Taking a breath

I'll give you shelter from your storm.

the threads - Updated

Wholly unexpected that they would sell out in like, 20 minutes. Grateful to all who made it so. And take heart, there will be more. Who doesn't have fun making candy?

Well. That was fun and will be repeated in the near future. Did I mention that I had a 2000 yard cone of DMC floss sitting around wondering what to do with itself?

Kept these two for myself.
The rest of the first flock is here

kitchen busywork

It's been gray, humid and depressing for days and I'm sick of it so had a little kitchen table dyefest to get on with making up skeins of embroidery floss to sell.

Now, my problem is what the heck to charge?  These are each 10 (not 8) yards of hand dyed, DMC 6-strand cotton floss.  No two of these are alike so if you are project oriented, I can't help you.

Clues anyone?

the Haunted dyefest

It was stewish out Thursday - hot and humid like we have not yet had so far this year. I will soon invent a word to describe weather that weird because of climate change.

I was distracted. Thunder muttered just beyond the horizon.
I am also taking two different medications for back pain and when they overlap, strange things happen. Let's just say, I haven't been driving as much as I like.

I play music through a small wireless speaker and the playlist randomly chose Jimmy's chili cookoff tunes. I already had on new and very sticky rubber gloves so I let it roll.

He used to love sitting on the living room couch and watch me work the dye deck while he watched TV from the cool darkness. Every now and then, I'd hold up a piece and he would applaud and comment.  I felt his presence strongly this time. He would also keep time for me. "Come inside before you get boil over."

Every conspired to go too quickly. Get it over with. I couldn't get my head into the work too deeply but the mechanics kept me moving. The results are more than half Providence and the Stars.

In every dyefest there are always one or two stand-outs. I can't even think about cutting this one.  Update...it's the new shop banner now..

There is a lot of gauze that I will be parting with one way or another. Something in the finishing process kept it from taking the color too harshly so it has a dreamy, blurred quality.

that woven, ribbed sheeting takes the color in amazing ways.

I'm picking through the remaining white good with focus on the cloths, like this, that won't let me down as I sneak up on some really vibrant colors on the next go round.

A number of these pieces will be worked on again. Discharging, soy wax and overdyeing and other process things are all in the wings waiting.

stitch this! Updated

These ten-yard skeins of 6-ply DMC cotton have a heather thing going on.

What you can't tell from this picture is that the opposite side of each of these is a different color, most of them a darker version of the one facing the camera. The color transitions are short and sharp which can be problematic.

What I do with these is split the six ply in half and reverse direction or just "color jog" half and then put them back together. Does anyone but me get that? I recently joined the Mildly Offensive Fiber Artists on FB...this stuffs looks right up their alley. Glorious, dirty string.



update - I ran to HoAnn's and scored those cardboard bobbins. You can see below the variations better now and the deeper you go into each bobbin, the less white there is.  Lessons learned. 
Still they are quite tasty. I'll be selling some of them in the shop soon.