Here’s the post about my first eco-dye bundle. With a title like that, it’s no surprise that I didn’t get around to posting it on time…

On May day I wrapped up a small eco-dye bundle and left it to sit for a week.

I am quite amazed with the rich color effects that come from

• an old dry stick
• a piece of rusty steel rod
• silver needle tea leaves
• vinegar
• black walnut hulls
• the dregs of a cup of black tea.

I shouldn’t be so surprised that rust and tannin combine in a rick, dark color.  I remember creating some genuinely black silk thread from such a combination.

I’m having such fun with plant dyes. Sometime soon, I will drive out to the countryside and go searching for local plants to make distinctive leaf prints on the fabric, but at the moment I am playing “what if” with a shelf full of stale teas and tisanes. I am creating abstract designs and learning what works and what doesn’t.

This week’s bundle was colorful and quick and quirky.

The ingredients?

• Adagio Teas’ Blood Orange Tea, a herbal blend of orange peel, hibiscus flowers and rose hips
• black walnut hulls, finely ground
• citric acid, like vinegar, but odorless. I mix three teaspoons in a quart of water.

The result?
Yummy pinks and peaches with brown speckles.

The quirks?
I used too much liquid. My previous bundle had a dry old stick in it, which soaked up a lot of liquid. This one sat soggily in the bag, and started growing mold after a couple of days. I had hoped to keep the bundle going for a week, but I unwrapped in the third day so the mold wouldn’t take over.

I didn’t grow up in a household where we patched our clothing.  We took good care of things and made a point of donating them to those in need while there was still a lot life left in the garments. It would have been selfish to have worn them out.

There were a couple of boxes of scrap fabric in the attic.  My mother was a creative person, and saved any good size bits that were left over from other projects. Scrap, for me, was short lengths of new fabric.

These are the reasons why boro patching both fascinates me and scares me a little bit. It’s a new way of thinking about fabric and garments. It demands things of me that I’ve never done.

For my project, I won’t be patching over wear and tear. I don’t have any. I will be patching thin fabric to add warmth and weight. I’m tryng to use what’s in the house, but I don’t have the boxes of scrap fabric from that long-ago attic. I don’t even have any good rags under the kitchen sink. There’s the old wash cloth I used to clean up my bicycle, and a small bit of cloth with furniture polish on it. That’s about it.

I’ve read a few accounts of people making rakusu for the Buddhist ceremony of jukai.  The rakusu is a miniature symbolic Buddha’s robe, patched together from bits of cloth.  Some use actual rags, found cloth, discarded cloth, or clothing that belonged to the dead.

Where is that kind of cloth in my life?

I could have picked up a jersey on the sidewalk this morning. But it wasn’t a piece of cloth that I could relate to. It was shiny, new and synthetic, that kind of sport jersey made with little air holes.

Doesn’t anyone lose or discard natural fabrics any more? Doesn’t anyone wear them? Where have all the good rags gone?

Hapazome – printing with flowers.  Some call it flower pounding, but that conjures an image that is far from the reality of the gentle taps of the hammer upon a sandwich of card stock, silk and blossom.

I had a thought that I might observe the other May Day today, the one with protest marches and general strikes. In a sense, I am.  Although I am not marching because my back has been in spasms today, I am quietly on strike.  No work for hire, no shopping, no banking.

At best, a day for creativity, time spent in the studio. This is the real May Day, the witches’ one.  Some call it Beltaine. It’s the time to turn away from spring and move toward summer, a subtle shift between sprouting and growing. The rain has washed the pollen dust away, but thoughts of fertility linger on the breeze. What is more fertile than the imagination? What evokes May more than bright annual flowers?

My tribe, the dear creative kindred spirits, bring me earthward and my discontent melts. Salad and green beans help me ground the pain of misunderstanding and sweet cider washes away the bitter taste of greed. All is not perfectly well, but much is better and I can breathe without the ragged breath of sobs overtaking me. Color has returned, the sweet green of the aged lock that guards my future. I am so over the coldness that overtook me on Saturday. I don’t need to fight petty obstacles that I can easily step over. I have things to do, roving to spin and fabric to weave. This is the way I usually feel after Rhinebeck. Stitches was just a wrong turn but I am back on my path and essentially unharmed. Thanks for your iron steadfastness and leafy vistas.

I am in Manhattan today after taking a wonderful break where I was immersed in color and texture.

I’m not impressed with what I am seeing. Black clothing. Tedious, suit-colored business suits. I have nothing in common with these people. They are not my tribe. I am sure they are interesting to someone, perhaps to themselves, but they do not interest me.  Even crows have better plumage than their unimaginative black, feathers rich with iridescent nuances.  Black is a good base color, a warp that ties together the random, glorious colors of weft. By itself, it’s not much for me.

I can’t wait to get back to the Aerie and surround myself with color.

I’m very honored that Tromp as Writ has received the Honest Scrap Award from a sister blogger, Life Looms Large.  When I return from the NY Sheep and Wool festival, I will share the honors with seven more bloggers of note.

Honest Scrap is a good metaphor for both the way I weave and the way I blog. Both are collages of my life, made from a bit of this and a bit of that.

It really is all about the yarn. You’ve heard me say that when I talk about my approach to weaving, because the color and texture of yarn is more important in my work than complexity of the weave structure.

When the yarn looks like this, it REALLY is ALL about the yArN.

I spun all this yarn in one fabulous weekend workshop with Jacey Boggs of Insubordiknit.

Jacey is a gifted teacher. She guided the twenty of us through each technique by calling up small groups to stand behind her as she demonstrated. Then, as we went back to our spinning wheels to practice, we got to hear the instructions repeated three more times as she called the other groups up in turn. This really reinforces the learning. See it. Hear it. Do it.

Working hard. Taking breaks to look out the window at the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge. That’s the same view as my new office space. I’d rather be spinning, of course.

Taking this class in NYC was a good idea. I had a chance to meet and hang out with many of the local fiberati. Familiar names from Ravelry now have faces.

I was essentially the only weaver-spinner in a room full of knitter-spinners. I’m sure a couple of people are going to rush out and get looms. This yarn is made for freestyle weaving.

If you are spinning to weave, here are a couple of things to consider:

-Don’t wet-finish the yarn after spinning. Just steam it enough to get the kinks out. It will be wet-finished along with the other yarns in the fabric.

-What you see is very close to what you get. Knitters space their inclusions, coils or cocoons farther apart, because knitting takes up a lot of the intervening yarn. Weaving doesn’t consume as much, so space them where you want to see them.

-Over-spun yarn creates a collapse weave effect. I madly over-spun some of my yarn while learning the techniques. I’m prepared to be happily surprised by what happens in wet-finishing.

The yarn? You want to see close ups of yarn?

I will be spending the weekend in an art yarn spinning workshop with Jacey Boggs of Insubordiknit. I am really excited by the idea of creating “durable, usable art yarns, brimming with color, creativity, and a touch of mischief.” There’s a lot of mischief in many things that I do, so why should I expect my yarn be any different?

I believe that art yarn is at its best in weaving, and am thrilled at the idea of creating unique yarn for the Misted Hills coat.

My Lendrum spinning wheel is packed in its new, lime green suitcase, surrounded by a few pounds of roving and miscellaneous fiber.

How am I going to sleep tonight?  I’m too excited. The mischief in the fiber is calling me.