Fruits, some unripe, some rotten. updated

 I fiddled with that cotton/silk twist and also remembered its provenance. Liz, I am pretty sure you had this sent to me all the way from AU or NZ? Please confirm. Thanks. I found the post about the greasy demise of that original hank. Be glad there were no pictures.

I used a tapestry needle on a piece of heavy linen because I couldn't find my damn glasses and was too intent on the project to get up and find the spares.

They were in my hair.

Weather is going to play a bigger role in this work in the future. I have not retaken the holy BATCHING oath. It's because I'm a lazy bitch and if I have to wait for a red-hot thunderstorm to do the primary rinsing, so be it. There are no elves to help out here. 

I wound off a few because they looked so unappetizing in the hanks and I needed to look deeper. 

Revelation #1: Morton's Kosher Salt gave a new dye delivery option that paid off nicely. Short and abrupt color changes were further enchanted by some clumsy handling with dirty gloves. And yes, the new Black Mix really came through nicely. 

                                                You always wondered about that 'dirty', didn't you? 

Basics...once again with feeling

 

Lessons learned all over again. Temper that Hot Pink harder, harder I say. Keep it away from that insipid blue and haul deeper on the turquoise, it's a noble color.

Where is my A Little Chaos blue? The granddaddy of long lost Bonnie Blue. Sad. 

And what the EFF were you yellows doing? Sleeping on the job? 

The new black is nicely neutral!

Y'all must think I'm nuts but I talk to the colors while I'm working. Lots of swearing going on.

They are all languishing in the studio. Drying thread and cloth indoors it tedious but the rain has come to stay for a few days.

My absence caused a bit of disapproval. Now I am sharing a queen-sized bed with four cats.

Finally

 

The glass jars were neglected on the deck over the winter and picked up a patina of rust that two passes through the dishwasher and hand scrubbing could not remove. I could hardly tell what was in the jars after I mixed colors and decided to not label them.

If this batch has a name, it's Come What May.

Even though (I thought) I had a whole day to work with, I only picked a bundle that I could carry down from the studio to the deck, one handed. Three big sections of that light linen, a few damask and woven napkins. A J Jill blouse, dismembered. A twin percale sheet for wiping up spills. Some sections of heavier linen. One of those silk/cotton threads and about twenty of six-strand DMC.

notes before I forget. The silk/cotton did NOT like the soda ash sauce and may have some kind of sizing. Next time, an overnight in hot water & Dawn first.

the lightweight linen allows for a lot of color creeping. very important to not over handle it. Some of this may wind up being discharged, waxed and overdyed. I'm considering them bases for other things.

Of course, all of this depends on how everything looks after rinsing, washing, and drying.

I made a point of choosing colors that I'd overlooked last summer.

I made a mix for black that looks like it's going to be terrific. It seems so neutral here. Again, results will vary a lot.

Equal parts Raven and 629. a dash of Deep Space and Bronze to counter the blue. They ALL show out in the linen.

The percale table moppers are going to be sublime!

Here's why I cut the day short and why nothing is going to get finished before Friday. 

I may get lucky and the rain takes care of the first rinse or two.

Bonus for small batches handled in a studied rather than a frenzied manner - I was not physically or mentally wiped out.

It was also barely 80 by the time I wrapped it up. 

I feel like I was cheating.

Words & weeds

 

As in the past, when the words on paper get stuck, stitching some seem to grease the wheels. Even in the face of some heavy-duty adulting, (so appropriate at my age) scenes are starting to fill out. Characters are having conversations that need recording. It feels good, but it's still a precarious state of mind. Like walking on a very narrow cliff edge with no handholds. 

The severe shortage of thread is hampering me, too.  We had frog-strangling rain all day yesterday. Today, the sun is blazing but it's only in the 40s. It's going to be a challenging dye season.

Just before the rain set in, I walked around the Wood Chip Heap and scattered several pounds of flower seeds that I have been collecting all winter. Native perennials. Butterfly and Hummingbird garden seeds.  "Ooooo, that's pretty" Seeds. I got suckered by the seedmen weekly. The seeds fall down into the top chips hidden away from birds and squirrels into the decomposed stuff that will hopefully nurture some of these seeds to blossom. If a quarter of them make it, it's going to be amazing. I have a mix of vinegar and soap to spray on the emerging poison ivy, brambles, and pokeweed to give the flowers some breathing room. Beyond that, the rest is up to nature.

