round 2 - full sun

 There's no cover on the deck anymore and it's ablaze today. It might be 70 with light breezes, but I am roasted. A hat would have been smart but the worst is over.

These foundlings have been dashed and dotted with soywax and will probably undergo a second round of dye once this one is over. Some of the over-dyed pieces are going to be smashing. Patience is in order. I've run out of time for this stuff today.

With a nod to my dyemaster, Elizabeth Barton, the dry cloth went straight into the dye, low water style. They'll wallow a while and then I'll bless everything with the soda ash sauce.

My own technique is harder, faster, but all new things considered today, a day of fresh starts in many ways.

fry for now

The Fish project is coming along. I started digging in the closet just to see what is actually in there. Holy Crap!  That request I put out for white goods?? Don't go crazy.

I pulled one box from a high shelf and the bottom broke...a blizzard of white goods is now up for review for a round of soy-resist and dye tomorrow, weather permitting.

There were boxes and baskets of things that are going into the Fat Baggies blend. Of course, I took first dibs. It's funny how one's taste will change. Stuff that I used to hoard for myself will now be up for grabs.

 I found small baskets of treats and wonders that just fell into place for an as-yet unclear vision, but I know I want to hand applique and embroidery  -  think in terms of the Creatives. Critters just doing what they do when no one is looking, just like people.

revisiting

 FB served up this and other memories this morning. I'm ambivalent about that feature, but for this, I'm grateful.

I can remember the hand of each of these cloths - the black hole went into one of the first Karmas. The rich orange with tiny white spots was a cotton lawn scarf I bought on spec from Dharma Trading.

I can also see I need to work on this year's color set. My reds are too warm and too many.There's soy resists and textures going on  here too - things I'd like to revisit when the weather final decided to cooperate.

If anyone has any old table linens that they'd like to swap for a set of hand dyes, get in touch. We'll deal.

hurdles

I can relate to that face. Charlie and I have been struggling with the same upper respiratory day care cooties for a week now. If snot was gold I'd be ordering that Benz E-550 right about now.

Slap me for complaining, I'm grown and know the course of these things. Poor little guy can actually get up and run when he sees me pick up one of Jimmy's soft, old handkerchiefs and will point to his nose and say "Boo-boo" as in "take it easy, Nana. It's only boogers."

The best time of the day was when I knew he needed a nap, but would fight it to the point of hysteria, so I shut us both in his room, put his pillow and blanket on the floor and we settled in for seven consecutive, slow readings of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", trying on a different character voice for each reading because my own is so cracked and broken.

After three, I settled on a soothing, gravelly whisper and he lay there on his back, clutching my sleeve with one hand and his own topknot with the other, eyes heavy-lidded and focused somewhere magical. I am so full of wonder to be the one (not the only one, I'm sure) to be introducing him to the magic of books.

I actually got in some writing time last night and ironed out a few things that have been taking up too much of my RAM. More about that elsewhere.

In the light of self-promises to get my corporeal self back in functional order after a long period of neglect and abuse, I volunteered to wheel my little assistant around the neighborhood for an hour or so this morning in the service of getting my stamina back. All this before downloading this  and cobbling together my own dance program. Here's music to move to or you're dead.

Move along quietly

My draw for the day (thanks, JR), which I think I'll just dwell on for a week or so.

Enough of that other thing - it's a very long time 'til November. After a week of no car, I have running to do.

~!~

                               Today, just this.

I got mine!

You know how I am...

the rest I've divvied up and are for sale.








I kept this little weirdo too.

the dryer buzzes!

the damasks.

Now I can see which colors need tinkering with. The black is better than it looked wet.

Grace, this is the rest of that hard linen I sent you.

It loves the dye, as I predicted.

and most happily, my fish. ready to fry.

session 1, wrap-up

Who else gets up to rinse cloth before the coffee is ready?

Superstitions, I rinse out the color 'kin" together. Learned that from accidental fuschia poisoning.

The fish came out exactly as I hoped. Looking forward to putting them on..everything.

Now, you know about getting too excited over wet cloth. But I suspect the center will hold.

Everything has been through the Zombie washing machine, gently, and is now tumbling because I don't want to wait for the sun.

