discombobulated

Last year around my birthday i was doing deco-printing.
http://amovablefeast.blogspot.com/2008/03/screen-printing-fun.htm
The fabric came out nicely and i overprinted a left over square with a print gocco master, my beloved "purinto gocco"that i had hauled all the way from Japan. i was testing fluorescent pigments and wanted to see their printability.

Results: nice; lovely pink fluo motifs but somewhat discombobulated (lovely puzzling word, there is no combobulate).
Or as husband- san, the resident critic, said "it's very abstract (snicker,snicker)":)
The fabric needed a unifying element desperately and so it was put down to rest.Yesterday the weather was hot and dry and i brought out a thermofax screen and tried some more over printing with a there's not much to lose attitude. Coincidentally the thermofax and print gocco technology are the same, so it is quite surprising that Riso wants to discontinue the gocco .

Results:

the linear elements combobulate(ha!ha!) the fabric.

i'm looking forward to more combobulation :)

BTW. i just became a fan of the gocco page on Facebook.

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closer to the end

of the strata series, here's a composite. There are 3 or 4 more plus the ones that are being exhibited. Gosh have i worked hard!i hadn't realized how much work was put into these series as i was really enjoying myself.
There are notes on some of the details at my photostream.

On the aizome front, the deranged vat received some synthetic indigo and did not complain.Dyed with it and came out ok. The newer vat is like a first born, you keep thinking wow! look at what i've produced :)

Now i'm stitching some rust dyed cotton that will be dunked in the vat.
And batching some cotton that i screened with a thermofax screen and preparing my deconstructed silkscreen. All this frenzy because i want everything done before we go on holidays at the end of the month. All that to the sound of the knocking down of walls.

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just a weaving weekend

i'm getting a bit sloppy with the photos. Wanted to try this one with transparent background, just in case i change the blog's background.Been thinking about that, but one of the things that refrain me from doing so is that i'll have to change all the backgrounds from the photos.Don't think Planet Textile will like that as i'll take over all their space that day.
Anyway, crummy photo, but the weaving went great. The warp is coming to an end and that's good because i don't like going on holidays with a warp on the loom.

Some aizome yesterday. The three day rest did wonders to one vat, the deranged one is very deranged. This morning mixed some synthetic. indigo and added it to the vat to see what happens. Can't get more deranged!

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茜 madder garance

My first attempt with akane was during a kasuri workshop i took. Sensei, being Japanese and a weaver insisted on having us doing all from scratch.Except for spinning the yarn we worked on every step of the process.We designed, tied the yarn, prepared the dye, dyed, set up the looms and the anti climax was really the weaving.

In her lecture prior to preparing the dye she mentioned that in Japan a certain type of seaweed was used and that rice bran was also used . She had brought over the akane

from Japan.

Notice the thick dried roots.i bought this bag when in Japan and i'm still treasuring half of it until i go back and get more. Dumb oi? If you look closer you can see the label says Indo akane, which means it's from India.

This is the result. Dyed silk tram awaiting to be woven. It was a captivating first experience and because of akanezome i visited Morioka,a town in the Iwate prefecture when i was in Japan. Fantastic akane and shikon Nanbu shibori (scroll down to mid page)is made there as well as katazome. And the town is delightful.

But back to dyeing .
i was able to locate recipes in some old books using bran, so this has been common knowledge since the beginning of the world. Here is a book with some recipes and also tips for dyeing silk and cotton. An exciting find indeed because it's part of the Gutenberg project. Let wisdom spread and we'll all be wiser and happier! Perhaps not richer nor prettier, but who cares if we're happier and wiser :)

Fast forward to traveling.
For travelers another charming and closer spot to try would be Albi in France where part of their medieval splendor came from the madder ( Fr-garance) trade. i'm sure that with some time for research more exciting finds about dyeing with madder can be found there. And to close the tourist bureau Toulouse Lautrec was born there so there are other interesting cultural stops.

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Change of weather, it's cloudy and insanely humid. Not good for dyeing therefore there's a Japanese movie waiting to be seen this afternoon. A treat to go to that part of town. A town in itself, Gracia is full of nice shops, wine bars, restaurants and original version movie houses. With an interesting bead shop 3 doors down the movie house. And as local gossip goes the home town of Jackson Browne during part of the year.

