Raven and Sparrow

Possibly prolific

After a monumental dry spell and a couple false starts, I am suddenly re-energized and working once again on textiles. Two variations in my old routine have really got me excited. I told you a couple of posts ago about the two new fabrics I was auditioning...well the winner is the linen silk combo. Its more expensive, narrower, and lighter weight, but the way it takes color reminds me again of why I do this in the first place. Also, it releases wax much more easily than any other fabric I have worked with (probably a function of that light weight). I can actually contemplate removing and rewaxing, should a design call for that, when before it was just too hard to even consider it.

Another change is going from squares to runners. I still love squares, but I'm just not coming up with good new designs and I am  tired of my old patterns. I also need to increase my output to get more practise and improve my techniques. I switched from 50" squares to 15" x 70"  runners, and now have cut that down to 15" x 50". ( The 45" width of my new fabric encouraged this also.) Long and skinny suddenly opened previously unworkable design possibilities and my interest and enthusiasm zoomed upwards. Yippee!

One new design has come from a small metal piece made by my jeweler friend Lois Bertolino. She came into work one day last fall and showed me a flat disc of metal she had etched with a pattern she had originally made by tie-dyeing fabric. (Talk about full circles.)  I was just captivated with it and got her permission to make a rubbing. The little graphite circles in the picture are what I used to make the silk screen above them. Screening the image with both dyes and discharges is how I made the runner shown.

I love a lot of what is going on in the circles, but my control over their placement needs work. I took too cavalier an attitude about getting the silk screen down on the right spot ( it's just a straight march down the fabric, how hard can it be?) so the circles aren't spaced well. I thought I wouldn't mind if they were a little off, but I do. I will be making more.

A library of art supplies

Although my dyeing projects died away to nothing in the past year, I didn't quite give up. I reviewed what I did and didn't want to do and gave away a lot of fabric and general stuff I knew I wouldn't use anymore. I also re-organized some of my supplies into this old card catalog, which has turned out to be perfect for holding stuff like pencils, brushes, tape, etc....all the little bits that you always need and can never find when you need it.

The card catalog itself came from the University of Washington by a round-about route that landed it in the hands of my friend Sandra Swarbrick, who graciously gave it to me. Thank you Sandra! I've always had a fondness for card catalogs. Computers do a better job most of the time of organizing the information required to navigate a library, but they don't have any of the charm of these old wooden cases, so evocative of the stored knowledge a library represents. I planned to be a librarian once; I just loved being in the presence of so many books. It's a good thing in the end that I didn't, but using the card catalogs to organize my art supplies creates a link to my past that I find very satisfying.