Summer Solstice Dye Fest & Father's Day Feast

I am in the home stretch of a two day dyeing extravaganza only slightly relieved by a short stint at the local ER. The last of almost about 40 individual pieces averaging 3/4 yards and up are rolling around in the dryer right now. The color mood was generally restrained - I think the age of the dye powder is beginning to show especially because I have not been able to keep them in a cool place. Things ranges from midnight moodiness to the sublime and quite a few ridiculous. All and all I'm quite satisfied. It really was too hot to be working midday on Saturday but I pressed on brain baked and a good portion of those pieces went back in the vats or under the Softscrub on Sunday. Oh yeah, Saturday evening I took my son Jake to the emergency room to have an abscessed insect bite on his forearm lanced before it got a moments worse. He'll be fine. There are at least a full dozen new Sugar Dyes in colorways ranging from emerald forest to desert sands. You can see the pattern woven into the damask in this picture. I was actually ironing this stuff in the heat. If I seem a little possessed it's because I will have very little time for this kind of fun in the future - my Beloved, father of my finest creations, my chef, my personal shopper and all the kitchen cleaning elves are leaving - Jim has been called back to his real job!! The boys came by today to spend some time with their Dad, eat some food and do some laundry. It was a wonderful day.

Measures of Pleasure

I did some more machine stitching on this with a dark, metallic thread to help define the layers a bit. The handwork I have planned may or may not work - it will be easy enough to pick out if I change my mind. I'm thinking this could be a small study for bigger things hinged on the same techniques. Don't you find that things that are a pleasure to work on turn out well more often than the things that fight and struggle and balk you along the way? And sometimes, no matter what you do, a wishpot will just go bad to the bone.

Random Acts of Dyeness

I know getting too excited about hand dyes before they have been washed and dried can sometimes lead to disappointment but I have good feeling about this group. Odilon's pallette was ringing in my brain I think. and sometimes you can tell it was a great day at the Dyeworx when the table mopper turns out like this one.

All's Well

We were home from Dr. Nick's by 8:45. By 9am I was stuffed with breakfast and nodding off on the couch blissful with the leftover anesthesia. Everything is peachy and that's all I'll say about it except that everyone reading this should ask their doctor when they should have a colonoscopy. My husband's baseline screening at aged 53 saved his life. What more could I add? By noon I was well enough to don the mask and gloves and mix up some new colors and just get crazy. The whole cloth piece above is a commercial table cloth I got from OHCO for 2$. It's 5'x5' and I guess that 100% cotton label was telling the truth. We'll see what washes out and what remains. More wishpots taking on new hues. and a bunch of miscellaneous cottons from sacking to lawn. These were all soaked in soda ash, allowed to dry and then layered into the jars with several colors of dye. Something new abrew.

Link Love and a new Condition

Thanks to Lines and Colors for reconnecting me with Odilon Redon and leading me to Cure the Blind. These and Lorraine Glessner's (exquisite encaustic) "Oh, What World, What a World" are my solution for I don't get out much anymore.... If my internet behaves I will be using it to distract me from my first adventure in fasting. I'm embarrassed to admit in front of a world that starves on a daily basis that I don't think I've ever gone a day (let alone 24 hours) without eating anything but there you have it. In preparation for my first colonoscopy (why do I think of My First Communion?). Sad to say the gallon of nasty that I'll have to consume later this evening does not come in Merlot or Mimosa. After spending some time looking at a variety of his work I get the feeling that Odie and I would have gotten along quite famously. Can you believe that someone put a poster of this cyclops painting in the children s library where I spent a lot of my childhood? I think the spider print was in the restroom too. Odilon's nearly abstracts are inspirational for this surface designer. A package from Dharma came yesterday bringing colors that I have never worked with so, under the altered state of Hungry, I will be mixing up some new dyestock this morning and working on some new wholecloth notions that have been clamoring for attention.