retreat ahead

Spring is in full bloom & I am in the midst of preparations to once again journey to Janie Hoffman’s place on the Blue River in the White Mountains of AZ. Janie & I have organized a tapestry weaving retreat… there will be 7 of us attending, hanging out together in the mountain spring weather, weaving, soaking in the sights & sounds of nature, & talking about all things under the sun that could possibly interest any fiber artist!

I finally completed canyon night. It was difficult to finish, it felt as if all motivation I had to weave suddenly dried up and blew away. The lack of fanfare with its completion is a direct reflection of the ambivalence & dissatisfaction I have been feeling about my design process. I did submit it & painted hills for IWC’s Fiber Celebrated, but I am not sure they will be accepted, especially with my poor batting average as of late. Yet another rejection notice today, received from the Tucson Museum of Art for their Biennial exhibit.

I am not upset in the least by these rejections, they are just confirming what I’ve been feeling… my artistic soul is experiencing a period of fallowness. With the exception of IWC & the upcoming Tohono Chul fiber art postcard exhibit, I have decided to stop trying to exhibit right now. Sometimes we need that thwack on the head to wake up & say, “Yeah, I knew that.”

Time to renew, regroup, reinvent, rethink. I have begun that process, it is in the rumination stages. I am researching new design methods, I hope to greatly improve upon my weaving skills by taking Kathe Todd-Hooker’s tapestry workshop at IWC this summer, & I have registered for a couple of other non-tapestry workshops that I hope will allow for deeper design & creativity explorations. I plan to make major changes to my blog & website. I am ready to dig deep to find my true artistic vision… it’s in there & just needs encouragement to rise to the surface.

I am viewing this upcoming retreat as a door opening to a new & exciting place. While I am there I will be reading about design methods used by collage & journal artists, & I have a new camera, a Nikon P80, that I have started experimenting with & I will take it with me… some of the first images I have taken with it are below. I am preparing a cartoon so I can work on a very small piece while I am there, it will be a postcard for the Tohono Chul exhibit, & it is a depiction of one of our bobcat kittens from a previous year. This particular bobcat mama would leave her kitten in our courtyard lemon tree while she went about her business for the day. We discovered this when one day, as Dennis went out to water, he looked up & was startled by this tiny bit of fluff staring at him with amber eyes through the bright green leaves. Below is my design sketch, just started, using watercolor crayons & pencils. I am working from a cropped version of the photo Dennis managed to take & also getting inspiration for stylized versions of lemon leaves from a Frida Kahlo painting I admire.

Now I am off to continue preparing for the retreat… I will keep a diary of my time there & will look forward to posting about it all upon my return!

early spring

I had a thought the other day when we started getting these warm temps that spring isn't green in the desert, it's yellow. Our desert is green all year... not that Kelly green crayon box green, but chartreuse, sage, silver, avocado, & army greens. Spring in the desert, I thought to myself, is really yellow. Yellow prickly pear blooms, yellow palo verde blooms, yellow creosote blooms, yellow cassia blooms, yellow fiddleneck blooms, yellow desert marigold blooms, yellow brittlebush blooms, & even more plants with yellow blooms that I cannot think of just now, none of which are really blooming just yet, but which will soon if the warm weather continues.

It is early spring.

It feels like early summer with the 80 degree temps we've been having. This is the desert, but even that is unseasonably warm for this time of year. I am not complaining in the least, it feels fabulous compared to the highs in the 30s we experienced while visiting my parents in Illinois during the family reunion to celebrate their 50th anniversary. It is quite cruel to force desert dwellers to visit locations with those kinds of conditions!

Here's a photo of all of us gathered together after a wonderful anniversary meal at one of my parents' favorite restaurants, Zapatas. I am usually skeptical of Mexican food outside of the Southwest (it tends to be what I think of as Amerxican). Not bad for Illinois, not bad at all. There are 6 of us offspring (I am the oldest, there is a 12 year span between myself & my youngest brother) & we all attended along with most of our respective spouses/children. Two old & dear friends of my parents, whom they met when they were stationed in Cheyenne, WY together, were also able to join us. This is the only family photo from that experience I will subject you to & I'm not even going to say who's who in it. If you are dying to see more, which unfortunately includes the strange gringo habit of drinking margaritas & donning sombreros, visit this set on Flickr.