I can tell from here that the black is going to need tempering away from warm. I'll divide the remaining stock in two and mess with them. Have to think about how.

Opening Day!

Not baseball. That's next Monday. It's the first dye fest at the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx, indoor division, kitchen table league. (It's still a bit brisk outside today and I just couldn't wait.)

Once the colors have been cooked, things move pretty fast. I knew what I wanted - pure color -  and the session was over and done in an hour and half. Well, part one anyway.

Remember the fish batik that I cut into pieces? The plan was to overdye each one with a different color and then applique them back onto, I don't know what yet. Maybe stinky little pine pillows.

That pile of victims up above was the remains of a very tough linen tablecloth and a very tired cotton damask one. I think both will take up the color like camels at the oasis.

I'm not religious about batching like some. I've been known to give things a hot hour in the sauce and then hit the rinse. I'll leave these bits bagged up until tomorrow. I have other things to attend to.

My personal schedule has been tilted thanks to the day job. My new weekend is Thursday & Friday and my new start times the rest of the week is 4:15pm. Everything else will have to flux around that crap. At least I will get to go to some Friday night baseball games this season - the last at Turner field.  The fireworks should be outstanding.

Here is the first tablemopper of the season. I didn't preset it with soda ash this time but did drop it in a baggie with a half cup when cleanup was done. Somehow these derelicts become the star of my scrap basket every year and used to find their way into my more interesting pieces. Time will tell.

(notice the eyelet flannel sheet under everything, picking up drips and stains)

close call

On my 27-minute dinner break from the paying job, this came into my line of sight and I came very close to folding it in half and stitching it into a pillow so I could stuff it with five pounds of balsam fir needles that have been reeking around the studio for a few days. The only thing that saved it (?) was that the Janome was not rigged up with white thread. I'll finish this as Art over the weekend and we'll have an auction!! I'll make stinky pillows from something else.

Colors of the days

I'll lead with the pretty pictures and I can see now that a few of these need tinkering, but I'll stay my hand because these are the concentrates that I will work with, so a little bit goes a long way - even with my predilection for waste. I need to find a good sized disposable syringe, the turkey baster is too big.

While waiting for these to come up to room temp, I replaced the agitator dogs in the washing machine- the final phase of restoring it to useful life before having to knuckle under and buy a replacement. No washer = no dye season. Never mind clean clothes. I work from home. Clothes?

I followed this funny video and found it to be much like playing with Lego. Years ago I tore down and rebuilt the carburetor in our lawn mower and MANY years ago, swapped out the engine and tranny in my '63 Ford Fairlane. Most satisfying endeavors. The washing machine thing was not nearly as hard on the fingernails, but Kids, it's Nasty in there!  Building computers from scratch is a joke by comparison. Hands-on feels good. What's next?  And where the hell did I put last years seeds????

I missed Ostara...

...so I'm celebrating today while everyone else is Eastering.

I should have taken this outside for better exposure, buts it's drizzling and I've lost the tent cover over the dye deck to rot and old age.

The fun part was trying to read the labels on the powdered dyes. 90% have faded away which doesn't speak well to the way I stored them.

Only time will tell if this batch of dye stock will be valid.

I stuck to the twelve. I'm particularly happy with what looks to be a very neutral black. No more cheesy plastic squeeze bottles. I invested in a dozen 16oz. mason jars which rack up nicely on the bottom shelf of the fridge.

No more fooling with this stuff today, although I'm tempted. I have a writing project with a deadline. These will keep until we get some sunshine. And I'm happy with this salvage job:

the provenance of twine

One of the prototype cusspots.

This one was made from 12 strand cotton string that came from the first post office that my mother worked at in Goldens Bridge. They used to tie bundles of mail and magazines with this stuff. In a pinch, they could have used in a hanging. When the old PO was closed, they were going to throw four giant cones of this in the trash. I was twelve and I knew it was wrong. This was the very last of it.

This is about the size of a baseball and was covered car grime. A soak in laundry detergent, no bleach and it looks like the day I made it and will go back to catching coins in the console of his car.

All this whiteness has me itching to stoke up the dye deck this weekend. I feel the need for color.

sweetness

There's nothing sweeter than unexpected company on a Sunday morning.

