hand dyed threads

These colors were dashed off in a little haste last night but after a thorough rinse and a day drying in the sun, I just did a little stitching with this thread and I love the way it handles. I've tried Perle and didn't like it. This stuff is fun. Now to custom dye some colors for the things I am working on right now.

glory days

I only got about a third of the new hand dyes ironed. It was just so hot at that task, but the results were making me dizzy.

The older damasks can look pretty frowsy fresh out of the dryer or off the line. Line dried, they are stiff and scratchy and you have to be careful with the iron lest you catch a fold in the point of your iron and rip it. The ones from the dryer remind me of a bad hair day- limp and fuzzy.  Once ironed, they become smooth, shiny and with some color combos, iridescent.

Yesterday I took The Creatives and two of the Karmas to Kinkys and made a series of new reprographs.

They are quite startling in person. An elderly Asian gentleman was standing by waiting on a woman who was busy feeding a pile of documents into the printer next to the one I was working.

 He stepped in to observe as the machine spit out the one I am holding in this picture and broke into a broad smile. He could see the edges of the back of the cloth lapping out from under the machines cover but he couldn't get what he was looking at until I took it out and turned it over to show him the original.

He was holding the print and said "You sell?"

I nodded "Yes."

He said "You keep cloth?"

I said "Yes" and smiled.

He threw back his head and cackled and said something in a foreign language to the scowling woman hard at work over her copies. She scowled harder  and I imagine his remark was something along my Goodman's joke about prostitution. "You got it, you sell it, you still got it!"


Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the mailbox garden sprung me a surprise. The morning glory seeds I planted showed WHITE flowers on the package.

We get by with a little help from our friends....

If you are a regular reader here, you may also be familiar with my friend Arlee Barr and her amazing work.

If not, you should know that she recently lost most of her raw materials and UFOs in the flooding that overwhelmed the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

If you can help get her art studio back on its "hoofies" in the smallest way, there is a link in the sidebar of her blog to donate...

Surprise! the LIMIT is the cost of one of those mocha-choke-a, latte, with a double dash of extra calorie coffees that y'all swear you should live without anyway!

One 5$ brick at a time, we'll lift her up.

color blizzard

There's been an orgy of color going on here. The Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyedeck has been burning up with heat and awash with jewel tones, my favorite indulgence.

This is the time of year when I say "Cram it" to the misty, pastel, and delicate colors. Take a vacation, we are rocking the loud and lively. These are the colors that will sustain me through the drabness of winter.

I get the sense that the term jewel tones have fallen out of favor in some sets. There's a reason these colors are named after the precious..it never fails that if something is offered in different colorways, the jewels sell out first.

There's enough here to keep me busy for some time.

From the dramatic to the sublime. All I need is a rainy day for ironing 

my super moon

We live on the downside of a ridge and the moon didn't clear the trees until after 11pm just as a bank of light clouds drifted in.

I must have taken twenty or thirty shots with all the settings the little Coolpix had and this was among the best. More interesting, but un-photographical, were the thousands of fireflies doing their best moon imitations.

The pinpoints of light through the trees reminded me of the need for paying attention to the sizes of the stars in the Firmament to give the illusion of depth.

I took Karma's cast iron lantern down to the pool deck and armed it with what turned out to be a highly effective citronella candle. I was over an hour at the edge of the woods and next to the water and not one bite. Usually, anything that bites will take a piece of me before anyone else but not last night.





All these black and white patterns have me thinking about what to do with these.