Today, however, as I meandered about outside enjoying the sun, I started really noticing things, like waking up from a fog. And I noticed more than yellow, although yellow was first-- the photo at the beginning of this post is of the eensy-tineensy electric chartreuse flowers on a zig-zag cactus.

Here are others...

A diaphanous purple vinca bloom

Pink tinged newly unfurled pomegranate leaves, sunlit & glowing against a blue blue sky

Chinese star jasmine buds; slender, rosy, & soon to burst into little twinkles of white that will fill the air with their divinely sweet, heavy scent

My hot orange kalanchoe kettle

The always sudden & astonishing beauty of fuchsia pincushion buds... one day it's just a little cactus, the next, a tiny jewel box

Plump indigo purple velvety Texas Laurel blooms that smell exactly like sweet sweet grape Koolaid & make me think of hot sticky summer days of childhood

And Roger & Mo on lizard watch & wondering why I am crawling around on the ground with that little metal square box pointing it at things.











canyon night is still underway, you can actually start seeing the forest for the trees. If my cartoon looks odd, in case you missed an earlier post-- I decided to create & use what I've dubbed an "X-ray cartoon", a black & white color inverted version of the original that allows me to see the detail in the trees much easier than tracing them onto vellum would ever have done. The IWC Fiber Celebrated deadline is a little over two weeks away... will I make it? Weave, weave, weave...

rejected, but not dejected &... accepted!

Yes, I also received my "Dear Artist," letter on Tuesday from ATA. Thanks to Kathy Spoering's subliminal post, I was prepared. It is only my second rejection since I've been exhibiting, so I feel fortunate. I also knew that it is notoriously difficult to be accepted into ATA's juried exhibits, whether you are a master or novice weaver. At least this letter was tempered by Kathy's wonderful handwritten message... thank you, Kathy, I know that must be taking quite a bit of effort!

My first rejection was several months ago after I submitted several works to a gallery in Tempe for a Contemporary Craft exhibit. Guess I was either not contemporary enough or crafty enough, but I wan't dejected about that rejection either. However, I did become quite irritated when the same gallery quickly started inundating me with requests to support them (as one of their artists!) with monetary donations. Let's just say I communicated to said gallery my desire to stop receiving those solicitations in as an adult way as possible.

Yesterday I received another letter from another exhibit I had submittted work to. Uh oh, the envelope felt awfully thin, so I steeled myself for another Dear Artist letter. But, instead it told me they had accepted one of the three tapestries I had submitted, my monochrome macro: agave, one of my first tapestries. The exhibit is "Of The Earth" & is being held at the Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles, Missouri which happens to be very close to where my parents are living in Illinois & where I am headed next week to attend a family reunion that I put together to celebrate my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, the exhibit won't be up until March, so I won't get to visit it in person, but I am very happy that they selected this tapestry to be included since it is one of my favorites.

I am fresh from a weekend in Bisbee which I spent with Shirley & Lynn, two of my first students who are now special friends, helping them to stay on track with their tapestry weaving. Lynn was getting back into weaving her impressionistic wetlands & Shirley was learning to use her new Mirrix & starting a tapestry of a sunset on a special "friendship beach" near where she lives in Alaska most of the year. What could possibly be better than a weekend of weaving, friends, & wine? I was so involved with helping them that I forgot to take photos with my own camera, but luckily Shirley shared hers with me...

Work continues on canyon night, although the trees are still looking a bit ambiguous at this point. I am planning to submit it to IWC's Fiber Celebrated exhibit & it will now have a companion, as I think Kathy's suggestion to consider submitting my recently rejected painted hills to the same exhibit is most excellent! Great idea, Kathy, & if they are both accepted I will get to see them in person since Janie Hoffman & I will be attending together & taking Kathe Todd-Hooker's "Color & Tapestry" workshop she's teaching there. Anyone I know planning to attend?

a touchable tapestry

sensia...

smooth, silken, soft

rough, ribbed, ridged

thick, thin, thirled

desert life fragments

human made trinkets

tangible & visible feast

a NM trip & new tapestry

At the end of June & through July's beginning we took our first trip of the year to our New Mexico mountain property. It was also the first time Roger & Moka have gone there, & for Roger, probably the first time he's ever been on a trip at all. Moka's foster owners, Lisa & Kurt, had taken her on a brief camping trip just before we adopted her. So, this was more of a "shake down cruise" than the laid back relaxation we had enjoyed when we took Roux in previous years. After all, she was, as Dennis put it "an old lady" & knew how to behave; in sharp contrast, Roger & Moka are two rowdy teenagers & needed constant supervision! Their senses were in high gear, seeing, smelling, & hearing all things new & wonderful. They did pretty good overall, although they became quite vocal over turkeys that passed through our clearing on a couple of days & very agitated with a bold vole that kept dashing through the middle of camp & seemed to know just how far Roger & Moka could stretch their ropes. They were tired & quiet at night, very ready to come into the camper & settle into their beds. The biggest issue we discovered turned out to be Roger's inability to cope with riding in the vehicle in a calm manner, so this is something we'll have to work on so we can better maintain our sanity when we travel with them the next time!

