dotz

Just waiting on the moon, I guess. Before the dotz these cloths were sad. Now they are humming with life. Stone Roses too.

hand dyes for sale

Many of the pieces I made this weekend were big enough for me to take a chunk for myself and put the rest up for sale here: I'll be posting more pieces as soon as I can. There's enough good stuff to share. If you are only interested in 1/2 of a piece we can work it out.

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.