A worky Saturday

 

The scrap basket is chock full!

The trouble is each time I dip into it, I sneak another piece of cloth into my stash. 

Charlie has discovered the funny pages and he is fascinated. Some of the strips are a bit obtuse for a nine-year-old but we read every single one. Talked about religions, meaning, sarcasm, and the sad fact that there were only six pages of funnies. 

Oddly, he particularly liked the ones that were part of a serial even though we came in on the middle of the story.  To be continued. I'm sure.

A wild leap

 

Remember this from last September? 

I set the cloth aside because I was engrossed with Dee's book, "The Weight of Cloth".

The new threads put a fire under the ongoing stitched Spell project but I'm still not happy with the thread colors so I'm parking that one for a while. There was a serious shortage of blues. It took me all morning to decide which side of the cloth to use and which end up. Now I'm committed.

For this one, I'm using the same text, and still digging things out of my thread stash.

BUT (and it's a big one, folks) I'm not laying out the lettering. With nothing more than base guidelines that I first ironed in and then basted, I'm winging the lettering a word at a time. It feels like too much control is wrong for a spell of any kind. 

It's going to call for the kind of focus I have lost recently from spending too much time escaping life into the glowing screens. Writing requires the same focus and I've been groping in the dark on that account lately, too. An electronic fast is in order. 

Grateful

 

I could not ask for a more perfect coda to a dyefest than an all-day rain. Lightning just flashed and thunder rolled in from far off. The light is pinking up.

 I was exhausted by the time I finished the last of the threads. The break for watching the eclipse was enough to get me through basic cleanup. 

By evening the certainty of today's rain pushed me to spend the early evening finishing the threads in the kitchen while I listened to a ballgame on the radio. I'm grateful that I did. The cloth I left for the rain to handle.

Speaking of gratitude, this post set the tone for my day. Thanks, Dee. 

As intended, there's a delicacy, an understatement to the color of this lot of thread. Some of the subtly was intentional, some not. The blues lost some ground because it was just not hot enough for them even in the sun. Time has proven that turquoise and his cousins need 80 degrees to come through strong.

It's going to be a few days before I start posting these for sale.

image by Diana Taylor. "All Night Rain" by the Atlanta Rhythm Section

Dyfest eclipsed

 Did I mention the magic ingredient is sweat? All the thread has been washed,rinsed,and laid out to dry. Tomorrow we'll see what gives. I worked slowly. Being methodical, correcting colors at the halfway mark. Broadening my willingness to accept a color made me a little cranky. Maybe it was the time constraint of the eclipse. I wrapped up about fifteen minutes before the peak dark. Sat out front with the cats and observed with my cardboard glasses.

I shot this over my shoulder without looking. The fur people were unfazed. They noticed, but seemed to be underwhelmed.

Start Your Engines!

 The weather is cooperating albeit a little chilly right now, but by noon the sun will be over the yardarm and I'll have the heat the process needs, fingers crossed. I hope to have everything done and dusted by the time the eclipse starts. My most distinct memory of the last eclipse is how weird colors looked as the moon and sun did their dance. Not trusting one's eyes was disorienting.

Here's where any help or instructions I have to offer will fall short because, during the color mixing process, words fail and instinct takes over. I have eleven of these little shakers left. One went AWOL somewhere under the deck where it's now king of spiders and slugs, forever. I sometimes wonder what color was in it, but not enough to crawl down there and find out. Eleven is a good number. 

 

I started with the notion of three sets of primaries with each set having a warm, neutral, and cool. But things went sideways quickly when I remembered that I also wanted some complimentary blends or browns. 

I've also started something new. That stainless steel shaker has a little bit of everything with a hot dose of Raven. A dollar well spent at GW.

None of these hopefuls will prove out until the dye hits the cloth and thread. That might be the most exciting part of the process. I don't measure anything so every color created at the kitchen table is unique, a true one-of-a-kind. 

When I get outside, I find myself saying "Yay" or "Yuck" and yucks can be amended quickly by adding color in whatever direction I think it needs. 

Winding, measuring, and tying off the skeins is something that happens while I'm half-watching TV reruns.  

                           Vroom vroom!