American Cafe 美语咖啡屋 第037课

Dying Wool Naturally

(Enter Music)

Y: 各位听众好，我是杨晨。欢迎到美语咖啡屋！

J: Hello I'm Jody, welcome to American Cafe 美语咖啡屋! On this edition of American Cafe 美语咖啡屋 we are going to talk to our friend Jeannie from West Virginia.

Y: 好香啊。你是在煮汤吗？

J: No, I am boiling soup. I am boiling brown.

Y: Brown？ 你说的颜色里的brown, 棕色吗？

J: That is right. I am boiling the color brown.

Y: Jody, 你真是越来越可爱了。 颜色也能煮吗？

J: Of course, you can boil a color. I got the idea from Jeannie, the woman artist we met who raises sheep and then uses their wool to make stuff.

Y: 对。我认识Jeannie。她非常特别。为什么说她特别呢？ 因为她不但自己养羊，还会剪羊毛，织毛衣。 她织的每一件毛衣都是艺术品。

J: That is right. She also dyes the wool herself.

But Yang Chen, you forgot a part of the process.

Y: 她还会给羊毛染色啊？

J: People who dye wool naturally use by-products found in nature like fruit, leaves and bark from trees, vegetables, even bugs!

Y: Bugs? 虫子，我最怕那些小虫子。 你刚才提到的by-product，能不能给大家解释一下？

J: By-product, spelled B-Y-P-R-O-D-U-C-T. A by-product is something that is left over from a process.

Y：对， By-product就是副产品的意思。

J: Jeannie is going to tell us how she is going to use by-product from trees like yellow boxwood elder, osage orange wood and walnut tress to get completely natural color.


Y: 你刚才提到的yellow boxwood elder或者是osage orange wood...

J: Those are just types of trees.

Y: 好。我们就听听Jeannie是利用那些by-products来作染料。


Jeannie: And in this case I've dyed with yellow box elder to get this nice green-yellow color. And I've got some dyed with osage orange wood and the boxwood was given to me by another friend as a by-product of something he was making.

Y: 我还是不太明白，她到底是用什么方法把这些东西制作出各种颜色的染料呢？

J: The process involves cocking the ingratiates over an open fire like a big pot of soup. Jeannie says that she dyed her wool over an open fire with friends. Doesn't that sound fun?

Y: 嗯...

J: Don't answer that. I had the feeling that boiling bugs over an open flame is not your idea of fun, but for Jeannie...

Jeannie: Well, we did this outside over an open fire and it took a couple of hours. It was a lot of fun.

Y: 不过我还有一个疑问，如果是利用这些自然界的这些东西来制作颜色，那么颜色的种类是不是很有限呢？

J: Jeannie said that you can get almost any color you want from nature; you can have the whole color span.

Y: 那你这里说的whole color span就是所有的颜色都包括在内。

J: Exactly, and according to Jeannie people who are really into dying wool naturally can get any color they want.

Y: 等一等，我想提醒大家当你说一个人“really into something"就是说这个人某件事特别认真，特别投入。

J: Oh, good point. If you are really into something, you have been doing something for a long time and you really like it. But enough from us, Yang Chen, let's hear how Jeannie uses the expression "really into it" and words like "span..."

Jeannie: Yeah, there's natural colors you can get almost anything you want. And people who are really into it -- which I'm not, I'm just a beginner, but with the natural colors -- but you can get browns from walnut. You can get blue from indigo. So you can have the whole span.

J: Jeannie says she is just a beginner, but to me she sounds like a pro.

Y: 没错，我也觉得她听起来很老练。你有没有闻到什么东西煮糊了？

Y: 我知道这种来自大自然的颜色一定有很多好处，但是它们会不会很容易退色呢？

J: Oh, no it's my color brown. It's burning, it is all boiled over. Oh, man, my color brown it the color black. I guess I am the real beginner here. Well, anyway, thanks for joining us on American Cafe 美语咖啡屋...See you next time.

Y: 谢谢大家收听美语咖啡屋。我们下次再见。

J: Where is Jeannie when we need her?