Ninety and Nice!

 

My father's birthday is today.  Originally Mom planned to have a family event and a neighborhood party, then rescheduled the neighborhood party for two weeks from now.  (Next weekend is Labour Day weekend, and she figured people may have other plans.)  This took pressure off the family event, and won't be as wearing on my parents.

I think Dad would rather spend the day with some music and a book, than entertaining a parade of guests.

   

Testing the tea (dye).

Since I am going to Dallas (briefly) I thought I'd try some dyeing and take the samples to leave for next month's class.  I hoped to have a pile of knitted blanks to leave, but have had issues with tensioning the loom.  I've also decided to give people half-skein blanks, about 98-100 yards of yarn, instead of a full one, because it might take too long for people to paint a full-sized one.

Speaking of blanks, one of my sample dyes is a blank and a hank, dyed the same (half in one shade of green and half in another), to show how differently the resulting yarn will work:

However, the main plan was to refresh my ability with tea-dyeing.  In theory it is simple: make a BIG pot of tea, add yarn, and simmer.

I managed to goof it up in the beginning by (1) putting in too many skeins, crowding the slow-cooker I am using, and (2) adding the tea bags and yarn at the same time.

The result was VERY spotty, so I pulled out the yarn, drained much of the water back into the pot, added some fresh tea bags with the spent ones, and allowed it to become tea before returning the yarn.  The end result was still a bit streaky, but not as badly:

The above photo has a hank of the original colour under and to the left of each dyed hank.  The blue and tan came out much closer in colour than I expected.  Even though they are not perfect, it's a learning experiment, and I took notes, and that's also part of what I am teaching the students.

I was able to get a couple more slow cookers, so opened to the waiting list but with an absolute cap of eighteen.  When I last year, there are seventeen registered for the class.  Wow!!

Back. With yarn and knitting.

Just a quick report - I did knitting, and am into the second skein, second half, of the Berie Shawl:

Not much done on the Albuquerque Shawl, but attention must be paid so it's not good for knitting while sightseeing or reading or during intermissions:

Yarn and fabrics acquired, and some fiber for a swap at the annual meeting for one of my local fiber guilds:

LOTS of photos taken, and I may get around to summarizing the trip.  I had fun, not enough sitting-around time as one sometimes gets on vacations, did some hiking, saw a number of museums plus some places I wanted to see and will visit again, and ate a lot of good food.

One of the boring ones.

Mostly because this is a placeholder - I am traveling, which means I cannot upload photos.  My watercolour seems to have stalled the middle of last week, because I was busy and felt overwhelmed and underinspired.  I do have ideas, but wasn't confident of creating them.  I'll get back to it - I brought the pad and some paints on the trip, but have had zero time to focus on them.

Whiling away the hours between when I arrived for my
originally-schedule departure flight, and the time of my
rescheduled departure, caused by some impressive weather
in other parts of the country, which I was now avoiding.

After some travel-fu (a very early connecting flight rescheduled to a very late one due to weather and other delays, and a very kind person at the check-in counter who moved me to an earlier pair that would avoid the kerfluffle although get me to ABQ a few hours later than planned), and a visit with an elderly relative that involved some very yummy Mexican food and a bit of sightseeing, I joined the tour group I'm with for the Santa Fe opera.  And some other adventures.

And a few of my own.  I'll report more about all of this next week, when I can add photos (such as the one above, added after my return).  I might slip one in here later, as an update; maybe the shawl I started on Saturday while waiting for the flights.

A bit stalled.

I've wanted to work on watercolours this week, but haven't quite had the energy to accomplish my intentions, so I did a lot of exercises instead of representational things.  I took process photos only of the last one, which didn't come out as planned.  I was trying to use the washi tape to mark out lines to do a plaid, but ended up with a checkerboard instead:

I taped a square for the library's mini art event on the paper.

So I filled in the center square very simply, although somebody skilled might put in a landscape or something representational:

This is the total since last week's post:

Trying to make the flag look as if it is waving
in the wind, and failing spectacularly.

TOP:  Transparent paint in overlapping circles.
BOTTOM:  Dripping water (left) or other colours
(right) onto a wet ground.

These are the two pieces I made for the library mini-art collection:

I've finished a couple of hats and most of a C2C scarf, plus plenty of work.  And a good soufflé this week:

And today is National Ice Cream Day, so:

My great-grandmother loved butter pecan ice cream, and we kids thought it was some strange old person's flavour.  (My great-grandmother was from Texas and they had pecan trees on some of the family land, so that might be part of it.)  As an adult, I've decided she wasn't wrong.

It Got Long.

I didn't read the pattern correctly; I should have stopped the diamonds with 9 stitches and I took them down to 5 stitches.  So they are much more defined and the scarf is quite long:

One skein of Lion Brand Homespun.

I kept painting this week, trying gradients one day and using washi and masking tape:

The outer ones are monochrome; the inner
use two or three colours.  I tried to blend them.

Finished, with tape removed.  The masking tape didn't come
up as cleaning as I would like on the right side and damaged
the pink triangle a bit.  Or the paper was still damp.

These are most of the ones for this week.  Some are just techniques or exercises.

I did a book for the day when the Prompt is
"TIRED" since reading in bed is my cause!

The prompt for the lower picture is "turtle" and
I thought of the shell pattern.  They are irregular
because I freehanded the outlines.