I did do a bit of gathering on this trip, collecting more stinging nettle-- the last I collected was in late summer on a previous trip; early summer is supposed to give slightly different colors, so we will see. I also collected elderberry leaves & branches to bring as a gift for DY when I made a trip to her hogan in Tselani with Janie Hoffman--- that trip will be the subject of the next post!

On a walk down our road with Dennis & the dogs, I was surprised to look down & see a spiral shape amongst the rocks... I found a cephalopod fossil! What a special find, I did a small sketch of it with my watercolor pencils & crayons, inspired by Tommye Scanlin's ferns. I think I would love to design a tapestry based on my sketch! I also did a sketch of a vervain bloom, New Mexico's state flower, & one day worked just a little on my painted hills tapestry, unweaving some of what I had woven previously because the colors weren't working, & began to replace those areas with yarns that I just dyed this past spring which worked much better.

Before leaving on our trip, I had started working on a mixed media tapestry, entitled "sensia", for submission to the exhibit, “Please Touch, Again”, the third in a series of award-winning, hands-on exhibits at Tohono Chul Park. The series is intended to give everyone a unique opportunity to experience art using multiple senses, reaching out to people in the community who have vision loss. Once we returned from NM, I was able to finish the weaving & submit it. It is constructed of linen warp, wool, linen, & sea silk weft with mixed objects woven in. Some found & picked up here on our desert property & during walks with Roger & Moka & others from my stash of "art stuff"-- seed pods, cholla & saguaro skeleton fragments, a snake backbone, desert luffas, wood & glass beads. I also used a few different weaving techniques with the wool & linen weft in areas to add texture-- soumak & a looped weft Coptic technique. Now I need to finish the hems... I have been considering several different methods & will choose one this week to complete it.

a retreat, a studio gathering, an exhibit, & getting my head on straight

It has been a long time since I last posted, but life has been overflowing the rim...

Back in the beginning of May, I & several of the women who were students in the beginning tapestry class I taught in Bisbee early this year, Darquise, Shirley, & Lynn, made plans to go to Janie Hoffman's Blue River Retreat for a tapestry retreat. We were there for 3 days and it was a wonderful & relaxed experience for everyone. Morning walks in the woods & birdwatching for those who wanted to go, gathering informally by mid-morning to weave the rest of the day with breaks for lunch. I didn't actually do a whole lot of weaving because I don't focus well in a group, but I helped them when they had questions or needed to learn a technique that hadn't been covered in the workshop. Janie also gave assistance at times which I appreciated since I think learning from more than one teacher can be so enriching & she was also one of my first teachers. On some days we invaded Janie's studio, exploring her space & admiring her work. This was the first time any of them had visited an actual tapestry artist's studio & it was a great experience for them to see some of Janie's finished tapestries, her work in progress, her cartoons & watercolors, her yarns, & her library. Some of these encounters led to in depth discussions about many things related to tapestry, inspiring for everyone! In the evenings, Janie & Don invited us into their home to gather at their dinner table to share our communally prepared meals. I was absolutely astonished by how well they were all weaving; their tapestries in progress were the first they had attempted since taking my workshop! We all decided it was an experience worth repeating next year, so when the time comes around I will post an announcement on my blog for anyone who might care to join us! I had so many wonderful photos, I created a slide show so I could include more--


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

After returning from the retreat, I hosted an informal studio gathering in my studio for friends & fellow weavers... unfortunately, I was so excited when everyone started arriving & had such a great time, I forgot to take pictures! Thank you to everyone who came, you all brought great energy into my space.

