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Turned Into Biology


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The science switched today, well, probably yesterday.  What started out as chemistry (which is what dyeing really is) turned into biology.

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I tried to get a close up of the life I, not unlike Dr. Frankenstein, created.  This life, probably a lot like the Frankenstein monster, stank like hell.  So, I gave up on this as a long term project.  It had been sitting outside for about four days.

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After a rinse, the silk scarf still only picked up a light pink.

It’s waiting to go through the wash now.   I’ve read that I should be washing all of my naturally dyed fabrics by hand and drying them on a line.  Maybe one day I will.  For now, I want to see how they tolerate a heavy duty washing.

In the meantime, I’ve started another collection of avocado skins and pits so I can try it again.  This was really fun.  If you try out dyeing with avocado skins because you saw this post, please let me know how it goes.  It’s really fascinating to me.

 

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Blown Out

Well, I had hoped to share pictures of our awesome both set up at Elver Park for the Fresh Air Craft Fair today.  But we got blown out.  Literally.  The vendor agreement said that the fair would go ahead rain or shine; it did not say that it would go ahead with crazy, gusty winds.
So here’s our booth part way through being taken down.  That’s when I remembered to take a picture.  It looked great and we actually held out longer than the people around us before the big wind came through.  The secret:  Attach the canopy to cinder blocks.  We were helping someone else keep her canopy from blowing away when the wind knocked everything off our table.
Look at the poor gourd lady.  This is when they cancelled the fair.  It was a bummer to do all that prep work and then have it cancelled but, ya know, shit happens and we met some nice people there.  Also, the wind distributed many of our new business cards far and wide.  
So on to planning our Etsy Shop opening.  It’s May 21st  and I’m too superstitious to make a crack about the weather not being able to affect that opening.  
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Getting My Act Together and Taking It On The Road!!!!!!!!

So, this will seem pretty random but when I was in college, I had to bring in a song to learn for Musical Theatre class.  I knew nothing about sheet music or what to pick so I asked the guy at the shop to pick for me.  I don’t remember which song he picked but it was from the musical “I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road“.  I think the reason I don’t remember the name of the song is that I never sang it.  My teacher said he didn’t want to spend the semester hearing it over and over again so we picked an old standard from the ’40’s for me to sing.  It was actually pretty funny.
In any case, any time I am getting myself organized my brain shrieks: I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road!  And that is what is ringing in my head because I am vending at a craft fair (My first in years) this coming Saturday.
I made cards.  I sewed on them a little bit.  
We’re probably going to change the design eventually so I only made 40.  
It doesn’t seem sustainable to always sew on our business cards but I like the way it looks.
I made a big ol’ sign.  I sewed on that, too.
But you can’t really see the stitching unless you’re up close to it.  I need to fix that somehow.  I don’t want to sew on it too much because it perforates the paper and if I do too much, it will fall apart.  
I have some stuffed animals.
Jewelry out of electronic components in muffin tins…Yes that’s right, muffin tins.  They’re good for storage.  
Pin cushion bonanza!
Jewelry out of tee shirts and my partner has a lot of wool crowns and balls.
And I have the ability to take credit cards which feels like a super power.  I know there’s butt loads more of stuff to prepare but I feel like I’M GETTING MY ACT TOGETHER etc…  
PS – I still can’t carry a tune.  That poor teacher was tortured by my singing for a whole year, 
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Halfway and counting down…

I’m calling this the halfway point.  I emptied the shelves and put lots of stuff into bins.  We’ll be moving these shelves into the next room and then putting in some way deeper shelves.
Gotta find a sunny spot for my table.  It all looks so spare and tidy now 
But this is only some of what I have to put back in an orderly fashion.  
Actually, I’m going to cal it the thirdway point.
There’s more here.  The quarterway point is starting to feel right.  I’d better get up and get moving.  
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Not Too Shabby

I finished the owls which means…time for a totally new project!  
I don’t know if you remember, but lately I’ve been playing with remaking tee-shirts so that they fit me.  It’s really fun but I had trouble figuring out sizing.  To figure that out I went and bought a bunch of giant ugly tee shirts to experiment on.  I knew it was a new way of sewing and I would need a ton of practice so I bought quite a few.  But…surprise surprise…I figured it out by tee-shirt # 3.  Not too shabby.  However, now I have a buncha giant ugly tee shirts.  
Like this one.
So I cut them buggers up.
They look like this until you stretch them out.  Then they look like this:
Thanks for another great idea, Alabama Chanin.

Now there are many things I can make with them.  I choose….jewelry.
But, until then I just want to say that this shirt:

was awesome.
Unfortunately, a really large printed area on a tee shirt doesn’t stretch the way I need it to so I had to throw that part away.  However, I still really enjoyed cutting up the word cancer.
I chopped it up real good.

On an unrelated note, I also fixed Mr. Floppy.  He appreciates it, his face was loose.  Now he can go home to my daughter; she has really missed him.
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We have a winner the second

The winner is…Anonymous!  That’s right.  But she emailed me and I know who she really is.  
I think I’ll also wait on having another give away until there’s some sort of blog hop dealy that I can join in on again.  That seems to work better.  I will have more though.  I have big scary plans to clean my space.  I’m sure to find lots of stuff that needs to travel on to greener pastures.