The trees are surprisingly good (to my eyes) other
than the trunks being out of proportion.  They
should be quite slim.  I may try doing them again.

On my way home from a fiber group meeting on Saturday, I turned in my second Reading Challenge form; I forgot to take a photo of it.  No prize this time, but I am entered into a drawing.  And I have started completing my third:

Without prompting.

An artist who started popping into my fees mentioned that it is World Watercolor Month, and since I have been playing with art, I decided to try to do something in watercolor each day.  I am not counting the form I was completing for the library's Summer Reading Challenge, although I did do the first one in watercolor and completed it on July 2nd:

I forgot to take a photo of the completed form
before I turned it on on July 2nd, when I went to
the library's science fiction book club meeting.

Since I didn't hear about this until a couple days into the month, I needed to do some catching-up, so my first couple of images are just trying the paints I have, on dry and wet paper:

Then I did one that was just making lines, to get into the feel of paintings.  And one limited to red and blue for the holiday:

I probably could have studied and done something
that resembles fireworks more accurately, but no.

Starting with Day 5, I wanted to try something that actually looks like a picture.  I'd seen a tutorial of hers, and it looked easy enough - and it was!

I decided to look up the official prompts for the month, and quickly decided that I am not able to follow all of them.  I may do a few, if I think it's something I can manage, or if the prompt inspires me.  Speaking of which, today's was "Hat" and I decided to try:

I need to make lighter pencil outlines.  And the proportions
are not quite right - but it does resemble a sunhat!

As for the reading challenge, we're supposed to mark every ten minutes we read.  That's too fiddly for me, so mostly a mark each time I read at least ten minutes, although if I read for an hour or so I'll count multiple ten-minute increments.  Nobody should be surprised that I've read well over the number of spots times ten minutes and am well into my second form.

As for my personal reading challenge, I've read fourteen books (fifteen if you count re-reading one) for the year, of the eighteen I proposed.  Being in a book club does help!

For an unofficial challenge I wanted to finish an item each day of the long weekend, and I did:

The "Americana" scarf was my 'car scarf', mostly worked on while waiting, so it took a while.  (I immediately cast on another.)  The two hats and other scarf were pretty much done in the last week.  Hats don't take much time and I wanted to do the crocheted scarf to have something quickly done.  Back to the scarf of linked diamonds shown at the top left.

Cool Licks for Hot Days.

Not of the frozen treat variety, but the musical variety, while the temperatures are triple-digiting:

Too Darn Hot  (Cole Porter)

Summer in the City  (Lovin' Spoonful)

Summertime from "Porgy and Bess", and Joplin's version.

I planned to post more songs, but it's hot and I didn't.  😁   Also, I went to Dallas for some plays, and back again.  It's also really hot there - but surprisingly, not as hot as the east coast is suffering.

"Slave Letters" at MBS Productions

"Cry Havoc" at Lakeside Community Theater

"Curtains", a musical, at Allen Contemporary Theater

And of course, masks with quotes and facts:

  

  

They're still at it.

Happy 45th Anniversary to our parents.

Done and Done.

I finished the scarf I mentioned last week, and a hat from an oddball of Big Twist Lollipop Twistie in a colour called "Clownfish Coral".  I didn't like the Lollipop Twistie (so I am not sad that it is discontinued) and decided to use it all up, hence the little topknot on the hat:

I started another scarf of chunky, and very soft, chenille yarn that a neighbor gave me when she decided her hands were too arthritic for knitting.

I also finished a book, which was fine, and turns out to be part of a series, but I don't know if I need to read any of the others.  I do need to read the book for the library's Science Fiction Book Club.  I picked up a form for their summer reading program - fill in a space for every ten minutes you read, turn in the filled sheet, and get a token item (last year it was a choice of some cool bookmarks) plus entry into a prize draw.  I decided that given how much I read, I would just record every session where I read for at least ten minutes.  That way I don't have to keep adding together reading sessions.

From June 14th to morning of June 23rd.

More art: I decided to try different media to complete each chart.  This one is watercolours.  I have not used those in a very long time, many years, except a token bit as part of a book art piece.  I wanted to practice a bit and this is a very low-pressure way to do it.

I went to the gallery for another round of putting things together to fuse, adding to one of the pieces I did two weeks ago and creating another for this four-panel light box I'm creating:

I've done some more practice pieces for the DFW Fiber Fest class.  I may be doing a variation of it at the gallery.  One of the owners is really interested; she's the one who encouraged me to try fabric also, because she thinks it will be more useful to people.  Since cellulose fibers need a more toxic mordant (soda ash) to prepare, which means people may not be able to do it at home, I searched and found a lightweight 100% wool in a light enough colour to dye, but it turns out to be a deeper beige than I thought it would be from the online photos.  Well, that happens.

First, I did some testing of single-serving beverage powders:

Light blue ReVive and the three options I chose.

Not too much water because I wanted the dye to stay put
and not float all through the pot.

I sprinkled half of each tube, then flipped the yarn and 
sprinkled the other half of the tube.

Simmering.  I wasn't sure how much the dye would spread.

Final result, after drying. You can still see some of the
original colour.  The grape is unimpressive.

Then I did a quick test of the fabric, one piece tied and one loose, with two different dyes in the pot:

I need to remember to photograph the final results.  I showed it to the owner and she liked the effect, so that may be what I offer to the students at the gallery.  Now, what to do with the pieces?