Author: Rita de Heer

Writing is what I do. What I think about. What I meditate on. What I dream up. Listen to. Imagine. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I eat. And I walk. Pull out environmental weeds. There are a thousand more things I do, though writing comes into a fair few of those things too.

Indigo

Indigo by Daniel Smith is probably the watercolor I use most, and is also my favorite to experiment with … if that makes sense. This indigo is so finely milled it’s the smoothest paint I own and yet it’s capable of amazing gymnastics. Below a wet layer of indigo over a failed experiment (which is represented by the pink tones) with phthalo blue dropped into it.

The Indigo, being smooth and light (weight) allows granulars such as sodalite, and heavier colors such as phthalo blue, to react spectacularly.

Getting shades by dipping a brush into water after a stroke, indigo will last longer than any other color and make the most wonderful greys.

One of the newsletters I subscribe to is Books on Books curated by Robert Bolick (https://books-on-books.com/2025/03/23/books-on-books-collection-louis-luthi/)

This month’s letter took me to a link (https://sites.rutgers.edu/motley-emblem/indigo/) where I discovered some interesting facts about indigo. So far about 200 plants have been discovered that yield indigo, and it is nearly the only color-fast natural plant dye.

The two hundred plants is quite a surprise as the Japanese indigo cloths are quite expensive and said to be made from a rare plant. Several cultures in Africa also use indigo to dye cloths. I’m wondering now whether the original processes make these products expensive, there is bound to be a lot of processing necessary to make dyes from scratch.

My only experience extracting color from wild plant materials to dye wool, has been using lichens to make a dark red, and that was by boiling the lichen and the yarn in ammonia, then setting the pot in a sunny place for three weeks, stirring it daily. Reading how indigo was/is extracted, it seems a similar process.

Following the links, the Brooklyn Museum webpage presented me with Catherine McKinley’s article on indigo’s influence in women’s culture, where Indigo is spoke of as rare … as in “the rare, refulgent dye and the commodities spun from it.” from (https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/stories uncovering_a_womens_history_of_african_indigo) while Bloomsbury Press offered me one of McKinley’s resulting books https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/indigo-9781608195886/

In Asia, cultures such as Javanese batiks and ikats, and Japanese aizome also made indigo famous.

Nowadays ammonia is one of my no-no’s in that I’m allergic to everything with chlorine in it, though fabric dyeing has remained one of my interests. It was only a small hop to watercolor painting on cotton paper.

Wikipedia’s article on indigo, in particular growing the plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigofera_tinctoria

Story Debt continued …

One of those photos I make of a seemingly hidden pic on the TV screen, a god-like figure in the hidden depths of a mysterious pool, inserted … even seeded … in there, perhaps to act as an eventual hook for a new series. I seem to remember that I got it from The Mandolorian somewhere. This camera shot surprisingly clear compared to the original.

Instead of sedately side-stepping back to the original Lodestar story, or going way back to the first or third installments, I’ve decided to skip to part 12. [This is all on the Page about the Lodestar Timeline] Which in a way can be thought of as the very first installment and anyway is a necessary prequel to the Doomed Trilogy.

Claire and Nalbo retired to the valley where the alien engineer, original owner of the spacecraft known on Earth as The Lodestar, decides to spend time on Earth to renew a member of his life support system. Things don’t go well as can be expected when species as different as the alien engineer and his support system, and humans meet.

I was only about fifty when I began writing this installment, and thought I should wait until I was much older to know what it felt like to be old and crotchety. Well, I’m seventy-seven now, high time I tackled it.

Cat Diary 35

Two weeks ago the old woman went to Bunnings on the little bus and got, among a few other doo-dads, a 50 meters of a black twine-like substance.

When she got home she cut off a piece to test it for knots, she said. Making a few of them in this stuff and dragging it along the floor.

A black string dragging along the floor is like a red rag to a bull if you get my meaning… when I see it I have gotto chase it.

It’s been my only interest for two weeks and I still don’t know how to stop it sliding from between my toes when the old woman tugs it.

She’s getting bored with it, she tells me as she put another knot in the end for me to catch hold of. She tells me it’s the easiest form of playing. She means it requires the least output of energy by me. And she’s right, I like to take it easy.

This is me looking at the string draped over my pillow case with catnip in it.

This me starting a game. Except then I heard her starting to video me and I walked away. I hate that little noise. Lucky the corner was right there.

When she started typing, the one-fingered type, I came back and am just sitting here looking at my black string. Hoping it’ll magically start moving itself so I can chase it.

PS she gave the rest of the string to the builder in the family. It’s 100% polyester and too slippery to hold a knot.

Food: GF Bread

‘Falling off the Wagon’, is a phrase that originated in the Temperance Movement, according to Wikipedia.

Meaning falling of the water wagon back into alcoholism. Getting back onto the wagon means getting sober again. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything new.

Every so often I fall off my gluten free, dairy free, lowFODMAP and sugar free penny-farthing-bicycle and then I am in pain and discomfort.

Getting back onto my penny-farthing bicycle is a matter of figuring out where the bad stuff has crept in. While one teaspoon of gluten-containing flour in a loaf of bread is not going to cause any problems, a cup of 100% wheat flour will. And I’ve been mixing spelt flour in my baked goods to encourage yeast action.

And having that bread daily. Having anything you’re sensitive to daily, is another no-no for people with a lot of allergies, intolerances and sensitivities.

Having a particular food once every three days usually prevents a build up of the bad chemicals in the body. But sometimes all I want is to be able to eat something without worrying what it will do to my chemistry.

That’s when my penny-farthing slams to the ground and I fall by the wayside.

Which is why I’ve started experimenting with baking my own bread. Commercial gluten free breads tend to have a ‘stampede of ingredients’, and the breads that are any good aren’t always available. The phrase ‘stampede of ingredients’ … so appropriate to food intolrances … comes from the MooGoo people, who make natural skin care products.

Cutting gluten-containing flour from my diet only half-fixed my problem. I came to the conclusion yesterday it has to be a capsule filler causing me grief. I’m now taking 0.9 mg LDN daily, either a (3 x 0.2 + 3 x 0.1) dose equaling 6 capsules, or (4 x 0.2 + 1 x 0.1) equaling 5 capsules.

Meaning, I’m taking a lot of Avicel cellulose filler. And I’ve been reading in a pertinent group that this stuff gives a lot of people grief. They either have their capsules compounded with a different filler and that’s a minefield I don’t want to go into right now, or they throw the contents of their capsules in water. The LDN dissolves and the Avicel is the residue at the bottom of the glass, and then drinking the water.

That’s what I’ll be doing. I still have about one hundred and fifty capsules to work through before I can ask for a different filler. It’s a real “Good Grief, Charley Brown!” situation.

Lunch … couldn’t wait any longer. Wilted greens, avocado, a few olives and the equivalent of approx 2 slices of newly-baked bread. A third of an apple. A jug of hot salted water.

After stopping the bread machine for a minute, I hauled out the bucket and scooped out the equivalent of two slices of bread. Bucket back in to finish the cycle, 28 minutes to go. Going on the texture of the bread, it looks like it will be my most successful loaf yet.