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So this happened over the weekend.
I couldn’t take it anymore – the beautiful sun room, the place where I started seeds in the springtime, and the wonderful library space with the comfy wicker chair that Snowball likes to call His Throne, had become a disaster. It started to collect stuff in the corners, becoming a catchall for random stuff. Basically, it became nigh unusable except as a place to stuff, well, stuff. And when I walked through the apartment last week, it felt like more and more of it was becoming this combination between catchall and clearinghouse (oh, kitchen table!) and less sanctuary. Which, really? Was a pretty clear reflection of my headspace, which has been super chaotic for about two months now. Something had to freaking give – either that or my blood pressure was going to become yet another thing that I was going to worry about.
Well, my family will be in town this week for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I needed to clean the house till it sparkled anyway, so this seemed as good a time as any to move some stuff, right? Right.
So we moved stuff. I spent a month working up to the decision of what to do with the sun room. I knew that I needed to make it into a dedicated space in order to make it function, but I couldn’t decide between a yoga space or a studio space. We started moving stuff out of the room, because I figured that once it was more empty, I would be able to visualize what it was I wanted from the room. It wasn’t until we moved Queen Coleus that I started to get a clearer picture.
It was also when we moved Queen Coleus that things started to get really hairy. See that pretty red trunk? That was where we originally had the papasan chair. Which now I couldn’t bear to put back in that spot, because it would block the view to the trunk and the plant, which looked totally pretty together. So I moved a bookcase on the other side of the room and stuck the chair there. Which made me want to move the table holding the teevee and assorted other electronics to the other wall. (Only I hated it there, and in the morning would wind up moving it back.*) Did I mention, this took place at, like, nine o’clock at night?? But in the end it was worth it, and by the next morning, I had made a decision: project space it would be.
I know, I know, it’s still August – I’m picking tomatoes and peppers as they ripen, watching to see if the pumpkins will fruit from the blossoms, getting a kick out of the bumblebees that have been flirting with our sunflowers, and pickling the cukes for later (exciting! I’ll post pix of the jars soon). It’s garden season, right? Absolutely.
BUT! Autumn is on the way, and if I may be completely honest, I could not be more thrilled. As much as I love the garden,watching stuff happen and change in the dirt, as much as we have enjoyed the hell out of home-grown zucchinis and all the dreaming about how we’ll improve on it next year, I’m super tired of being hot. There it is, all of it – I can’t wait for the weather to cool off and my blood pressure to drop. And red leaves! And the smell of autumn – zomg, the smell! And sweaters!
So, um, I’ve been knitting in anticipation. Hats. HATS WITH EARS!
Zomg what a week!
In addition to dailies and boss fights in Firelands, real life goes on, and it has been going on in a rather full manner. Man Cub is finally back from vacation in FL (where he had a blast, thank you), I’m still temping four days a week, and my application to vend over at the Holden Farmer’s Market* was accepted.
Which means that I’ve been sewing my little heart out. On Sunday I stitched and stitched while both The Fifth Element and Serenity played, as well as three This American Life podcasts, and two episodes of Firefly. And I made a whole bunch of rather pretty (I think!) shopping totes =D I put some up on Etsy this morning, too, if you’d like to check them out.
And speaking of Etsy – the lovely Ms. Lavoie over at Maple Street Shoppes has rounded a bunch of us MA locals together on her webbie. If you go visit my page by her, you’ll find a coupon code you can use at my Etsy shop.
The rest of the week has been awash in gardening and taking care of business. Read the rest of this entry »
Who gets up at 6am on a Saturday when they don’t have to work? For reals- Will will tell you out of hand that Saturdays are for sleep till eleven. Man Cub would make that nine instead, for there are video games to be played and cartoons to be watched on a Saturdays, amirite? Regardless, Saturdays are customarily for sleeping in at No. 208.
But this last Saturday we all rolled out of bed and got our butts in gear. We packed the car all full of tee shirts that I had batiked up in the basement over the last month, the hats that I had made over the course of a year, and a bunch of sticky labels with ‘Apple Batiks’ printed on them, and headed up to East Brookfield.