This is right outside my kitchen windows.

Silk & cotton spaghetti (updated)

 The opening day of baseball was usually the opening day for my dye season, but the weather conspires against me.

Warm enough today but no direct sunlight and showers on and off enough to be pesty.

Charlie was here overnight and I would have put him to work, too but...rain and gross humidity. 

Instead, we put down grass seed in some bald patches leftover from the septic work and I broadcast another round of flowering perennials over the wood chip lot, The rain knocks the seeds into the crevices hiding them from squirrels and birds. Hopefully. I'd settle for 25% of them making it to maturity.

Colin planted a third blueberry bush, 'cause plant sex or something requires another type if I want blueberries. I don't try to understand. I just shell out and hope.

I'm going to experiment with a B&W thread. This hank of cotton/silk two-ply has been hanging on the back of the studio door for years. It's already a mess of tangles. IF it takes the dye and IF I like the way it turns out and handles, it's going to get put up on the cardboard spindles like so much long spaghetti. When I'm winding it off the hank (no chair, no swift, no extra pair of hands) when I run into a knot or tangle....SNIP. You were going to cut it anyway, right?

There's a thought. Cut the whole hank in one place! The pieces will be about a yard long. Little speckled balls of thread that you have to tease out to use. It could work. Right?

ON SECOND THOUGHT...I do that a lot. What was I thinking? No way I could dye spaghetti directly on the cardboard bobbins. They'd mold before they would dry. I went ahead and cut the hang leaving me a lot of 30+ inches pieces which I divided in three and tied off like sails. One will be spattered in Raven, another speckled with dirt colors, and the last one is tutti-frutti rainbow cutie. All to be wound onto bobbins when the spirit moves me.

Saturday Blessings

 

How to be grateful and not gloat? I have two wonderful, capable sons with valuable skills and generous hearts. 

Colin is rebuilding the deck that overhangs the pool. The one where I hang all the cloth and thread to dry. For a long time, it's been treacherous. The floor itself is solid but the railings and roof were rotted. The demolition is done, and the new railings will be up soon. I might even get a chair for out there when all is done.

Jake and Charlie came and set all the mechanical beasts to rights quickly and (luckily) inexpensively. The truck will start and run reliably. A lawnmower only needed an air filter and the AC in my car is once again frosty. 

Next week is Spring Break and Charlie and I will have more time together. Poker, Lego, the Park, and car washing. Pray for good weather.

prospecting

    If you've ordered cloth recently, a big batch of orders left the PO on Monday so...soon.  Thank you all. This is a first, selling out thread and cloth.

    Spring and spring cleaning are here. I would love to take an old-fashioned junking expedition. Heading out on a Saturday morning and stopping at every yard sale sign I see. Carry cash and maybe even dicker a little. 

    

    Many years ago, my friend Barb and I would plot a course from the garage sales listed in the most current Pennysaver. Remember those? I honestly don't remember what either of us was prospecting for. It wasn't cloth. Our tastes in most things were diametrically opposed. She went for what I call Americana Kitsch and I looked for Bizarro & Sorry I Bought it a Week Later. 

After a rather wasted (in more ways than one) day, we headed back to her place at dusk. A few streets from home, a big yard sale was long over and the unloved stuff was piled on the curb to wait for the garbage man.

     She just had to have a large platform rocking chair with overstuffed cushions. There was also a big box of hundreds of empty aluminum film canisters. You know the kind. So, something for each of us, but the chair would not fit into the trunk of my car. We tried. As big as the trunk of a '53 Chevy is, the two of us could not lift and turn the chair in a way to make it fit. 

    

    So we did what people did back in the seventies. We sat on the curb and split a joint to consider the problem. There was a coil of nylon rope in the trunk and somehow we decided that this chair would survive being dragged behind the car for a few streets.

    The streetlights came on. The mosquitos found us. We roped up the chair and turned the radio up loud to drown out reasoning and headed for her place. She was nattering on about our route for the Sunday sales and I forgot I was dragging a hundred-pound chair and picked up speed to all of twenty-five in this asphalt-paved residential neighborhood. 