(My camera needs its eyes checked)

the Sordid Tale continues...

"The Error of Her Ways"  (cont.)

Picking everything out wasn't as bad as I anticipated.  Music helped. The base cloth is a sturdy, service weight damask, not too vintage, so it can take a little punishment without falling apart.

But..web research is telling me I am well and truly screwed for using an indelible (hello!) metallic gold ballpoint ink to so arrogantly lay out the lettering. Such chutzpah!

The solution I'm too familiar with is laying in a needle-turned patch of the same base material with the tiniest, most invisible, made by blind Bavarian nuns, stitching and then, getting the damn words right, bless you Beatles.

Relax baby, it's gonna be OK.

ugh and shit

That little badge I've been working on? It took me a week of mulling to decide on the text. Another few days of drawing the letters with my finger before I committed to the gold metallic pen. I was pretty smug about how nicely I fit the words around the perimeter of the design. That should have been a warning.

And in the end, the love you make is equal to the love 

you take.

Did you see the error? Neither did I until I was finished stitching. Sigh.

Scary, isn't it.

Nothing like yesterday, though.

While I was at the park yesterday I scored a few good books from the Little Free Libray on a stick. I owe them a bunch, now that I think about it. Morbid has been the flavor of the day, politics aside.

"A Morbid Taste for Bones" is probably out of print so I'm keeping this yellowed little paperback. I was first introduced to the work of Ellis Peters while I was checking out anything and everything that was unabridged audio back when I had two hour daily commute to the Deathstar.

Imagine my surprise when I investigated the authors backlist to find that Ellis Peters was a little old lady who was dead and not writing any new adventures for Brother Cadfael. Then I stumbled on the BBC TV production of one of her books,  "the Virgin in Ice" and I was reminded of how well-written drama can break your heart wide open.

And while I was doing the dishes this morning, I wrote a scene that has been wanting and waiting to trouble and terrify me. Good day and it's only noon.

practical matters

The sun coming in over the sewing chair is rich in the mornings, strong until 11 almost, but once the trees get leaves all that will change. For now, I'll take advantage of it if I can.

The washing machine heard me boasting about getting a good deal on those lumberjacks yesterday so it decided this would be a good time to up and die. Not if I have anything to say about it.

We jackassed it off the base because I thought we had to take the back cover off. Then I did a little web surfing and found the trixie technique for getting at the works - flipping the lid and yanking off the cabinet from the front. It was nasty in there.

 In search of a clog, hoses were disconnected, but I forgot about the several gallons of dirty water still in the tub, even though we siphoned off most of it. Damp carpets will look cleaner someday. There was NO sock blockage, although I did find an ATM card in the basket that I hadn't even missed yet.

The next part to be investigated/replaced is the timer. Part ordered and an excellent tutorial found. All I need is a strappy t-shirt and crack-revealing jeans.

passing time

I was going to call this post "killing time", but it's such an awful expression when you think about it. Lately, if anyone was to tell me to my face that they were just killing time I might smack them!

While I got even more fussy with the corded lines on this piece, I waited for a phone call from the tree guy.

The house phone was ringing the other day and out of sheer spite, I answered all prepared to send some telemarketer, politician or bill collector to a venomous hell with my snappy repartee. Instead, I took a cold sales call from a local tree company who must have scouted the property from the street even though my concerns are in the back yard.

He came, he saw and he conquered me with an amazing price for felling a group of trees that have been threatening my pool for years. The time has come. Well, it will come later in the summer after I've sold a few pounds of cloth and/or a few gallons of blood.

In the meantime,  it's Spring Break at the Froggy Club Med. This strange climate year has emboldened a host of tender-voiced leopard frogs to come out ahead of the shrieking tree frogs. Who will eat whom? All of them will be evicted in the coming days.

             I cleaned and relocated my favorite, deep-voiced wind chimes.

for Grace

unhinged

Is it just me?

The almost complete lack of winter (as lame as it is here in Georgia) has me unsettled and not recognizing these days as Spring.

Our pool is a pit of green slime, the algae never died off and turned black like it usually does. We are going to have to move up the purge a whole month.