I’ve cleaned it before but I’m hoping this time I’ll be able to keep it tidier.  Gotta buy a buncha plastic bins.  They fix everything.
I finished the owls last night, too.  
I stuffed them with wool.  I really prefer it to cotton or poly fill because dust mites do not like wool.  I do not like dust mites so that all works out in the end.
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That’s How Cute

You never can tell with with critters.
Will they be cute?  They might be kinda cute.  I haven’t made any critters for months…over a year!  
The thing is that you have to turn them inside out and sew around their edges which is a serious leap of faith.  Let’s just say that it does not always end well, especially when one is out of practice.
But it so did this time.  How cute is that?  Seriously cute, that’s how cute.
AHHH!!  That’s darling.
That one worked really well, too.
Is it too weird to pinch the cheeks of a halfway made stuffed animal?  Oh, wait…yes…it is.  It’s too weird so I won’t do that.  
But I love my little parliament!  
All I have left to do is stuff them and then they’ll be ready for the world.  
And a quick reminder:  Want to join in my purse give away?  
I know, you’ve been waiting for the last minute (Why, by the way, what’s the point?).  Anyway, the last minute is here.  Tomorrow I’ll announce the winner of my latest (And last, for a while) give away. 
Just go here and leave me a comment and let me know how to reach you if you win.  
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Parliament

After that owl give away, I’m back to making critters again.  
First a parliament of owls.
They look so plain because they’re still in the designing phase.
Soon they’ll have button eyes
And detail stitching.  Mostly machine stitching because I’d like to sell them and I have to balance the time put into them with how much I can realistically charge for a stuffed denim owl.
But I’m not totally a practical person so a couple have hand stitching because that’s just how I roll.
Hoot.
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Feeling Proud

I donated my Denim OCD Quilt to The Habitat for Humanity ReStore.  
They have a salvaged art auction every year to raise money.
You might remember that I donated some stuffed critters a couple of years ago.  
They just put my quilt on their website (scroll down) as a featured piece and I’m all aflutter.  I’m not sure where it will be displayed yet but I’ll be attending the opening for sure.
I also recently received  an email from the WI Institutes For Discovery.  They will be displaying the drawings from the last Lynda Barry workshop during their Public Humanities Conference.  I actually think the drawings done by kids will be waaaaay more interesting than the stuff us grown ups made.  The conference looks really intriguing and the workshop was crazy fun
I’m looking forward to attending that, too.  
That’s my spring social calendar filled.  
Not bad for someone who doesn’t actually have a social calendar. 
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Junky for Learning: Screen Printing.

On to the actual screen printing class at Sector67.
 
 After messing around with images, I came up with some that I was satisfied with. I got some input from my kids and picked the owl (bottom right) and the Villain (top right) as my top contenders.  
When I got to the class there was a good hour that felt like nails on the chalk board to me, if I’m being honest and I guess I am.  
I hadn’t realized that I needed to bring the images in digital format.  Neither had anyone else (There were four of us) since that information wasn’t actually shared with us.  So the instructor had to run around helping us get the images the way they needed to be.  For me, this entailed scanning and Photoshopping to get something that would work.  I didn’t take any photographs at this point.  I was busy gnashing my teeth.
So, you’ll just have to take my word for it that it brought us to this.  We got our images figured out and then printed them onto a transparency sheet which we then taped to a screen that had been coated with a photo emulsion – the red stuff.  I know, I’m sorry. I skipped over much of the fun part there. 
This is the part when I started to relax again.
The screen got placed in here.  It’s a light box.  The top is fabric and has a vacuum dealy that sucks the air out so that the screen is pressed snugly up against the light. 
Not that it matters but that’s not me.  It’s another participant who was nice enough to let me take her picture a bunch.
After three minutes of light exposure, we pulled our screens out.   The red stuff that was exposed to the light hardened.  The areas that were covered (by the lines of the image) hadn’t.
The parts that hadn’t hardened washed right out with water.  That left us with with a cool stencil that will last for up to 1000 prints.
 
Here he is right after his bath
 
And here he’s all dry and upside down so that the stuffing is running to his head.
 
Moving right along.  He was clamped down over my fabric and ink was plopped by his feet.  
 Taking the squeegee, I pulled the ink over him several times.
It was a little hard on the hands.


The screen was hooked up to this crazy contraption.  It’s like a lazy Susan with four clamps.  What was great about it was that you could pick the screen up and check the image and know that the screen would return to exactly where it had been if you needed to squeegee again.  Which I always did.

Tada!

The very nice instructor said I could make as many as I wanted and I, of course, had brought an excessive amount of fabric.  I made eight villains but exactly at 11 (2 hours after the class was supposed to end) I turned into a pumpkin and all but ran out the door to get home to bed.  Of course, having run out so quickly, I left my phone (After annoyingly taking so many pictures with it) and had to turn around and go back to get it again.  You just do not leave a phone at a hacker space overnight.

I did also make a screen of the owl.  The instructor said I could take this one home (The villain was on screen he used more often so he needed it back) to use.  I didn’t print any owls that night but this screen is in my garage awaiting my attention.

It was a rough start but I would totally take the class again.  I learned so much and the instructor was great.  I think I’ll make some tote bags and pillows with my screened images since I made them on canvas.  I’m kinda tempted to open my etsy shop again and try to sell them.  We’ll see.  Even typing that out makes me cringe a bit.

But I’m a junky for learning how to do new stuff!