sack cloth magic

I'm please and proud to find that Jude will be building a magic cloth starting with  a piece of vintage cotton sacking that I dyed last summer.

This piece was part of this batch of cloth,  gifted me by my friend Rosemary just about a year ago. I left this image large so you can zoom in an see the various textures.

Some of the pieces in this batch had a stencil reading   "Made For A.D.Pierce, Brooklyn, Conn." A little research told me that this company was a hatchery of some sort last mentioned or annotated in the 1930s.

I love a cloth with history, no matter how prosaic.
There will be just a few more pieces of this cloth posted to the Random Acts of Dyeness page. Hoarding most of it for myself.

Macro

Learning the macro settings on the new camera. No shortage of willing subjects lounging about.

Which one of my internet friends collects these carved wood stamps? I bought this one at a flea market years ago and have never done anything constructive with it.

the pleasures of the weekend

I'm taking my time with this one enjoying every stitch. Building the threads by using 3, 4 and 6 strands of machine thread, sometimes splitting up floss and mixing in rayon and metallic. A tiny but satisfying palette.


I have some sheers that might come into play down the line too.




Meanwhile the real pool is draining after a long hard winter. We beat the frog sexcapade this year by about two weeks so no polliwogs in peril.

The boys are going to muck it out when the water is all gone. Jim will pressure wash it and the fill - up  will get under way. Order will be restored to my world.


'Sketti & salad tonight with garlic bread made from potato rolls that they were giving away at Publix.

starting a thing

Now that I think about it, everyone should have a cusspot. To save threads in for bird nests, dimes, earrings, whatever. They are all different, some dyed, some not, some stiffened with medium, some still soft. None of them much bigger than an egg.

If you send me a little padded envelope with your address and  enough postage on it  for a return trip, I get one off to you. They might as well live at your house too. the studio is infested with them.

email me for address & info




I'm also starting to put together "My Picks" - little groupings of cloth that I might choose myself to start a small slow cloth - pieces that get along nicely. The first two are posted at
Random Acts of Dyeness

Art at work

I keep a little, undyed cusspot at my desk at the office and stuff every tiny shred of thread in it. After several months it was pretty packed so I took it out onto the grounds and left little bits here and there on the shrubs.

Last evening this was the only one I could find. The birds nests in the vicinity all have Art!

There is Art for us too, sadly unattributed and one or two woodpeckers have had at it.

gifts

The was a package waiting on the doorstep for me when I got home a few minutes into this new day.

I hardly know what to say about the generosity and kindness of good people all around the world but I'll tell you I am amazed.

DS, please email me.....

Backyards #1

Remember that sketch from a few days ago? Was I close? There's a long road ahead for this one. I have a lot of stitching planned and this morning, a date with some tax forms, so that will be all from me for a while.

I'm a long way from comfortable with the new camera (Thank you Angel, once again!) but at least I'm satisfied that the colors are true. Those two blues were giving me fits until I found the right settings.

She's Baaaack

A few quick shots...no, I have not read the manual yet, but I promise I will.

glass wonderland

My neighbor and former fiber dye partner Jan T. took off into the realm of hot glass sometime back. Her focal beads are lush with both exotic and natural color themes.
I started picking out favorites and realized it was like eating really good potato chips....you can see more here

your Monday, my Friday

Even though I had to be there over the weekend, it was a great day at the Whine Mine. The calls that come in over the weekend (and after hours) tend to be more interesting. Things like "parked car rolls across three yards, causing 20k in landscaping damage and falls into brand new swimming pool. no witnesses" and
"employee falls asleep in walk-in cooler and claims his head cold as an on the job injury". The human parade, never in step and always hilarious. "WTF?!"  has become my mental mantra.

I didn't have time to enjoy the Sunday Times but it usually takes me all week to get through it anyway. The newest small hand stitched piece fell into place - the base cloth is a roughly woven linen, rust and gold with red flecks - I'm sad it's almost all gone. I'm going to take a stitch primer with me today to think about new things to do with the needle and thread. My embroidery repertoire is pretty limited. Got to hear the Braves on the radio, always fun even though they lost last night in San Francisco. AT&T park sounds like Hell's back yard to hear our announcers describe it.

I really miss my camera...so many things are gorgeous in the morning light.

scribbling

Thanks to Terry G. for reminding me about ZFranks Scribbler which has uncovered a new, more flexible black hole for my time, V2.

You'll curse me for following those links.

Left is a scribble that sketches the bare bones of a small piece that came together on the design wall at the WhineMine last night. No denying it's representational. Suburban landscapes, a series perhaps.

The central element, a pool, came from the  last batch of hand dyes -  a wonderful bright teal from something ProChem called "Bonnie Blue" over some pale yellow cotton, another gift that's full of promise. I think I finally used the last of all that vintage linen and coarse sack cloth, all wonderful in greens, gold and rust. A grove.