A week later was the artists' reception for Artful Insects & Inspired Arachnids at Tohono Chul Park's museum. My tapestry, pinacate shuffle, was included in the exhibit, but the highlight for me was seeing the drawing, Butterfly Magic, done by my husband, Dennis, his first exhibit. He was so low key about it all, I took it upon myself to secretly invite his father & "step-mom", so it was a very big surprise for Dennis when they appeared. And, luckily, they persuaded him to allow them to take a photo of him with his work, because he had forbidden me to do so!

During all of this, I was steeling myself for a visit to where my parents are living... they both have been having major health issues the last 8 months or so. I had recently seen my mother at the beginning of this year when she came to visit one of her sisters who lives nearby, but I hadn't seen my father, who is the most ill, for a little over a year. I wasn't sure how he would look, and let's just say my nursing experience was making me think the worst. As fate would have it, our hot water heater sprung a leak just prior to my visit... I had been storing practically the whole mother lode of our family's photos in the same space for my parents when they were traveling in an RV after my father's retirement, so I had to go through ALL of them to make sure none had gotten wet. Luckily, none were damaged, but I went down a very, very long walk on memory lane. Some of the photos were so old of my parents when they were children, & then there were all of those of myself & my 5 siblings as we each were born & grew up. I laughed, I cried, I felt so very nostalgic. Now they are all stored in a plastic bin instead of cardboard boxes! When I called my mother to tell her what had happened it proved to be good timing since my father, who is quite depressed over his condition, had been asking about specific photos he wanted to see again. So, I selected a few albums to send & used my scanner to scan in, blow up, & print a few photos from those albums. The box arrived in the middle of my visit there & one evening I persuaded my parents to look through one especially old album. It generated many good memories for them, & I heard many stories, some I'd heard before, & others new & surprising. It was, for the most part, a good visit. My father's condition is not ideal, but he did not look as bad as I had imagined. I cooked dinner for them most nights I was there, pulled weeds in the garden for them, did a temporary fix on a leaky AC pipe & got them to call for repair; we had a serious discussion about considering assisted living & I am going to research it for them. Although I am still worried about them, I feel a weight has been lifted because I have a more accurate image of how they are living & how they look.

My mother, 1st on left, the captain of her high school cheerleading squad.



My father playing his bass in a high school jazz band (I have this very same bass displayed in a prominent place in our house).

The only weaving I have done since the tapestry retreat was to weave an alpaca lap blanket for my father (I was there during Father's Day). In amongst all of the above, I was working on my volunteer job editing the ATA's Tapestry Topics newsletter for the online digest, putting together the final Desert Tapestry Weavers newsletter, & writing several articles for the next ATA newsletter. With all of that, along with the worry about my parents, I had no desire to weave or be creative... I was experiencing a complete creative block-- mentally, physically, & spiritually.

Now, I feel the block starting to crumble... Dennis & I are planning our first trip to our mountain property this year next week. We'll spend close to a week there; it will be the first trip for Roger & Moka. I am bringing my Mirrix with the painted hills study in progress that I had started during the tapestry retreat, also my watercolor pencils, crayons, & paper. Our camping is primitive, but I make sure to bring good food, and we both love spending our days outside in the mountain air & out of the desert heat. I always feel renewed after a trip there, so I am looking forward to bringing that feeling home to the studio.

In sorting through all of those old photos, I came across one of a place we used to live on a river in rural New York from the time I was about 8 until I was 12. It was a tiny old cottage perched on a steep river bank; my parents moved our trailer home next to it & built a connecting hallway into the cottage. It was the only place we lived where I had my own room, & my room was in the cottage. A bed of lily of the valley bloomed outside my window in summers & I could smell it all night. The old German couple who sold it to us had planted many interesting plants on the property & there was a patio landing over the river where we went fishing. A study room surrounded in plate glass windows overlooked the river & the cow pasture on the other side. If the river froze solidly enough in winter, we could skate on it. I always loved that place & cried when my parents decided to sell it after my father rejoined the military. In finding this photo that I had not seen before, I realized it embodied the essence of how I felt about the cottage. It was where I learned to love nature, to see it, to smell it, to listen to it, to taste it, to experience it. I now have a copy of that old photo, enlarged & hanging on my board next to my desk so I can see it every day.

dye run - spring 2008

After preparing & organizing all last week -- choosing & weighing dyestuffs from the 33 I have on hand, most that I gathered myself, weighing & labeling the skeins, readying all of my dye worksheets & sample cards --I was finally able to start the dye run last Thursday! This was the largest since the one I did in spring of '06 & it was fun, but after 4 days I am happy it is finished. I decided to give Burnham's tapestry weight wool a try this time & also changed from using natural white to bleached white. I also always overdye grey skeins along with the white, they are so wonderful to use for shading & blending.

