Happy Sunny Summer Solstice!!!! Celebrating the sun today with a root of its likeness: turmeric.
I've been wanting to write this tutorial forEVER. I made these prayer flags....last summer I think. But I just never had the time to do it. You see, I couldn't for the life of me do the craft and take awesome pictures, and edit them into a gorgeous artful tutorial. I almost hesitated to even share it this week. But it speaks to the real story of the herbmama. My days are busy and filled with everyday life stuff too. And it would be unrealistic to represent myself in this space as a perfect artful herbcrafting mum all the time. So I'm sharing the post anyway, without perfect how-to pictures and a crappy set of instructions. Because it's a fabulous Summer Solstice craft and it really is rather simple. Besides recipes are made to be broken anyway. I broke several when I made this craft myself. The art of herbcraft lies in the experiment. Make it your own.
Today is about something different. Herbs, plants, nature bits....they provide us so much more than clinical medicine. When we make a connection to nature in this way, through play, it feeds us as more than healing an ailment. It heals a broken lineage of working with nature. We don't need to buy fancy dyes in little tubes. We really can make our own with plants. When we play with our kids and make art with herbs, they remember, we remember. They remember that the same vibrant gold that colored their rice, colored the t-shirt they wear to bed every night. We are imprinting our senses with age-old traditions and making relationships. Reconnecting the lines of lost heritage.
So to celebrate solstice today, venture into the 'ethnic' foods aisle and grab some turmeric. Make some face paint, dye your hands, color some tee-shirts and paint them, or enjoy some steamy yellow rice with a bit of ginger. Experiment, grab a root and channel the sun, get yellow, and play.
Dyeing with Turmeric: Fill a 4 quart sauce pan with water Add 1cup dried and powdered turmeric Warm until dissolved Add scraps of fabric, tee-shirts, etc you wish to dye Simmer until desired color achieved To check color simply remove from turmeric bath and rinse under cold water resubmerge if darker color is desired Bath can be used many, many times with success Note: you will stain your hands and anything in sight, but it will wash out within a few days.
Love and Besos, Latisha
