Prelude

Came as a shock to me too! 

Late this afternoon I finished a task and was at loose ends. I was stowing stuff away when that basket full of losers shifted and threatened to dump. 

I didn't count them, but there were about two dozen skeins of thread that came out so piss-poor or pale that I set them aside for overdyeing someday. Someday arrived. 

I try to keep over-dyeing simple. Choose only three primaries and mix them right in with the soda ash sauce. Not my regular routine at all. There's never any telling if the threads will take the dye or if I've wasted time and materials. It's a molecular thing that I don't have a full understanding of.

Dip here, drip there. Quick and dirty. I didn't take any before pictures; they looked like failed easter eggs.

I'm kind of hoping this intensity will calm down once everything is dry. There can be too much of a good thing.

Of course, I had to get a couple drying. Handling wet skeins is pesky as hell. I wrap them around a cone of mystery thread that never took the dye. It serves. 

I'm very interested in this piece of linen that I used for a table mopper.

 

Golden Yellow, Peacock and Mulberry... all together now.

The Dixie Mink

right shoulder

From what I can tell, I coined the phrase "Dixie Mink" referring to an oversized, denim jacket usually the property of her old man, or boy toy.

It's coming up on time to give it a gentle soak and rinse inside out, line dry and tuck it away until the cool weather comes back.

But before then, I think I'm going to build some snakes down each sleeve from the heart to the cuff.  

right upper arm

left chest 

left upper sleeve

 

Pointillism

 

This took forever to finish. The design is by illustrator Roger Dean. I wish I hadn't been so set being true to his colors. Any interpretation on my part was due to being stuck with whatever colors DMC had in stores. I did it on an insane forty stitches to the inch canvas. 

Even so, I'll never stop being irked by the flattening of the circle in the lower right quadrant. 

Remember when the football player Rosey Grier revealed that real men did needlepoint? I taught Jim with yarn on a more forgiving size canvas and he duplicated a few album covers but lost interest once the details were accomplished. I'll look for them. We used to listen to music and stitch like a couple of old ladies. 

I remember an elementary school teacher speaking about pointillism. I started a project using dots of colored paper made with a hole puncher. Library paste, yummy. I was butting the tiny circles of paper up against each other and halfway through my design when I thought "Why can't they overlap like scales on a snake?? ....Project abandoned. 

Finished, but not out of my system. I may modify the original drawing and start over once I have a fresh pallet of colors. I really struggled to complete this with what I had on hand. Parts work for me and parts don't. 

A closer look here.

nest material

The OG cusspot was crafted when I was still working in the whine mine, in person. I remember being so satisfied with the shape and the speed at which it manifested. It's been hard at work in the traveling stitch bag for all these years catching the stuff I stopped throwing on the floor when I found bits of string in some cat hurk. I still don't know which hairy fool was dumb enough to swallow thread. 

This morning, it was so full I had to decant it. Amazing how much was crammed in there. Later I'll take it up to the grove and hang chunks in the crape myrtles for the birds to take as nesting material. 

Before I hear from any ornithological experts, there is no piece of thread longer than two inches, so no bluebirds will be garroting one another. I am that cheap. 

 

The deck is a mess, but the thyme, lavender and the dumpster rose bush made it through the winter.

Inventory

Some keep calendars. Some journal. This is the place&time marker that I look forward to each year. 

Instead of keeping this somewhere I can refer to it (as if) I'm going to cut out the samples and tape them to the outside of the jars. The names don't do a good job of conveying what's in those little pots of dust~

  

~ speaking of dust, I just made the mistake of sneezing in the vicinity of the open container of Raven. I'm only grateful I had my glasses on. I had to start this over as the whole sheet was contaminated with particles of dye. Cleaned my face, blew my nose, and brushed my teeth again. I'm afraid to look in the mirror~

I rarely use colors straight from the can, but I need to keep in mind:

 

BRONZE, BUTTERSCOTCH, AVOCADO and ROBINs EGG. How their voices are clear and strong. 

And that RAVEN can whisper.  

And Tangerine, Marigold, Golden & Bright Yellow can easily stand alone. 

There was also a pillowcase half full of undyed cloth and three yards of garment-weight linen landed on the doorstep.