In the middle of the dyeing, I received good news... John Jenkins the wood artisan who creates fabulous tapestry forks (along with other beautifully crafted wood items) now has a website...

Magpie Woodworks, LLC

Everyone who sees my tapestry forks wants to know where they can get them, just as I was struck with fork lust the first time I saw one, so here it is.

And more good news, Jan Austin has joined the world of tapestry weaver blogs! Bravo, Jan, I think you'll be a natural. As far as I'm concerned, the more tapestry blogs, the better. It is so wonderful & inspiring to see an artist's work from planning stages to cutting off, so much more enlightening than looking at a photos of a finished piece in a book! Visit Jan's blog-- http://austintapestry.blogspot.com/

Every dye run has its surprises & this one was no exception...

The cutch given to me by Kathy Perkins produced a beautiful coppery brown & smelled of slightly burned cooked carmel. After dyeing my skeins I even threw a white washable linen skirt in that I love the feel of but don't wear much because of the color in the cooling dyebath to soak overnight. The "cutch skirt" has come out a beautiful light coppery brown.

However, the lichens were a complete failure, producing absolutely no color in the dyebath after simmering for an hour & no color on the one skein I threw in the dyepot! I had good directions to follow from a source that reported using New Mexico lichens. Hmmm. Well, that skein was rinsed & joined the skirt to soak overnight in the cooling cutch exhaust. Don't think I'll be one of the lichen dye junkies as I now have no desire to harvest any more, even though what I collected was from deadfall on our NM mountain property. Too many other plants out there are easier to harvest, more predictable in the colors that they produce, & less precious.

As far as the avocado, the results were a little disappointing. Even at 200% wog, the colors were very subtle, barely beige from the peels & a light apricot from the pits. I did an ammonia assist with one pit skein with no change. I did follow the instructions very carefully, including heating them once during their soak time to prevent mold growth. My feeling is that I did not let them soak long enough, just 7 days. The author of the recipe goes on at length about the longer they are soaked the deeper the colors, but she is quite vague on just how long is long enough! If I were to attempt it again, I think I would just collect the pits since they seem the most promising. You would have to be quite attentive & diligent about heating the soaking dyebath every few days to keep mold from growing, so I'm not sure how happy I'd be having to do that for a long period of time!

The eucalyptus did not give me the hoped for oranges, but instead a green tinged gold. No matter, it smelled quite heavenly. I was quite happy with all of the other dyestuffs I used as well those I've already mentioned... mountain mahogany roots, elderberry leaves, nettle, & brasil wood.

Now I am looking forward to a Bisbee trip with Dennis to celebrate our 15th, then soon after that a trip up to Janie Hoffman's place on the Blue River for a tapestry retreat with several other weavers!

Live to dye another day; respect our Earth; live, love, weave!

livin' la vida moka

Life has been taking the fast track lately & I feel like I've been holding onto the ragged edge by my fingertips! But, it has all been good, if a bit hectic...

Spring seems to have come & gone, since we've had temps in the mid-90s already! Fold up that fuzzy sweater & pop on that bikini, would ya? The change in season has brought a quick succession of flowers bursting forth as is wont in the desert-- the heady perfume of the waxy blooms of citrus trees; the dark, rich scent of jasmine; the bright scattered spots of color from desert marigolds, mallows, & lupines; and now the cactus & palo verdes are starting to join the floral chorus as mesquites & acacias don their millions of tiny green leaves. Dennis barely had time to get outside to attend to his "yard chores" before the high temps hit! We are hoping this is not the harbinger of a very dry & hot summer.

