my super moon

We live on the downside of a ridge and the moon didn't clear the trees until after 11pm just as a bank of light clouds drifted in.

I must have taken twenty or thirty shots with all the settings the little Coolpix had and this was among the best. More interesting, but un-photographical, were the thousands of fireflies doing their best moon imitations.

The pinpoints of light through the trees reminded me of the need for paying attention to the sizes of the stars in the Firmament to give the illusion of depth.

I took Karma's cast iron lantern down to the pool deck and armed it with what turned out to be a highly effective citronella candle. I was over an hour at the edge of the woods and next to the water and not one bite. Usually, anything that bites will take a piece of me before anyone else but not last night.





All these black and white patterns have me thinking about what to do with these.

an electronic hiatus

Solstice Gifts

The first fruits of yesterday's dyefest were uninspiring. I put part of that down to my own frazzled lack of focus and some to the tired out dye stock that I was being flagrant with.

The offenders have been sent back into the sauce but I did get some new combinations mixed up today.

This gem is a section of one of Martha Stewarts finest which I used for wiping up the spills while making the new dyestock.

And while I was looking for something else, look who popped out of one of the cloth bins!

Soltice dyefest

I felt the need for a little textural excitement from the dye jars yesterday. The pantry yielded a very old box of pastina.  I didn't see any bugs in the box but they did the job nicely. Later this morning the experiment will continue.

I also plan on mixing some fresh dyestock this morning blending some of the new colors. Green has proven to be elusive this season and the bottles for the purples and curry have been rolling around the caddy empty  for a while now.

Might there be something special about colors born on the Solstice?

pool water magic trick

We are coming off a spell of what feels like tropical weather; heat and humidity every day, capped off by violent thunderstorms with torrential rains.

The guy at the pool supply place said all the rain unbalanced the pH so some other chemical thing we do (which is not much) fails.
You can see my alter ego lurking in the algae laden water shown here.

He tested the water and gave me a recipe for adding soda ash and baking soda in the right proportions.

 In a matter of hours, the water was back to Caribbean blue, even bluer that you see here..magic.