humbled by the process

I guess I will never learn.

"Never crow about hand dyed cloth before it's been washed and dried" should be up in neon on my design wall.

Here's a link to a large image so you can see all the texture in the cloth. I can't decide if I want to continue working on this batch with other techniques or let them rest as is.

I also have to remind myself that nothing spectacular comes easy and that the best pieces I've made came from very humble starts.

she sheps naches

My friend Jan's son Ryan moved to Taiwan right out of high school to learn the language. I think it's been a little more than a year. Makes me think about what I've accomplished in the past year.

Here he is starring in an entertaining promotional video for Kaohsiung, the second largest city in Taiwan. Um, he's the tall guy with the guitar. I don't know what they are saying but the message comes across clearly.

October Glory

Well, if I can't have October baseball at least I'll have hatched out what may be the very best fabrics of the year - so far. Seriously, I was driving home from the grocery store with my ancient Ipod plugged into the car stereo (thank you Steve, you will be missed) and the theme from "The Natural" started playing and I started to cry.

I bought a leather purse the other day because it reminded me of my baseball mitt. You get funny looks carrying around a baseball mitt when you are not at the ballpark.

These are all shots from the first "reveal" when I open up the rolls of cloth and grains after 24 hours.

I can tell by the rinse water that the dye took pretty strongly . All the grains get shaken out onto the lawn and these entire batch is in the washing machine right now.





There won't be any time to take and post any finished pictures before I have to go to work so we will have to wait until tomorrow.

Que Sera, Sera    (my mother really did sing this to me)

It's seriously messy and labor intensive process but the results are worth all the trouble to me.





 

I have decided to name this entire set after the late, great Steve Jobs....they are the October Jobs.

wild assistants

While I was inspecting the tubs with cloth rolls, I tripped over this...I left a few pieces bagged up and in the sunshine to poach. They pulled it off the railing and checked on the contents for me, rather inelegantly.

From all appearances they did not approve of the contents.



update...the cable guy gave us a new remote as the service magically restored itself.

Here's part of what was in the bag shown above...you cant PAY for help this great!

waiting

I'm waiting. For the sun to come through the front door so I can see well enough to stitch on this piece for a while. And waiting on the Comcast guy to tell him I don't think the trouble is at our house because whatever was wrong seems to have cleared up since other Comcast trucks were shuttling up and down the block the past few days.

And waiting until it's warm enough to get those cloths out of the tubs and see the magic!