slowly she turned
Living the Slow life in North Carolina
Category: dyeing
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The meadows around MISA were gorgeous; full of wildflowers and wildlife. Unfortunately that wildlife included many ticks. If you go, do take bug repellent of some kind. I think that I may have been one of the only people in my class that did not find a tick on me at some point during my…
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Continuing the tale of the past weekend: Of course, we spent too much money, even though we spent two nights in the Super 8 motel in Black Mountain. It isn’t bad for the price. Our first stop was at Nice Threads Fiber Gallery on Cherry St. in Black Mountain, where I showed Leslie several of…
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Preparing the rhododendron leaves while our fabrics and yarn skeins soaked in a mordant bath with alum. We only used the older leaves, not the new, sticky shoots and new leaves. The breeze felt great but it kept blowing out the gas stoves. The rhododendron leaf dyepot: We simmered the leaves for about an hour…
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Dede ponders the answer to a question. I couldn’t wait for the India Flint workshop so I signed up for a workshop with Dede Styles at Cloth Fiber Workshop on Saturday. I’m so glad that I did. She gave us a great lesson in identifying local wild dye plants, with information about when to harvest…
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I mostly relaxed with a novel yesterday. My hands needed a break. The lichen tea dyepot was the last art project, and it was a success, although it produced almost exactly the same color as the onion skin dye, which was a tad disappointing. However, I was thrilled to get any dye at all since…
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Yesterday was a full day of mixed emotions. I mixed up three colors of Procion dyepots, then combined some to get a variety of colors on a variety of rags, fabric remnants, and silk and wool skeins. I didn’t get the purples that I wanted, so I’ll take that up at home. The dyepots were…
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Yesterday was a day of experimentation with natural dyes with just the tannin-laced water of Lake Waccamaw as a mordant. The onion skin dye was very successful, although it is very hard to mess up yellow onion skins for a dye. What I did notice was that the color yielded more reddish tones, which I…
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I am back in one of my happy places – my cousin’s house at Lake Waccamaw. This time we are here alone for a couple’s art retreat. Sandy brought canvases and paint, and I brought dyepots, fabrics, yarns, hot plate, Procion dyes, and acrylic paints, paper, brayers, collage materials, and my Gelli plate. Also a…
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For the first time since I came back from the Art-is-you Petaluma retreat, I finally got some creative work done. It was easy to the point of being fairly mindless, so that helped. I’d do it again all day today if it was warm and sunny, but alas, cool and rainy weather has set in…
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So, things are going fairly well. I sold three scarves, a few books, and a few prints at the gallery in the past two months. I’m going to renew my contract for May 2012-13 but rent a smaller space, since I really didn’t need three shelves of space this year. If my sales get a…
slowly she turned 