Spring also brought us... Moka! She is our newest dog, another rescue, born on & rescued from the reservation, adopted as a puppy & then returned to the rescue organization by her first owners. She is about a year old & was very shy & skittish when we first got her, owing to whatever kind of treatment her first owners did or didn't give her. She lived with foster owners Lisa & Kurt for three weeks before we got her & they did wonders to help her become adoptable. The name came with her, although it was originally "Moca" (which I didn't like because it is way too close to a Spanish word for a bodily fluid I am not fond of), then became "Mocha", which I decided to change to "Moka" because she is way too hip for such a common name & she isn't brown! Good thing dogs can't spell. She has now been with us for just over two weeks & has completely made herself at home. She still has some skittishness at times, but she is quickly learning she can trust us & she absolutely loves Roger, who is a bit of a stick in the mud about playing, but who allows her to steal the cushiest bed & fling toys around & on him without much grumbling. All of the old stuffed animal toys have all had very precise sqeakectomies performed on them, Moka is quite the little surgeon. Both dogs love the daily 3 mile walks, are getting in good shape, & have learned to drink from the water bottle when we are walking. Bunnies went out of fashion after Easter, now their latest obsessions are ground squirrel holes & lizards. Needless to say, one must have a tight hold on the leashes or find oneself going for an unplanned flight into the cactus!

I finished pinacate shuffle just in time to get the loom warped up & a header woven for the Hernmarck method workshop I took during Arizona Federation of Weavers & Spinners Fibers Through Time 2008 convention. Here it is while in progress & the cropped shot I took of it for the Tohono Chul exhibit it was woven & accepted for--

Burnham's Two Grey Hills & Native Brown were perfect for the sand!

Dennis also had one of his works accepted into Artful Insects, it will be his first exhibit! He works in watercolor pencil and pen & ink. Here is his Butterfly Magic before framing.

The Fibers Through Time convention was 3 1/2 days of fiber, fiber, fiber & it was held here in Tucson. The first day was registration & tours; I took the AZ Historical Society & Arizona State Museum tours which were fabulous since we were allowed to go "behind the scenes" to see textiles that were not currently on display. At the Historical Society we saw many items of hand stitched clothing from the early 1900s worn by people who were living here then, & at ASM, known for its textile collection, we saw breathtaking pre-Columbian textiles undergoing restoration & exquisitely old Navajo weavings. That evening instead of going to the wine & cheese event I decided to go home, partly because I was very tired & partly because I have learned to trust my premonitions & instincts when they come on strongly... something in Dennis' voice when I called to see how the dogs had done after being left alone during the afternoon was not reassuring when he told me that someone (Moka!) had gotten into my yarns & he wasn't sure what color they were. I arrived home to find that Moka must have had quite the soccer match with not just any yarn, but the special yarn I had just bought & carefully packed for the workshop. I was winding what I could out of the mess for 2 1/2 hours just to get enough to use! It is somewhat humorous now, but wasn't at the time! While I was winding & thinking bad thoughts, Roger made sure he came into the studio & told me he had absolutely nothing to do with it, honest!

The workshop was taught by Diane Wolf, who has studied with Helena Hernmarck, worked as her assistant during convergence, & was encouraged by Hernmarck to teach the class. Here is our workshop space, a shot of my loom with my piece in progress (it's a silver U.S. Navy pitcher, the photo was taken by Diane), & a detail of the weaving. It is a very intriguing & time consuming method, requiring much consideration... I still have most of it left to weave!

I entered 3 of my works into the exhibit that coincided with the convention... I was quite honored to have recuerdos de georgia selected to receive the Juror's Recognition Award For Tapestry.

My friend Janie Hoffman taught the natural dyeing workshop during the convention & after the convention's end, she came to stay for a couple days before heading back to Alpine. We had a field trip day, driving up into the Santa Rita Mountains on a very narrow single lane dirt road that switchbacked up close to the peak of Mt. Hopkins before we reached the security gate for the Whipple Observatory at around 8000' elevation. It was a slow going, sweaty palm drive up with very steep drop offs, most with no guardrails, & spectacular views-- thank goodness the road was very well maintained! The reason for our trek was for Janie to get some photos of the Tumacacori Mountains across the basin from the Santa Ritas for her Sky Islands tapestry that she is working on. She got some great shots & so did I, along with having most of the day to enjoy each other's company, the mountains, & the desert.

Now I am in the midst of preparing for a dye run that is overdue... I also want to get the dyeing done before it gets any hotter! I will be dyeing with 8 dyestuffs, most which I have not tried before & most from my own collecting efforts. The most unusual of them all will be the avocado peels & pits-- these photos were taken immediately after I covered them with boiling water to begin a week long soaking process, wow!

I hope to be able to post the results of the dyeing session before Dennis & I take a mini-trip to spend a couple days in Bisbee to celebrate our 15th anniversary. It will be the first time Roger & Moka will be left with our trusted pet sitters, so we are hoping all goes well so that we will be able to enjoy future trips together occasionally in non-dog venues!