Sunday, May 06, 2012

cooked by the supermoon

She's  baaack.

It's so good to be home. There are so many people to thank, and so much to think about and share that I can't find the end of the yarn to start winding that ball, so, one foot in front of the other and start with familiar tasks that give satisfying results.

I went out on the deck early this morning and rescued all of these from the little baggies and jars they have been pickling and poaching in since a week ago. Lesson one...there was zero dye in the liquids.  In a while I will get some help getting these up to the laundry.

After being gone for a full week which included emergency  surgery and a short hospital stay, there is unpacking, paperwork, housework, web work...all sorts of work to get caught up on but right now reconnecting with family here, touching base with distant family and friends and putting my hands on the fabric is all I want to do.

My reason for traveling in the first place was a long overdue visit with my Mom. It was very hard to say goodbye yesterday.

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

waylaid -updated

I left for NY as planned on Sunday morning but had no plan for being admitted to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy at the crack of dawn on Monday. Convalescing here for a while

I got to NY  midday, with mild discomfort but fever and pain set for real by dinnertime and it was off to the ER at the Rockstar of hospitals, Northern Westchester Hospital...if you must get sick, it's the place to be. The staff, the care and the technology were all the best. My sister Kitty got me there and stayed 'til I was tucked in and diagnosed. The plan is to fly home on Saturday.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

incubation


Here they are, forty or fifty half and third yard pieces of vintage damask of varying weights, a few pieces of high quality cotton muslin and a little linen. They will just be poaching out here in the sun until Friday. I've never set a lot of store by the notion of batching dyed goods; that is, giving them time to acquire color (or not). Several notable dyers have posited that whatever is going to happen will happen in two to four hours. Now we'll see what five days looks like.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Brewing a good time

the pieces of black damask and linen from yesterday came out just as I wanted them..the greenish cast in this photo is bounce from the outside lawn/trees light. The non color is dense and actually warm. Photographing anything made with this will be trixy.

Below is the wet table mopper from the session I just finished out on the dye deck. My current colors have been jacked up, doped sideways and titillated to the max. There is  Bloody Bordeaux, Monkeys Blood, Bile, several Blues from Beyond, Indigo Hell, Yell-ow and Grape Grotto among others.

The remaining vintage cloths are in the sauce waiting and tomorrow everything will be put together with Jazz & Heart and left to stew and fritter until I get back from New York on Friday. That's right folks..you read it correctly. Steeping for almost a week..a record for this hasty, impatient colorista.

And now to try to scrub the green off my feet so I can wear sandals on the plane..don't want to be accused of having something odd going on bodywise.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

blues on the line

Sure..hang things on the line and just watch the storm clouds gather. Oh well, what's one more rinse.

 I'm busy gathering bits and pieces for Jude's Contemporary Boro class that starts tomorrow. A thing on my mind will require some pieces of black and I have zero pieces of hand dyed black cloth, so, there's an experiment brewing out on the dyedeck right now. I mixed dry dye powders that no longer had readable lables...one said "JET something". Hope  it wasn't jet fuel. It looked black and got blacker as I blended in other things. Fingers crossed, results tomorrow.