Gathering myself

 

Shirker- updated 8/24

 

Now comes the hard part. Sharing. Keeping my mitts out of the cookie jar. But there's a hella lot of cookies this trip.

I've already indulged my need for some bloody reds, but I had to pack this set out of sight quickly because I could feel my fingers getting sticky.

And I'm running out of names. Going forward, they are going to be fairly obvious. 

That's Claret   (now SOLD!)

This is my thread box six hours later. It was an emotionally stressful day. These helped. An hour of driving with good music. A big glass of lemonade. A nap. Some 🌿. 

Now replaying "Springsteen on Broadway" and shuffling these around. Seeing tomorrow's stuff.

Conjuring colors

There is a line somewhere between production and manifesting. I don't care for either word, one being too "widget" and the other too "woo".  Neither word nor anywhere in between describes my process.

Once I've set the pallette of colors, all my intentions get very flexible. If I get sick of seeing that yellow and that purple, I'll dump one on top of the other and come up with a warm olive that I never planned for. 

Has that blue slipped too cool? Bring on the goldenrod. There's never too much green because I never plan for any.

It's going to take time to process all this cloth and thread. After four days, I am out of personal gas and will take a few days unrelated to dyeing.
 

There's still a ton of cloth to be hand washed and dried.

The best part of Saturday? A surprise visit from Charlie and Jake. We went out to lunch and got caught up. Since they moved, time with them makes the minutes we get more precious. 

Today, r&r includes a little stitch, some reading, pool time, and some walking. Putting those needles in my back to the test. 

Ripe fruit

 

Despite weather reports promising another perfect day for the dye deck, Colin sent this sunrise from the airport where he works. "Red sky in the morning, sailors warning." 

Scientifically, more humidity in the air will affect what I'm planning for the day.

I washed out one piece of lines last night and hung it up with the threads to dry. Just one.

Because there have been requests, I'm going to experiment with selling these pieces whole. See how that flys for a while before I rip or cut them up smaller and blend them into the general basket.

The blue/green threads were hiding in the dryer from the last dye-fest. This wire and mesh contraption, which folds up to take up almost no space in the closet, has become an essential tool. 

I somehow tricked my phone camera into giving me an accurate (to my eye) rendering of the colors in this one.

It's part of a light linen blouse. Most of these will be parts of deconstructed garments. 

This one is 12"x 24".  

High Adventures in August

I used flag-shaped lengths of that midweight linen toweling to cover the table and catch the dye leaking out of skeins and bundles. The famous table moppers. 

BIG LESSON - do NOT wash out the cloth in the machine. As tempting as that is, these will get hand washed in a bucket with Dawn and cold water. One by one.

Tomorrow. 

I'm pacing myself.