Raven and Sparrow

Transitional blue

I am about to leave Home Depot. This week I received a job offer from a local printer and today I decided to make the change. You would think I would feel joyful, but so far I just feel blank. The new job pays less and offers fewer benefits, but the hours are regular: weekdays from 8:30 to 5:30 with weekends off. What a concept. (Tomorrow at Home Depot I am scheduled for 1:00 to 10:00 and the day after for 8:00 to 5:00.) Also, it is much closer to home, so I won't lose so much time traveling, or spend so much on gas. I will be doing graphic design and general dogsbody type work. It will be a chance to sharpen my skills on the big graphics programs like In Design and Photoshop. 

This afternoon as I was making this decision I got such a horrible headache behind my eyes. I rarely get this particular sort of headache, so I wondered if it had to do with the job. I focussed on it for a while, and like the answer in the eight ball, up from the depths rolled the thought that my eyes didn't want to work in the print shop because it is ugly. It is in what used to be a bank, built in the sixties, which was an eyesore to start with. Now it is worn and shabby on the outside, and absolutely crammed with presses and paper on the inside. Everything is grubby. I have been in several print shops, and the smaller ones were all like this, so I guess it is just the result of working with lots of paper and ink. When I realized what the problem was, I decided I could live with it, but that I have to make a point of looking at or making something beautiful as often as I can. With that resolution, my headache went away.

Tomorrow I will give my notice at Home Depot. I won't miss the soulless corporation or the horrible hours, but I will miss my friends.

Mad at miters

I have hemmed many many tablecloths, and every time I have trouble with the mitered corners. I found very clear instructions in the February 1997 issue of Martha Stewart Living but if I don't get it out and study it each time I mess up the corners. Even sometimes with the magazine open and available, I mess them up. As I did this time.

Out of the eight corners on the two tablecloths I was hemming, one went bad. Of course I didn't see it until I had clipped the seam, and after that there was no way to fix it. Sigh. Now the brown tablecloth is defective. Not that every tablecloth isn't loaded with mistakes, but this is so obviously bad workmanship. Grrr.

This makes me less interested in doing any embroidery on the brown cloth, but as I said I was on the fence about that anyway. I think I will declare it finished.

Successes and failures

Here is my other tablecloth in a dyebath of 1.5% weld extract. It was blue and white with faint green hints, all of my previous efforts having disappeared in the wax removal process. Now it is electric green and yellow. Saint Mike said that he usually really likes my work (bless his heart), but this one leaves him cold. Also, it still has those mysterious smears which look so appetizing. I think this one is headed back

into indigo.

Also, I was happy with my Clorox bleach pen discharge, except it was a little faint. I thought maybe my bleach pen was running out of umph, so I opened a new one. Disaster. I have to re-think this technique.

On the bright side, I think over-painting my lac-dyed cloth turned out pretty well. It is always hard to get the consistency of the paint right, and having done this entire cloth I think I almost have it right.

It still needs something more, but I like where it's going. It sure is different than I planned.

Alas, a-lac

My original idea for this tablecloth was a lavender background with white leaf shapes. I waxed the pattern, mordanted, painted with cochineal, dipped in indigo, painted with cochineal again and dipped indigo again. You have seen some of these steps in previous posts. When I tried to remove the wax, I lost all of the pink and most of the blue I spent so much time putting in. I've never had so much trouble losing wax. I re-mordanted and immersion dyed with lac, the insect dye from Southeast Asia (source of lacquer and shellac). It is strong blue-pink like cochineal, but not quite so pure in hue. I like it better, even though I have to boil it with cream of tartar and strain it before I can put it in the dye kettle with fabric. It isn't tremendously light-fast on cotton, but I decided I don't care. This is what I got. I haven't yet washed all of the dye out, so it may finish lighter. The contrast between the pattern and the background is low, so I need to add some definition. Embroidery is the safe route, but I am thinking of using fabric paint to bring out the pattern. Unfortunately, I don't have any way to try it out without working on this cloth, so I will have to leap into it...do or die, so to speak.

Over-painting is the plan with this table runner too. It is an old reject from a couple of years ago. I was experimenting with clamp and fold dyeing, (you can see the faint squares running down the middle from that trial) but didn't care for this result. This time I have used a Clorox bleach pen to discharge the branch pattern, which I will over-paint. The stray dots came from the last shake of the pen just as I was finishing. Darn.