Dyfest eclipsed

 Did I mention the magic ingredient is sweat? All the thread has been washed,rinsed,and laid out to dry. Tomorrow we'll see what gives. I worked slowly. Being methodical, correcting colors at the halfway mark. Broadening my willingness to accept a color made me a little cranky. Maybe it was the time constraint of the eclipse. I wrapped up about fifteen minutes before the peak dark. Sat out front with the cats and observed with my cardboard glasses.

I shot this over my shoulder without looking. The fur people were unfazed. They noticed, but seemed to be underwhelmed.

Start Your Engines!

 The weather is cooperating albeit a little chilly right now, but by noon the sun will be over the yardarm and I'll have the heat the process needs, fingers crossed. I hope to have everything done and dusted by the time the eclipse starts. My most distinct memory of the last eclipse is how weird colors looked as the moon and sun did their dance. Not trusting one's eyes was disorienting.

Here's where any help or instructions I have to offer will fall short because, during the color mixing process, words fail and instinct takes over. I have eleven of these little shakers left. One went AWOL somewhere under the deck where it's now king of spiders and slugs, forever. I sometimes wonder what color was in it, but not enough to crawl down there and find out. Eleven is a good number. 

 

I started with the notion of three sets of primaries with each set having a warm, neutral, and cool. But things went sideways quickly when I remembered that I also wanted some complimentary blends or browns. 

I've also started something new. That stainless steel shaker has a little bit of everything with a hot dose of Raven. A dollar well spent at GW.

None of these hopefuls will prove out until the dye hits the cloth and thread. That might be the most exciting part of the process. I don't measure anything so every color created at the kitchen table is unique, a true one-of-a-kind. 

When I get outside, I find myself saying "Yay" or "Yuck" and yucks can be amended quickly by adding color in whatever direction I think it needs. 

Winding, measuring, and tying off the skeins is something that happens while I'm half-watching TV reruns.  

                           Vroom vroom!

eclipse eve

 

Go here for the rest of it. Keep your eye on the guy on the right.

I've been looking at color all day. Broke out the acrylics and paper for a little flexing. The deck wasn't as bad as I thought. Pick up and hose off mostly. 

I've been leafing through a kind of color Bible.

My big color compass, Joan Mitchell.  (Liz- our exchange in the comments is still relevant)

 

I must have a dozen of these steel hotel pans all over the house. Bathrooms, studio, kitchen. They are so useful. Tomorrow I'll use them for steeping a few larger pieces of cloth. Let them stew in their juices during the eclipse. 

Everything is filled with fresh water because the hose head leaks. The front end of my process is relatively low water. The next day, I pray for rain to help with the first rinse. 

The new Thyme in the foreground and the Old Lavender are so alike in form, but so different under the nose. And look at the moss growing on the sides of the fiber pots!

A cover

 

Once I get fixated on a title that would mean carved in Carrera marble if I had the skills and I crave the skills. 

You know there are videos of sweaty, muscled guys chiseling marble statues? Quite mesmerizing to see art materialize from a lump of rock. 

This would be my version, minus the sweat and muscles, of bringing an idea to life.

Parking this for a while because I have to finish prepping the dye deck for tomorrow.

What will you be doing during the eclipse? 

Spring break

 

"Like a week in the country..." lyrics to something and the cure for what ails us.  The storms only gave us a lick of lightning and thunder last night. 

The first thing I did when I got here was take the grand tour of the new treehouse. I climbed the ladder and checked out the built-in bench to prove to myself that I still could. 

I would have put it a lot higher, but that's not my call. 

This is the view from the front porch. The people across the private road farm all organic. Last year this field was filled with giant sunflowers and cabbages as big as pumpkins. Just behind him is a field where cows wander around moaning with delight over all the new green grass. 

I hope he didn't see me staggering around the front steps stooped over planting nasturtium seeds everywhere. Surefire crop if Jake doesn't mow them.

It's a good thing that fine linen is so forgiving. I had to pick out the "r" and move it. Before it looked like Slash and Bum. I'm taking my time filling in the heart. This is the first time I've attempted anything realistic in stitch and I think the swords turned out pretty well. 

title and theme

 

I love this hard-assed morning light. In a week or two it will be filtered and muted by the new leaves on the big Water Oak in the front yard. At the moment that tree is festooned with strings of yellow, pollen-laden flowers.  All parked cars are yellow. All eyes are a little red.

A new car wash nearby is having its grand opening giving away free car washes. I got one a little while ago and the attendant said I should come back again tomorrow. Jumping Jack Flash was seriously filthy.

I'm working on the layout for the Spell project but I have to stop and find a hard surface to work on. Large enough to tape the cloth down. Hard enough to allow for a good transfer. In the meantime...

This cloth was folded into thirds and hand-stitched two-thirds of the way on the sides to form what looked like something to hold paper money. 

I didn't think I'd ever use these. So full of history and mystery. But when I pulled this one from the river basket and saw the monogram, there was no question that I would use it. 

Putting the bells on a cart before the horses are even born, I'm making a cover for the novel I'm working on. Their surname is Bell. 

Where did my metallic gold thread get to?

A disturbance in the force of my household has been healed 

and it's Baseball opening day. 

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. 

 

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.

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. 

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.