so what do you know about lichen?

I am planning a textile piece or maybe a set of samples on a theme of lichen, following a series of coincidences that happened over the last few days. It seems sometimes events conspire together to point in a particular direction-signposts to a new pathway.

The first occurrence was on Sunday when we were out walking the chalk downs  around Avebury, not far from home. As we were admiring the entrance to West Kennet long barrow, above, my eye was drawn to the yellow lichen growing on the stones.

And a  few miles further on we passed the site of some of England’s rarest lichens and promised ourselves a detour to see them on our next walking trip.

These coincidences were compounded on Tuesday when I was listening to a news report about how lichens are being used in a study by Imperial College, London to monitor air quality and public participation was invited. I downloaded the booklet on identifying lichens, about which I know almost nothing except that I have always found them fascinating to look at, and admired the wonderful close-ups of some of the species. Of course, I was then reminded that lichen has been used a dye plant since time immemorial. I think there is a trend away from collecting lichens for this purpose because of the  threats to various species from air pollution and from over collecting.

I guess there is a whole unresearched strand for me there, but in the meantime I settled on painting a bit of silk velvet in a licheny sort of way. As you can see, I still haven’t sorted out the dye blends and the fixing-the blueish areas started life as greens-but there are some usefully lichen coloured areas.

I have been enjoyably busy for the last week, occupied with my watercolour paints, with magazine cuttings, with learning new things, with taking shedloads of photos to capture the autumn light and colours. I have been feeling guilty about my lack of textile posting, but today I have  concluded that I will post about what has captured my butterfly brain at the moment, and hope you will come along for the ride. It might just be fun. But it will definitely be me.