Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Such problems

I had my heart set on using those rich dark greens and blues for the text on the Spell project, but reality spoke up loudly. "Your background is DARK, dummy!"

So, the paler blues and gold will carry the text. I'm still refining the letterforms and won't rush myself. There are too many other things to attend to.

All those on the bottom half of the picture are the rest of the recent overdyes. Some have little to no variation, but you never know what makes a stitcher's hair blow back.
They are here.

I'm putting off the first full dye session until Eclipse Day, hoping the weather will cooperate.

 Here in GA there will be 90% starting at 1:45 and peaking at 3pm. Since I need to see what I'm doing, I'll be finished flinging color by the time it starts. 


 

Sunday, March 24, 2024

Sky work

 




Colin sent this moonset from the airport this morning.

It's eerie. Has the feeling one has on waking from strange dreams which is my regular headspace lately.






And this was my sunrise in the studio a few hours later. The light at this hour is always a little too much for my camera but I couldn't discard this one because Salem was approving from her new favorite station - a chair cushion behind the Janome.

I will post most of this lot on the shop page later in the week with better, truer pictures.




Friday, March 22, 2024

tasty throwbacks

 



Been a long time since I've done this heavy color saturation. Experiments on the horizon.

The rest of them will spend a day and a night out in the spring rain. 

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Prelude


Came as a shock to me too! 
Late this afternoon I finished a task and was at loose ends. I was stowing stuff away when that basket full of losers shifted and threatened to dump. 
I didn't count them, but there were about two dozen skeins of thread that came out so piss-poor or pale that I set them aside for overdyeing someday. Someday arrived. 

I try to keep over-dyeing simple. Choose only three primaries and mix them right in with the soda ash sauce. Not my regular routine at all. There's never any telling if the threads will take the dye or if I've wasted time and materials. It's a molecular thing that I don't have a full understanding of.
Dip here, drip there. Quick and dirty. I didn't take any before pictures; they looked like failed easter eggs.

I'm kind of hoping this intensity will calm down once everything is dry. There can be too much of a good thing.





Of course, I had to get a couple drying. Handling wet skeins is pesky as hell. I wrap them around a cone of mystery thread that never took the dye. It serves. 


I'm very interested in this piece of linen that I used for a table mopper.
 
Golden Yellow, Peacock and Mulberry... all together now.



Wednesday, March 20, 2024

The Dixie Mink

right shoulder


From what I can tell, I coined the phrase "Dixie Mink" referring to an oversized, denim jacket usually the property of her old man, or boy toy.

It's coming up on time to give it a gentle soak and rinse inside out, line dry and tuck it away until the cool weather comes back.


But before then, I think I'm going to build some snakes down each sleeve from the heart to the cuff.  
right upper arm

left chest 

left upper sleeve