    

        "Stop!!" she yelled. The dregs of another failed yard sale were heaped on a curb and she wanted to check it out. I jumped on the brakes and the Chair launched itself into the air to crash into the implacable steel bumper of my two-ton Chevy. I had also forgotten the box on the roof while we were figuring out how to transport the chair. 

    At the sudden stop, the box flew forward, hit the hood, and dumped hundreds of tinkling little metal canisters rolling into the street. Porch lights popped on from both sides of the street. I cut the rope, jumped back in the car, and we took off, giggling until our guts ached, the dead chair and hundreds of twinkling metal eyes in my review mirror.

Simpler times.

scrapped updated 3.27

 

....all gone.

If you ordered scraps in the last week, they are on their way! Post Office said arrival for all on this Thursday or Friday. 

While I was making these up, I kept seeing pieces and looking the other way while the HAND snuck another little gem into the River Basket. To prevent this, I closed my eyes and stuffed bags full by feel. There are nine or ten left.  Here's the store link.

I have some new vintage scouts working in the field! Looking forward to warmer days and bigger messes out on the dye deck. This will be my first dye season since I retired from the day job. It's going to be interesting. I'll be doing a lot more documentation, maybe even some videos. Tutorials? A book?

 I don't know yet. Still thinking it all through.

Studio time

 

Look at this little crazy. Giving it her all even if her pot mates are on death's doorstep. They really need to be repotted in some real dirt and put outside in the shade so I can ignore them. The best treatment for cacti in my experience. 

 

I'm still mulling over how disturbed to be over this. 

You can't see it from this angle, but I laid out the lettering with a silver Prismacolor pencil - it erases easily from cloth. The next letter where the needle sticks up is a lowercase "a".

I drew it completely backward. 

Am not now, nor have I ever been, dyslexic.

store update:

There is still some cloth from the 2022 dye sessions. More new cottons and lightweight linen than vintage or damasks, but still rich with color and textures.

I've abandoned the square yard fussiness in favor of expediency. Back to stuffing the 6x9 poly bag full. I have about a dozen left, so SALE.

away sweetly

 

This cloth has been hanging on the design wall patiently waiting its turn. Could be it never gets cut up or incorporated into a larger thing, it's so strong and singular all on its own.

Look down there in the foreground at the little Christmas cactus playing at being an Easter bunny.

                 ~~~

I went "up country" on Sunday to stay over and spend the day with Charlie because they had no school on Monday for some administrative business. It was a welcome break. It's a shock seeing him after two weeks he's growing so fast. We've dispensed with the booster seat but there is still a wicker basket of toys and other crap in the back seat.

Sunday night another rainstorm blew through but Monday was glorious. He wanted me to time him running around the house with the stopwatch on my phone. Lucky me hit the camera button instead. 

All the neighboring herds were out enjoying the new grass. Sheep, cattle, cows, burros, horses. You can hear them from time to time mooing. 

Earlier in the day we had Poker 101 instead of boring math practice. Still, there was money involved. Adding, subtraction, probability, odds. He is discovering that math is in everything one way or another.

Hilariously, he learned to bluff accidentally and I learned that I have zero poker face.

 Sunday afternoon poker was a family tradition at my house. I joke that I was raised in the Church of the Inside Straight.

My family moved to the country when I was seven. Each Sunday my relatives would come for lunch and spend the afternoon into dinnertime playing nickel/dime poker around the kitchen table. Ballentine beer and the air blue with cigarette and cigar smoke. My Dad was a Charlie as was his father.

My Mom scuttled around the players in the tight kitchen cleaning up after dinner. My grandmother took over the TV in the living room. Kids were banished from the kitchen, but I had mastered the art of sitting quietly and was allowed to perch on a stool behind my Dad or my uncle and observe what was usually a friendly game. 

Holding a lame pair of sixes, my Dad leaned back to confer with me, silently. Stay or fold? Me, ever the wise guy, pushed a dime from his pile into the pot. We won that hand, but I was never allowed to sit in and play on my own. That would have been too much acknowledgment for a girl child.

Somehow, that distance was important to my understanding of the game, the people, and that my place would not be in their world in just a few years. 

Charlie and I laughed and learned as we went along, hand after hand. Later, I found a high-stakes poker tournament on TV and waited for him to spot the difference. He could tell that even with their poker faces on, they were anxious, and crabby even the big winner. On his own, he picked up that professional gamblers had flushed all the fun out of the game.

We went out to play.