Now going back to aizome i've been having lots of fun whilst dyeing( notice the e between y and i ):D exchanging tips, jokes and impressions with Glennis and we've become sort of deranged, as one of my vats. But before derangement i was able to accomplish what you can see above. A beauty shot, oi? Ai in all stages and shades.Hopefully i'll be able to continue tomorrow.
Some observations before moving on:

• it is true that the more the goods dyed with natural dyes age the better the color. Color develops and gains depth, will show proof of it tomorrow . It's all about slow dyeing .
  

• if you whip the fermentation vats until you create a thick froth they will, given a rest of a couple of days, correct the problems themselves. Just be patient and do not do anything . Slow dyeing again.
• Pay attention to the smells.If it smells swampy( not my term) and turns brown a bit of iron sulphate will correct this as it means too much lime.

The information comes from this book Coloring Matters my present bible and my best find of the year. It also talks about madder, logwood and other historical dyes and it is full of not only the hows, but also the whys.

And keeping on with the slow doings a terrible photo of the latest weaving of the series.

i was too impatient to re shot . Saving my patience to embellish the weaving . :)

A request before signing off. There have been problems with this blog's feed and i spent all Sunday morning at it. Think i fixed it. Could ya'll please let me know if it works?


Oh and btw today is San Fermin when lots of youth and the not so young will be testing their testosterone by running in front of the bulls, a very atavistic event. Sorry, Hemingway did not invent it!




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the tentacles

Slowly, day by day things have been shifting. We have not been aware of the shift .
But, think. We don't need an email account anymore.
People do not have to visit our blogs anymore to read about our work or our thoughts. Nor our storefronts to see our products. We do not even need twitter to tweet.
We can conduct all those activities through facebook.Plus keep in touch with friends and family. In fact we don't need a life, facebook provides. Very convenient, all neatly packed in one place.No more fragmented information and images floating around cyberia.

Is that as good as it sounds?

For one someone else is profiting from your blog traffic, which means the content you generate. What happens to your content if rules are changed? Like the orphan works law for example?
Then as we all know information is power. And power is a tart that sooner or later will create battles.
All that information is invisible, not listed, impervious to search engines.
It's in just one hand. And it's not really your hand.

This is not paranoid little me. Read about it .

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall
http://www.copyblogger.com/facebook-killing-seo/

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more strata

Hope you're not bored with the series because there are 5 or six more.

This is one of my faves.Organza on commercial felt, the felt is very black and dense, thus creating a nice contrast with the organza.There's some hand stitching and machine stitching on them. The dialog between the hand and machine stitching is subtle, but visually interesting.

Moving on to some appealing finds. One to whet your appetite for color and pattern after so much black. :-)
From India, where else, Print color pattern
And one for laughs, in a world where all creators are perfect and they never f**up here's Craft Fail
Refreshing indeed!

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full circle

Today is going to be fiendishly hot so i don't know how much i'll be able to dye.
More interesting things about ai i've found when doing some cross reading. Pardon my being so emphatic, but there are some people who have reading comprehension problems and this is meant for helping them. Found an excellent article here on indigo in Mali. As the material i'm using comes from there i could extrapolate one ot two things. Are the extrapolations correct? Will have to test them.

i also resurrected one of my first dye books an erudite treatise by Lenor Larsen called The Dyers Art , a socio-anthropological cross cultural study of dyeing and patterning methods. Not a how to, but incredibly valuable information is found in it.
And to close the circle the photo is a beautiful rough cotton textile from Mali.i
have my doubts whether it was dyed with natural indigo. But beauty is beauty nonetheless.

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the importance of peace and quiet

Spent the weekend with friends at their house in the country. Simply amazing what the sounds of silence can do.Yesterday i was all over as my mental energy levels were super high.

This weaving progressed into completion and i'm actually quite pleased the way it came out.It's a tad busy, but abstract busy if that makes sense.This series are being a very enjoyable weave.
And on top of this the dyeing is going well too.Even if it's too hot outside.And it's just July.

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what i do for fun

Aizome is work, this is fun!

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