Quote of the Week – July 26, 2010

"We cause as much pain by taking offense, as by giving it."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

A toast to Kirby the Kitty

After 2-and-a-half years of the exquisite pleasure of Kirby’s presence in our lives, he peacefully transitioned into pure consciousness yesterday morning at 11:30. 

At age 7, he succumbed to lupus, after enjoying a two-year remission in which he happily ruled his kingdom here at Casa Encantada, vigorously scaling 6-foot adobe walls in a single bound and luxuriating in a diet of grain-free roasted bison and wild salmon – not too shabby!

We loved his sweet, laid-back royal demeanor, his easy rhythms and his open affection for our dawg Roxy. Feeling waves of love, sadness and soul-deep appreciation…

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Celebrating my 5000th blog visitor!

Whoo-hoo!  This blog has reached a fun milestone – my 5000th unique visitor!  From 72 different countries!  And this is my 220th post.  And I’ve re-designed it a couple of times – here are the three generations…

Thanks for commenting, following, reading along -- and for your all-around support, good vibes and conviviality!  The “blogosphere” has proven to be yet another creative outlet where we get to connect around many shared passions.  Salut to all of us on this strange and wonderful frontier!

Afternoon relief

A monsoon cloud sweeps through violently, leaving a 20-degree temperature drop in its’ wake.

Bastille Day in “our” little French village

 

Ahhh… I feel so happy knowing that experiences like this are in our future!  Roquebrun, France, in the Languedoc region. (Photo credit: Campotel de l’Orb Facebook Page).

 

Feux d'artifice à Roquebrun le 13 juillet 2010!

 

 

 

Quote of the Week – July 19, 2010

"When you start working, everybody is in your studio -- your past, your friends, your enemies, the art world, your ancestors, your inner critic, and above all, your own ideas -- all are there.  But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left, completely, gloriously alone.  Then if you're lucky, even you leave."

--Philip Guston quoting John Cage in The Artist's Mentor, by Ian Jackman

Semi-final palette for new art quilt commission

Though, we did remove the grays and browns, and add a teal and a deep apricot!

These are all my OWN naturally hand-dyed organic silks and cottons. (Well, mine and Ken’s!)

Top row: heavy raw organic silks; middle row: organic cotton muslins; bottom row: is a mix of mid-weight organic Fuji silk broadcloth and heavy raw organic silks. SHLURP!

TODAY is the day I begin cutting into all this lusciousness and start sewing!  I am both excited and a bit nervous!

Ahhh… breathe…

YUM!!

Exploring surface design

Another couple of days of our two-week fabric-dyeing intensive was spent exploring and sampling the huge world of surface design.  We took our layered hand-dyed fat quarters and played with adding even MORE layers!

We played with stamps, stencils, silkscreens, resists, discharges, dyes, paints and more.  Iron, indigo, bleach, and more. Here are a few examples!  Click to enlarge any image.

The applications are endless, but I see myself making some gorgeous scarves – (photos of a few of those to come soon in a separate post).  Is an etsy.com shop in my future?  Hmmmm…

Wild hand-dyed silk samplers

 

This was one of the fun things Ken and I did during our two-week fabric-dyeing intensive with Gail Denton at the Natural Dye Studio in Boulder in June!  

We spent a couple of days exploring the interplay of the dyes with layering, double and triple-dipping, folding, fanning, tying, clamping and otherwise torturing the silks.

These samplers are fat-quarter-yard size (18 x 22 inches).  Click on any image to enlarge.

The idea here is that these techniques can be used to make silk scarves and/or to cut up and make into quilts, and/or to create a base for layers of surface design – painting, stamping, screen printing, stenciling, surface dyeing using a thickening agent, etc.  Some photos of THAT step to come tomorrow.

In the meantime, vote for your favorites!

Also watch for a blogpost later this week devoted to just our silk scarves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Color Study of our hand-dyed silks

Here is the line-up of naturally hand-dyed 100% organic silks for our headed for our color reference binder.  Aren’t they GORGEOUS!?  (Click to enlarge.)

The two rows on the far left are Fuji broadcloth.  The next two rows to the right are heavy silk noile.  We did the same color study on each of the fabrics to see how the dye behaves differently on different fabrics