates. As all the artists work and live in different parts of Rimbun Dahan, it is nice to talk to another person and exchange ideas and information. And what better way to do it than over makan.

Always busy, always delicious. You can even 'Like' them on Facebook!

And on the socialising front,  my Bahasa Melayu teacher in Canberra, cikgu Zahara, put me in contact with a friend of hers from high school, Fatahiya, who lives just up the road.  Her friend's daughter was getting married on Saturday and the women all gathered together to start preparing the food for the kenduri, or wedding feast.  

Fatahiyah is on the far left.  It's BYO knife for this social event.

I got to join in, thank goodness I like paying attention to miniscule things......

Ikan bilis....BEFORE cleaning!

These tiny, tiny ikan bilis are one of my favourite foods, mixed with a hot chilli sauce on top of rice, and more fresh chilli.  But I certainly did not know you could/ or would CLEAN them! It is a bit like peeling prawns - take off the head, slit down the back with your thumbnail, clean out the dark intestinal tract, and put in a pile ready for cooking. Wow, I will never eat so many of them again without thinking about the hours of labour going into cleaning them. Usually, cleaning ikan bilis is not done due to their size and the fact they are already dried and stiff, but this was for a special wedding feast.  There is a Bahasa term for this which I have forgotten, but basically it means 'coming from the heart'.  I am sure someone can remind me of it.

And finally, although Muslim culture does not have the same belief that rain on your wedding day is a good omen, I am sure being married on 31st August is...not only is it Hari Merdeka but it is also during Hari Raya.  Thankfully the Groom and his entourage arrived just before another downpour.

Congratulations to Sakinah and Kairol, and best wishes for your future happiness together.

Kairol and Sakinah

sehingga minggu depan  (until next week)

Julie