Jungleland

The first year we lived here in Georgia, it rained the entire month of June. Looks like a rerun. The pool is brimming over but if I got out there and the sun is not bright, I get chilled to the bone and the mosquitoes find me. Still, lush is lovely. It was a good, rainy writing day.

Taking a breath

I'll give you shelter from your storm.

the threads - Updated

Wholly unexpected that they would sell out in like, 20 minutes. Grateful to all who made it so. And take heart, there will be more. Who doesn't have fun making candy?

Well. That was fun and will be repeated in the near future. Did I mention that I had a 2000 yard cone of DMC floss sitting around wondering what to do with itself?

Kept these two for myself.
The rest of the first flock is here

kitchen busywork

It's been gray, humid and depressing for days and I'm sick of it so had a little kitchen table dyefest to get on with making up skeins of embroidery floss to sell.

Now, my problem is what the heck to charge?  These are each 10 (not 8) yards of hand dyed, DMC 6-strand cotton floss.  No two of these are alike so if you are project oriented, I can't help you.

Clues anyone?

the Haunted dyefest

It was stewish out Thursday - hot and humid like we have not yet had so far this year. I will soon invent a word to describe weather that weird because of climate change.

I was distracted. Thunder muttered just beyond the horizon.
I am also taking two different medications for back pain and when they overlap, strange things happen. Let's just say, I haven't been driving as much as I like.

I play music through a small wireless speaker and the playlist randomly chose Jimmy's chili cookoff tunes. I already had on new and very sticky rubber gloves so I let it roll.

He used to love sitting on the living room couch and watch me work the dye deck while he watched TV from the cool darkness. Every now and then, I'd hold up a piece and he would applaud and comment.  I felt his presence strongly this time. He would also keep time for me. "Come inside before you get boil over."

Every conspired to go too quickly. Get it over with. I couldn't get my head into the work too deeply but the mechanics kept me moving. The results are more than half Providence and the Stars.

In every dyefest there are always one or two stand-outs. I can't even think about cutting this one.  Update...it's the new shop banner now..

There is a lot of gauze that I will be parting with one way or another. Something in the finishing process kept it from taking the color too harshly so it has a dreamy, blurred quality.

that woven, ribbed sheeting takes the color in amazing ways.

I'm picking through the remaining white good with focus on the cloths, like this, that won't let me down as I sneak up on some really vibrant colors on the next go round.

A number of these pieces will be worked on again. Discharging, soy wax and overdyeing and other process things are all in the wings waiting.

stitch this! Updated

These ten-yard skeins of 6-ply DMC cotton have a heather thing going on.

What you can't tell from this picture is that the opposite side of each of these is a different color, most of them a darker version of the one facing the camera. The color transitions are short and sharp which can be problematic.

What I do with these is split the six ply in half and reverse direction or just "color jog" half and then put them back together. Does anyone but me get that? I recently joined the Mildly Offensive Fiber Artists on FB...this stuffs looks right up their alley. Glorious, dirty string.



update - I ran to HoAnn's and scored those cardboard bobbins. You can see below the variations better now and the deeper you go into each bobbin, the less white there is.  Lessons learned. 
Still they are quite tasty. I'll be selling some of them in the shop soon.

Storm, still

 Another rinse. I left them to it.

In the semi-dry state, I could see that several of these pieces turned out to be a cotton blend that took the color in a strange, blurred fashion. This happened because I was too lazy to do a few burn tests. Lesson learned.
I won't be using any of it. Other pieces got muddied by my over anxious manipulation of the bundles. I foresee discharging and over-dyeing in their futures.

The threads turned out so tasty. Need to find a packet of these cardboard holders. Fresh out.

thunder, lightning and rock & roll!

I was in a mood. I wanted to flush the world away today.  Things got a little dark right from the start. Turquoise and Sunshine rode in to save the day from the darkness.

It got really hot and the pool behind me beckoned but I pushed on. Things got messy and out of hand quickly. Serendipity and Mayhem were having their way with this session.
Salt is in play. I haven't fooled with the crystals in years but the heat and humidity were perfect.

The sky went dark just as I was finishing and the thunder, lightning, and rain are putting the polish on this set of threads and cloth. Heavy blessings. It's all going to just be at the mercy of the elements for as long as that takes. Days maybe according to the weathermen. We hunker down.

my kind of Just Going

It's late. late for everything. Dyeing, swimming in the pool, staying out late to see the fireflies.

Better late than never.

The 2017 season at the Lawrenceville Frankenstein dye works commences.

the new week begins

Mondays with Charlie are getting more entertaining now that he has a fair grip on the language. I can no longer claim Nana dumbness.  I just have to listen to him with an open mind because he says exactly what he means without the qualifiers and filters that grownups have built into verbal communications. 

Miscoms still happen owing more to my deafness than his experimental approach to English. We pat each other on the head and try not to get exasperated. I said, "take my word for it, you do not want to watch that TV show." He focused on which word of mine he was supposed to take and where was I hiding it.

This scrap of cotton sateen has been rolling around the floor with the dust bunnies and this morning I washed and dried it and decided it was a message that I should take seriously, so I took it for a ride in the car. I know, you were hoping for something else - something stitchy or dyeish, but I'm working up to it.

The water and air temperatures finally conspired to get me into the pool...the latest date since we put it in back in '98. My friends and family in the Northeast have been sweltering with our summer. It may finally be here.

Because there was no killing freeze this winter the level of organic activity in the water was off the charts...I have a lot of scrubbing to do. This will be my outside office until it gets too cold to get in.
This year, maybe Thanksgiving.

wheels

Where have I been? More properly where will I be going? Anywhere and everywhere...now. Meet Jumpin' Jack Flash. He is a 2010 Honda Accord Coupe that has only 81K miles on the odometer, which, if you know anything about Hondas, is barely broken in and I would say by his physical condition, his former owners gave much love and attention.

I have not had a new car since I bought my friend Cliff's off him when he got deployed in 2002. That's right. I have been driving the faithful frog, a '01 Civic for sixteen years.

It was time, the price was extremely right,  and JJF is the car I have been hurting my neck over for years. You know, when it goes by and you crank your head around to follow it's progress? Well, maybe it's just me. But a certain combination of line, design, color, and action gets my full attention and now I'm driving it! I feel like I'm piloting a space ship.

Spectacle!

The screen is not big enough for the wonder of this. Colin stopped and took it on the way to work just now.

digging in

A line from "Almost Famous" came to me this morning while I was trying to thread a needle with two strands of rayon, one 12wt cotton and a flashy Madeira metallic..."It's a think piece..."

but the truth is, it's a not think piece. I want to do something and not think about it so much that it doesn't matter what that thing is.

I've been too distracted to focus on anything that needs close attention like - who did what to who and when, and when, exactly did she know about it - the kinds of things that drive readers crazy when writers don't get them right.

I was planning a short vacation to the gulf coast, but now those meager funds have been diverted to handling this potential disaster before it becomes a reality. I can't even speak ill of this sweet gum tree until the guys get here and take it down. Then I will throw a damn party.

The joys of home ownership continue.  Yesterday I found out that the flooding we had on the lowest level of the house is not covered by the homeowners insurance. Busted pipes? No problem. Deluge from above coming in/around/through the foundation? Sorry.

First order of business is having the massive boxwood hedges that run the whole front of the house cut down and dug out. That is going to look like shit for sure. I'll get that estimate on Saturday. New gutters...of course. then the demolition downstairs.

I get it that there are people in the world who don't even have a roof over their heads or a place to tuck their kids in at night.  Bitching about my house feels bad, but it's all I have so I have to hang on to it.