I spent the morning avoiding all (current) media input. It's verging on toxic. I've done my part - did my investigation, made a contribution, slapped on a bumper sticker and voted. For a few days, anyway, the whole process can just catch a handbasket to hell.

What I'd really like is to go to a baseball game..no radio, no TV, just watch and listen, maybe stitch a bit while they are out there having private conversations on the mound.

spring?

Seasoned readers will think "oh, oh. she's been doing a whole lot of nothing." but, not so.

Mending, putting new bindings on old service quilts, actual zipper replacements - real old school stuff. I have new callouses.

It was warm enough to leave doors and windows open today and I was outside looking at the dyedeck wondering what would be next.

spring wear

This has been missing for a while. It needs a little work, but I'll wear it out today just for some fun.


A better look..

utility

I've been looking at the large chunks of good quality commercial cotton I still have as I shuffle tubs and containers around trying to make room in the closet.

The Janome behaved well recently and the activity was rewarding mentally. This kind of design work sparks flow. Winter weight quilts or two layer flings..tops are tops.

I've had to make some major changes to my manuscript - pacing issues - and looking at this quilt, I'm realizing that good design is good design, no matter the medium.

The cloth speaks.

you know I'm procrastinating

when it was new

That must mean it's Tax Time! Really, I know just where all the paperwork is. I know what room it's in and what set of baskets to go to.

In the meantime, the first quilt I made for Charlie has finally gotten the long promised and long overdue mending. I have not turned on the Janome since this quilt was first made more than eighteen months ago. I suppose I should clean and oil it.

I don't know what I was thinking when I discharged already tender cottons on the quilt top. Some of the pieces began to fray and develop holes just from day to day wash and wear.

At first, I was afraid I was going to have to deconstruct the entire thing, but the backing is substantial commercial batik so I'm counting on some sturdy, well-placed shirting patches and a new binding to hold things in service another year or two. I'll finish hand stitching that binding when he's sleeping tomorrow.

new now

hearts progress

It seems that this is where I fall back when nothing else is possible. Reflexive self-care.

I have a five alarm head cold that is already passing. Cold medicine leaves me with breezes blowing between my ears. No thoughts.

art at work

3D art pieces born again as Toys!  Charlie especially likes the one in the foreground for its handle.

back to badges

I went back in to the studio this morning and started a new badge, adding on to the series I started two years ago.

Finding those UFOs yesterday and digging into their history has proven to be a catalyst for a much-needed mental rest, although, while in the design phase of the project, I'm finding paralelles to writing that I never did in the past.  I think it's because I focused on this one..."the Heart of Life",  a personal favorite that sold pretty quickly.

 I found the post about the genesis of the badge project which includes a good shot of this piece in progress.

I can remember selecting and rejecting cloth, then cutting and folding and moving the shapes over and over until it was right.
Selecting and building the blended threads, choosing and executing each stitch. There was no hurry and no room for "whatever". I gave this little thing my all.  That's what it takes, no matter what I'm doing or I'm not going to be satisfied with the outcome. This one will get finished soon and I'll mount it to a small canvas. They will all be for sale.

wondering

We had snow showers all day today and the light was unusual. I was in the studio early and sat looking at the design wall for a while wondering what happens to the work when artists die. There are eight or nine pieces nailed up there for lack of better storage and will on my part. Nice and flat they are. What a pain in the butt for the families left behind!

           Yes, for reasons I won't dwell on, I missed both of those deadlines so the pieces that I started in 2012 and finished in 2013 probably they won't seen any exposure at a national show what with restrictions on the age of pieces. Or is that bit of fiber tomfoolery becoming a thing of the past?

         Then the sun broke through and I got this shot of "Consolation" 2012.
 It worked it's charm on me. No one out there has enough money to buy this one.

not locked up or in Tahiti

But it feels like the first one.

I've been writing critiques for a handful of other writers from a new group that I've joined. You have to give 'em to get 'em, as the saying goes.
My neck hurts, my shoulders are all hunched, there's a crease between my eyes and I have agita. No, not from working at the computer all day. From trying to be civil and instructive at the same time. It's exhausting. You can't just say "This sucks. Stop writing." The Karmic implications are grotesque!  What I really want to do right now is curl up with the river basket and maybe just mend something.  feh.