auditions and calls

 That great white whale on the design wall is getting on my nerves so I've rounded up some Unusual Suspects for the  next piece. Yes, your eyes are not playing tricks - you are seeing a commercial print in there. No promises, just a thought.

I was going to dye paint some black&white pieces for it this morning but  got sidetracked with errands, gardening and supervising cooking (Colin had 90% hand in a batch of chili).

I just finished pulling up most of the mailbox ivy to give the other perennials a fair crack at the dog piss and neglect that goes on up there. The peonies are just breaking through the soil.

This shot has the look of a Renaissance painting somehow, hate to disturb it but if I don't someone will be making it her nap bed. Speaking of naps....

seams and the Eye

I finally decided where that blue eye belonged last night. Why be coy? I knew it was an eye when I found it in the bottom of the scrap basket.

Jude has posted about seams this morning. Here seams appear to be a way of gracefully transitioning  from one cloth to another. Mine feel more like electric fences and will get stronger as I wrap some of the ropes.

the blank canvas b00gie

Yeah, that's a big empty cloth canvas peering over my shoulder. Right now it's not wearing a welcoming smile -it's leering. I took the black one down. It never stopped laughing at me loudly.


I spent a lot of time sketching digitally last night without anything jumping up and waving its arms screaming "make me!" so my fleeting notion of direct dye painting has been effectively quashed.

Later this morning, I'll take some raw cloth outside and paint some shapes...weather permitting. We are about to take our spring weather licks here in Georgia.

closing in on done.

its been a lot of fun.

First fruits of the season

Here they are washed and dried. Early outcomes are always guideposts for me. I can see that one of the warm color blends has a level of Fuschia in it that I will have to ferret out. The muslin that I pulled from the closet seems to have a level of resistance to dye that I find surprising while the old damask remains extremely open to the dye...less would be fine.

I'm taking the three intensely colored pieces straight to the design wall..the pale one will go back to the dye table for further clean up service.

color rescue

I thought about it some overnight and remembered how much I liked the  results from using various dry agents to carry and distribute raw dye powder.
(see Sugar Dyeing for a full explanation and some rules) .

Today it was a half pound of quinoa that I bought last year with the intention of cooking it up to see if I like it.  I wasn't in the mood for cooking or eating any weird or good for me so it's languished in the pantry since last summer.

 Since then there's been some controversy about how the booming demand from other places for quinoa has driven up the price devastated  the local culture and economies where it was a staple crop. More about that here and here.
So I went ahead and put my half pound to work in the service of my art.

These are outside in the garbage bag incubator baking in the sun. I'm wondering if the dry grains will swell with the heat and water and make patterns on the cloth.  If there's time I'll hatch them out before work today. Below is the first tablemopper of the season - always full of promise.