Plants used for dyeing Natural colours-Romania

We decided to do the dyeing with natural colours workshop with students from the 7 th class and little ones, too, as we thought it would be more interesting and enjoyable for the children. We made use of the following natural ingredients: dandelion flowers, blueberries, beetroots, green tea and onion skin.

 

As for the materials to be dyed we used both wool and paper. Here is what we got:

 

Traditional architectural heritage in Douro (Armamar/Portugal)

Painting with colours

Painting with nature colours

Since we love making homemade paint we thought we would take it a step further and see if we could use flowers to make our own natural watercolors. We started by choosing several flowers of varying colors from our yard. Students to find flowers with vibrant colors, so we could get vibrant paint.

We separated the flowers, picked and made predictions about which flowers we thought would give off the most color.  

We agreed that the red would probably give us the best results, followed closely by the orange and blue. I heated up one cup of water. We didn't want it too hot, but figured that warm water would help pull the color from the flowers. 

We put the flowers into ziploc bags and divided the cup of water between the four bags. We noticed that the red flowers bled immediately. 

Next we had use a rolling pin to squish the flowers in the baggies.
 Painting with colours .
 The results were surprising.  As I mentioned above the orange flowers gave off color immediately.


The blue flower gave off a lovely violet color. The blue was a very light blue.


 The photos make it look richer than it actually was.


The little people love to paint, but they tend to dump colored water. 




We didn't want to see our watercolors overturned before we had a chance to use them.

Myths and tales from Şicula, Romania

Origin of the name Şicula

Legends say that in the old times the village was scattered among the region to avoid the great floods of the Crişul Alb River. The previous community consisted in fact of many „cătune”- hamlets- spread on the highest places of the field. The old men gathered to set a new settlement and decide upon the place and the name of the new village. One of the chieftains, Cula, by his name, was angry and late for the meeting. The other ones thought he wouldn’t come at all, but to everybody’s surprise he showed himself at last. When they saw Cula one of those local chiefs said: “Iacă şi Cula” (Here‘s Cula, too). Thus they agreed to call the settlement Şicula. Cula is a short form of the Romanian name Niculae, Nicolae; there are several people in Romania and Moldova with Cula as a surname …

The tale of the rivers called Criş

The old men say that, once upon a time, when the men lived together with the giants, there was a prince of the fields, greedy for gold. He heard of a big gold mine in the Eastern Mountains, although nobody knew the place, but Criş the Old and his three sons. The prince had them captured, dungeoned and beaten by his guards to find out the fortune. The old man died in torture, but he did not reveal the secret. The lads, scared, decided to tell the place and live so that they could revenge their father’s death. So they set out for the place where the sun rises to find the mine, in unsteady steps, followed by the soldiers. After three day and night’s tiring walk the three lads disagreed on the way to follow, each of them pointing to another direction. The elder one said they had to keep the sunrise road, the other two said the right path would be souther. Quick tempered, the elder brother got angry and started hotfoot where he thought the way was, escorted by a group of soldiers. The second brother, a light-colored lad, and the youngest brother, a black one, turned south.  Later the youngest brother thought that the first brother might have been right, so he turned east, too. They wandered many days and nights in search of the golden mine, escorted by the guards. In the end the second brother, who went south, came across the treasure in the mountains. But when he wanted to show it to the soldiers, Vâlva Comorii (=the female spirit protective of the treasure) came out of the mine and put a spell on the lad turning him into a rock and the land under his feet into a stream. Vâlva did the same the other brothers, so that they would never find the treasure. The soldiers were also turned into springs. Thus the quick tempered brother became Crişul Repede (the rapid/quick one), the black brother became Crişul Negru (the black one), the faired-haired brother became Crişul Alb (the white one), while the guards became the other “Crişuri” (streams with the name Criş), too. The rocks of the three brothers can still be seen at the springs of the rivers, if not grounded by winds and rainfall.

Agricultural myths and tales from Romania