mid summer's night dream

MIDNIGHT BARCELONA from Pau Garcia Laita on Vimeo.

excuse me william :)
have a great weekend.





neki desu
 

an outing to wine country

st. marti sarroca, medieval castle and  romanesque church in the middle of penedes wine country.
my yearly visit to my friend is always full of pleasant surprises.

details of the castle

my present fluo orange crush

view of montserrat from the castle

vines everywhere

 until september.




neki desu

good to have adequate tools

the weather is overcast and muggy, awful  for being outside brushing dye to a pre mordanted scarf.

i know i am going to regret my wishes for sunshine, but at least it is dryer. i have been working inside after creating some space out of  my ever chaotic studio full of lots of everything .

anyhow  paraphrasing my beloved sennet and the craftsman it is good to have the required  tools  to complete a task.

note the harite on the foreground stretching taut the scarf. underneath some shinshi completing the task. 

i was mildly upset because all the tool nomenclature at tanaka nao has been changed and i was left in the dark.that said no one fabricates craft  tools like the japanese. they have elevated tool making to a craft itself.

the brushes;  works of art in themselves. the fat one is a small ground dyeing brush. if you regulate the amount of dye / paint you can get nice gradations. the other brush is for painting edges sharp. i think painting  fabric is my excuse for using these and getting extra pleasure from the job.

the scarf will be cured for a couple of days, then folded shibori like and dyed in ai perhaps? stay tuned.

neki desu
 

and now wools

fluorescent orange!!these mushrooms are awesome. the wool was mordanted in alum + cot then put in the dye  simmering liquor for about an hour. left there to cool until next day and resulted in this very bright orange, very similatr to mx deep orange.
the other skein is boiled over madder yucky brownish red. it will be overdyed in cochineal today, but need to throw away some dye to liberate at least one pot. such is the life of a wanna be dyer!
waiting for the weather to change to start the ai vat. in the meantime sewing a muslin for a skirt. need to get the fitting right before cutting the actual fabric. i have lost weight-not complaining- and what was valid last year isn't this year.





neki desu
 

a to dye weekend

i have a new favorite dye;  Cortinarius  semisanguineus  mushrooms. 

the silk on the left was dyed with them. the color although yellow is less yellow than the photo and has a red pink tinge. the silk on the right was a madder blah orange and i overdyed it with cochineal. the color is a very nice red  redder than the photo.but in the various processes the silk lost its luster :( temperature control is not my thing, actually control is not my thing. makes me so very curious all those people who are control freaks!

still have more mushroom stock and will be dyeing some wool today. hoping to get the reds now.

the indigo stock solution for the new vat has reduced beautifully - took 2 days mind you. i am using the 1-2-3- ratio for a reduction vat. it worked very well last year,let us hope it wasn't beginner's luck.

in the geekery dept: i'm taking photos of some pages of a japanese dyeing book,  opening in photoshop, saving as pdf then opening in word and translating them there. oh rapture! oh bliss! even if it's cherokee english the instructions are understandable. life is good.

neki desu

lacquer arts

where did this week go? already friday & vid!
have a great weekend!




neki desu

goodies and baddies

the frugal dyer again. had some leftover madder liquor that i couldn't bring myself to throw it away.

also had this light blah, i mean, blue silk scarf  and thought it wouldn't hurt to give it some character.

delving deep into geekery i took my phone and  my beloved origami shibori book and got a page translated. not on one shot, mind you, but in parts.

before my trip  husband-san coached me into   taking a photo and then using google translate. the app would scan , convert the image to text and proceed with the translation. if it worked with road signs why not book pages? et voila! it comes out in more of an obscure dialect, not real english, but a lot better than nothing. especially if you know the subject so that you can cut and paste in your head.

during my visit to tanaka nao i found the plastic rings used  with rubber bands for tying cloth. i am aware that other options could do , but i was there and so were the rings. in short they came home with me.

the scarf still needs more character, however the weather is not conductive to aizome. not complaining, saving weeks of hot inferno because it's nice and cool.

and now the baddies. 

yesterday i woke up to the blog's dashboard  reading list spammed with hd movie download offers. many. was going crazy because on the list are blogs that i follow and for sure i'm not following this jerk.contacted blogger, but it's easier getting a response from the pope. today the light bulb went on; i  right clicked on the page went to inspect element,that nice chrome feature and there they were an assortment of scripts. lovely! anyone can add a script to your page.

don't have to elaborate on what i did. perhaps the recent comments glitch was due to that. who knows. 

neki desu