Super fantatsic Ms. Kris Lavoie has put together a really great concept – she’s doing home-grown craft fairs at her house, under the moniker of The Maple Street Shoppe (the link is to FB – go ahead and like her, meow meow). The idea is to support local community by purchasing from artisans that live in the area.
Monday was an ambitious day in the basement, where I keep my studio. I had gotten some special orders, and they required two tub baths, so at 7:3o, as soon as Will and Man Cub were off for the day, I headed down and dug in. I think I finished around 4 in the afternoon?
I’m definitely getting better with the colors, and that’s super exciting. I even stopped the second dye bath early because the first had turned out so rich, and I wanted that one to come out less saturated. In the end, I got a dusty-grapey purple with some blue mottling, and a yummy clay red/wine stain. Also, the under-painting on the sugar skulls (pix under the cut) came out bright and vibrant the way I had hoped. \o/
More new stuff from yesterday. The tub color was supposed to be raspberry, and we thought it was going to be much darker when it was in the tub. But it turned out sort of a deep pink when everything was said and done.
I tried more of the two color, and it’s still yieldin
g results that look faded, despite laying it on so saturated that it took four hours (4!) to dry before it could be waxed over. The next step is going to be to try adding urea pellets to the brush applied dye, and see if that gives better results. Also, I can try laying down soda water again before painting. The batching was supposed to eliminate that step – it certainly boosts the tub dying vividness – but it doesn’t seem to be doing the trick just yet.
On the other hand, some of the single color ones came out far more spectacular than I thought they would. Halfway through the process of waxing, I was sure I had wasted the t-shirts, but I dyed them anyway figuring, hey, it’s a learning experience.
I know, I know – I should be writing about Doctor Who. Really, I should – the family sat rapt on Sunday morning (we dvr’d it so we could skip the ads – damn the ads!) and enjoyed the hell out of ourselves. But it was a to-be-continued, and I just don’t want to write about it until I’ve seen part two, y’know? All I’ll say for the time being is that zomg, Steven Moffat, I has a little writer’s crush on him.
Ok! So back to the business of… well… business! I spent last week temping, as cash is tight all around, and that means that trade in pageant frocks is down. So temping it is. The agency that I’m working through is super nice, which is a bonus. We still have a bitty nestegg, which is also a bonus.
But there is time between jobs. Which is not great for the wallet, but super great for the creative portion of me. And I’ve been busy!
Last we talked batik, I was flailing a little bit – ahh, chemistry. But I think I’m getting the hang of this, at last. I did a bunch of baby clothes today, and was greatly pleased when they came out of the dye baths. I went back to the beginning, went mostly with one color, simplified simplified simplified. Also, I got a handle on the ratio for the dye bath \o/
- 100% cotton cloth
- batched: 10yds hot washed (no rinse) with 3/4c soda ash, then tumble dried with low heat
- image painted onto cloth without soda water
- minimal agitation in the tub dye bath (lifted fabric and added salt in stages)
- soaked for an hour with just salt before adding soda for last fifteen minutes soak
produced this:
The orange came out lovely. I wish the blues and greens had come out a little more brilliantly, but I think that they would appear more brilliant if the background (tub bath) color was darker?
We’re getting somewhere, tho’ =)
In the end, also, I will have a bunch of patches to play with. Wondering what I should do with them…
So I’m trying to learn how to do batik.* If you google batik, you’ll get about a zillion sites that tell you how to do it, which is great. The fact that they all tell you different ways to do it is less great.
So far, I’ve gotten some osm information – but there’s just SO much bumbling along involved (a lot of it costing money – supplies and such) that it’s a little maddening. And yet, there’s been progress also.
So far, here’s what I’ve figured out, and are solid, from our attempts:
- Soy wax rocks the box. It has a low melting point, and can be worked with for more time than any other waxes. It also penetrates the fabric better than any of the other waxes.
- Best tub dying practices for strong color saturation include a long stay in the tub at some point.
- Soda ash, the mordant needed for cold-process dyes, eats up soy wax in the eventuality. (There is also a distinct possibility that Sharpie marker eats soy wax. This is a less-solid truth, tho’.)
Super busy, but fairly productive – back soon ♥
