the Month of Festivities

1981

It all happens in the month of June; Jake & Jim's birthdays and our wedding anniversary and, although he did his damnedest to NOT be on time, today is Colin's birthday.

He taught me how to do four things at once, badly. I learned the fine art of self-defense napping and seeing through baby eyes at the ripe old age of 30. We thank you son, for the love and the never ending challenges.

hand dyed threads

These colors were dashed off in a little haste last night but after a thorough rinse and a day drying in the sun, I just did a little stitching with this thread and I love the way it handles. I've tried Perle and didn't like it. This stuff is fun. Now to custom dye some colors for the things I am working on right now.

glory days

I only got about a third of the new hand dyes ironed. It was just so hot at that task, but the results were making me dizzy.

The older damasks can look pretty frowsy fresh out of the dryer or off the line. Line dried, they are stiff and scratchy and you have to be careful with the iron lest you catch a fold in the point of your iron and rip it. The ones from the dryer remind me of a bad hair day- limp and fuzzy.  Once ironed, they become smooth, shiny and with some color combos, iridescent.

Yesterday I took The Creatives and two of the Karmas to Kinkys and made a series of new reprographs.

They are quite startling in person. An elderly Asian gentleman was standing by waiting on a woman who was busy feeding a pile of documents into the printer next to the one I was working.

 He stepped in to observe as the machine spit out the one I am holding in this picture and broke into a broad smile. He could see the edges of the back of the cloth lapping out from under the machines cover but he couldn't get what he was looking at until I took it out and turned it over to show him the original.

He was holding the print and said "You sell?"

I nodded "Yes."

He said "You keep cloth?"

I said "Yes" and smiled.

He threw back his head and cackled and said something in a foreign language to the scowling woman hard at work over her copies. She scowled harder  and I imagine his remark was something along my Goodman's joke about prostitution. "You got it, you sell it, you still got it!"


Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the mailbox garden sprung me a surprise. The morning glory seeds I planted showed WHITE flowers on the package.

We get by with a little help from our friends....

If you are a regular reader here, you may also be familiar with my friend Arlee Barr and her amazing work.

If not, you should know that she recently lost most of her raw materials and UFOs in the flooding that overwhelmed the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

If you can help get her art studio back on its "hoofies" in the smallest way, there is a link in the sidebar of her blog to donate...

Surprise! the LIMIT is the cost of one of those mocha-choke-a, latte, with a double dash of extra calorie coffees that y'all swear you should live without anyway!

One 5$ brick at a time, we'll lift her up.

color blizzard

There's been an orgy of color going on here. The Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyedeck has been burning up with heat and awash with jewel tones, my favorite indulgence.

This is the time of year when I say "Cram it" to the misty, pastel, and delicate colors. Take a vacation, we are rocking the loud and lively. These are the colors that will sustain me through the drabness of winter.

I get the sense that the term jewel tones have fallen out of favor in some sets. There's a reason these colors are named after the precious..it never fails that if something is offered in different colorways, the jewels sell out first.

There's enough here to keep me busy for some time.

From the dramatic to the sublime. All I need is a rainy day for ironing 

my super moon

We live on the downside of a ridge and the moon didn't clear the trees until after 11pm just as a bank of light clouds drifted in.

I must have taken twenty or thirty shots with all the settings the little Coolpix had and this was among the best. More interesting, but un-photographical, were the thousands of fireflies doing their best moon imitations.

The pinpoints of light through the trees reminded me of the need for paying attention to the sizes of the stars in the Firmament to give the illusion of depth.

I took Karma's cast iron lantern down to the pool deck and armed it with what turned out to be a highly effective citronella candle. I was over an hour at the edge of the woods and next to the water and not one bite. Usually, anything that bites will take a piece of me before anyone else but not last night.





All these black and white patterns have me thinking about what to do with these.

an electronic hiatus

Solstice Gifts

The first fruits of yesterday's dyefest were uninspiring. I put part of that down to my own frazzled lack of focus and some to the tired out dye stock that I was being flagrant with.

The offenders have been sent back into the sauce but I did get some new combinations mixed up today.

This gem is a section of one of Martha Stewarts finest which I used for wiping up the spills while making the new dyestock.

And while I was looking for something else, look who popped out of one of the cloth bins!

Soltice dyefest

I felt the need for a little textural excitement from the dye jars yesterday. The pantry yielded a very old box of pastina.  I didn't see any bugs in the box but they did the job nicely. Later this morning the experiment will continue.

I also plan on mixing some fresh dyestock this morning blending some of the new colors. Green has proven to be elusive this season and the bottles for the purples and curry have been rolling around the caddy empty  for a while now.

Might there be something special about colors born on the Solstice?

pool water magic trick

We are coming off a spell of what feels like tropical weather; heat and humidity every day, capped off by violent thunderstorms with torrential rains.

The guy at the pool supply place said all the rain unbalanced the pH so some other chemical thing we do (which is not much) fails.
You can see my alter ego lurking in the algae laden water shown here.

He tested the water and gave me a recipe for adding soda ash and baking soda in the right proportions.

 In a matter of hours, the water was back to Caribbean blue, even bluer that you see here..magic.

not your regular workday

Wednesday is change up day around here.

I spent most of the afternoon with a friend at her neighbors fabulous swimming pool. She house sits for the mansion's owners when they travel, which is a lot. And boy, are we grateful! Sadly, the for sale sign went up yesterday.

I brought these two flowers home with me and by the time I got home I was dizzy with the combined fragrances of magnolia and gardenia. If I had gotten pulled over I would have been jailed for driving while stupefied by scent.

Jake, Colin and my nephew Jimmy

Based, in part, on this photo, my son Colin was called late last night to play a "russian mafia thug" for a few days in a movie being shot here in Atlanta.

So what does a RMT wear? Turns out he dresses like one most of the time so wardrobe (extras have to bring their own) was not a big problem.