Would you like some coffee with your milk?

This morning I woke up, went into the kitchen, turned on the coffee maker, put in a dose of coffee, got the milk out of the refrigerator and promptly poured some into the coffee canister....I'm still shaking my head at myself :p

TO Dye for...

I did my first dye bath. I bought some jersey sheets to cut up for my livingroom rug...cause there is NO WAY I can collect around 60 old tshirts to do that big of a rug. At least not in a short time. They were really cheap on ebay anyway so I couldnt resist. When they got here they werent quite the colors I wanted them but that was ok, what a perfect excuse to try out my dying! So I had a medium blue sheet that wasnt a bad color but I relly wanted it a little darker so I dyed it with my cotton candy dye (candy pink) I put plenty of dye in the bath to make it a nice color and lots of salt and the results were this beautiful shade of purple. I'm in love! So much so that I rushed home today ad made another dye bath, this one in navy...and I threw in a few old tops that I havent been wearing because of thier color.

They are soaking away right now and I just cant wait to see how they turn out. I'm hooked. I found this dye to be incredibly easy to work with and the vividness of the color is more than I expected. I cant wait to try something a little more interesting than solid color. I'm sure that It will be even more fun.

Warm and wooley

I dug out my stash of wool bits and pieces today. When I came here from Seattle one of the things I couldn't leave behind was all the bits and pieces of wool I had collected. I had a reweaving shop there for years and spent many a long day with piles of cashmere sweaters on my lap, patiently reknitting the holes to make them disappear. Often when I had to shorten a sweater I would have huge pieces of fabric left over. I would always give my customer the extra pieces but before I did I would wind a little onto a card and put it in my box. THis helped me much when someone brought in a sweater that had no place where I could find extra yarn...and often would help the original owner when they brought their sweater back but had managed to lose the spare piece I had returned to them. I looked at this pile of wool today and realized just how many sweaters I must have worked on if this represented only a tiny percent of the sweaters I did ( most times I did not harvest any yarn from a sweater, only when I shortened them)


I was quite sad to see that somehow I missed at least one box of my wool. Where are the reds? The pinks and oranges? All the wonderful sunny yellows and golds? Sad that they were left behind. I had pulled out these wools as I had a new idea for a square. I decided to do a sunrise on this wonderful piece of shimmer taffeta in the center of this photo. I was going to take pieces of wool and build up a misty cloudy effect. A sunrise on a cloudy morning. I am still going to try to accomplish something along this idea. I am doing two dye baths this week, one of them in pink, maybe I will add a few pieces of wool and see what I get. Since dyeing is an all new thing for me I am wandering into unexplored territory.


Last but not least...more strips! I sat and cut these the last two evenings. I am making a rug for my MIL like the one I did for my bathroom. She fell in love with mine when she came to visit and she does have need for a nice bathroom mat. I hope I get this done by christmas. I have 1500 strips cut for her rug. It should take about 5000 so almost a third of the way done. WIsh me luck *grin*

...and another step

So I finally finished the fourth square. I love crazy quilts and I've done a lot of different things like this. I really like how this one turned out, it is different from the previous crazy quilt squares I've done. One thing D and I talked about this afternoon though was the concern that this wall hanging will be too BUSY. I have always had the tendency to be overly ornate, IN art class my teacher was constantly telling me to put my work across the room and look at it. To step back and quit getting so lost in the image. I remember how I would get lost in a piece drawing a million little bricks in a wall or every single strand of hair. So I have to be careful. I am determined though to continue making what I LIKE, not try to conform what it is 'supposed' to be. I guess as long as the ideas keep coming, I will continue to put them to cloth. How it all goes together is a future problem and I will tackle it when I come to it!

5540.....

Crystal in a shop window in Bordeaux

....and 19, 612 to go! Thats how many more fabric strips I have to cut to finish my next rug, the big one for the living room. I hadn't planned on starting on this rug yet but then circumstances came about in such a way as that is where I ended up this week....cutting tshirts into strips.
Monday I had a headache all day that I just couldn't shake. I don't normally suffer from too many headaches. I didn't feel creative at all and even D noticed that I was out of sorts. Well Tuesday rolled around and in the middle of my French class I realized that I had just about the worst headache I've ever had. I came straight home from class, took an eferalgen (sp?) went to bed and SLEPT 5 HOURS. I have been out of sorts ever since, and being bent in the wrong direction has robbed me of any desire to create. The fact that my head just wouldn't stop pounding didn't help much either.
Stitching held no appeal to me whatsoever. I was completely stuck on this last square and felt no creative spark when I looked at it. So instead I sat on the couch watching old tv shows and cutting strips. The good news? Last night as I was falling asleep I thought up an idea for my square. I think I am on my way back up *wink*
Todays pic has absolutely nothing to do with this post. I love the colors though and waned to share them with you.