korean food is yummy

update from korea. i've survived the longest leg of my journey thus far. with the exception of having to go through security three times; basically, every airport i've stopped at, it has not been too bad. i had a window seat for my lax to seoul ride and it vastly limited my range of movements, but the sleeping positions i managed to twist myself into brought some measure of sleep. i'm feeling okay, a little sleepy, it's light here now and i'm waiting for the plane which will take me to osaka.

i breakfasted on a vegetarian bibimbap at the seoul airport, and it was mighty tasty, with a side of seaweed salad, fish stock soup and kimchi. i thought of taking a photo, after i had already eaten more than half of it. i will keep it in mind the next time i sit down to eat a meal.

a grand adventure

well, i'm off! i'll be posting from japan when next you hear from me. 32 hours is a completely doable length of time to get somewhere, right?

still going strong

the solar dyed avocado took up about the same amount of dye as heating it on the stove in the second bath, so that's interesting. there seams to be a significant amount of dyestuff in the avocado, so it's a good thing that i've been saving up the skins.

the shibori experiment went well, i'm really enjoying the calla lily-like patterning of the second piece (some bead work to enhance it would be pretty, or possibly some metallic thread embroidery). i will set these pieces aside and work on them more later.

tougher than it looks

i've been seeing posts about solar dyeing, and thought i would give it a try; as it's still in the 90's here and the thought of turning on the stove and standing over it for an hour is rather unbearable. using the leftover dyestuff from past dye projects, red onion skin and avocado skin, i pleated and wrapped some of my prepared alum mordanted cloth bits and let them soak outside in the sun for two days. the avocado is still soaking, so no results to post of yet.

i was happy with the results of the cotton swatch soaked in onion skin; finally some patterning to my dye efforts! as i've been going through my selvedge magazines i've been reading a lot about resist dyeing, i think that that along with shibori will be my next area of study. the linen piece was okay, some dye penetrated the edges but the inside of the pleat was still white. pretty, but not as interesting as the cotton.

i've been admiring the progress eva of tinctory has been making with her smocking pieces, and have to say that i was impressed and enchanted with her work last year, but am really enthralled by her current natural dye artworks. one day i shall own one of her lovely pieces for my own.

i had tried my hand at smocking in the past and every attempt was quite sad, so pulling out the art of manipulating fabric, i tried once more using the dyed linen swatch. after several eh stitched attempts, i ripped them out, and tried to simplify my approach. two rows in and i thought of what could fit in the niches to make it more interesting, and to aid in holding them open. looking through my bead collection, at first i tried seed beads (too small), then swarvoski crystals (too saturated in color), and finally my pearls (they popped right in and added a delicate glow to the soft coloring of the dye). as i sewed, the piece started to take shape and i pictured a 3-dimensional brooch; so when i was done, i sewed it to a bit of felt and a pin. at the finish of this project, i have to say hats off to tinctory, as this was a more difficult skill than i had previously thought, and requires a good deal of thought beforehand. i'm not sure if i shall make further attempts, but a skill learned is never lost.

back in the saddle

i had a desire to create more pins last night; sadly, i had ignored the making of them for some time. so i dumped out my scrap bags, gathered my sewing needle and thread spool and set to work.

the first is of limes and sky, with glow worms floating on a gust of air. my ode to the last days of summer.

the second is my halloween inspiration, with the warm pumpkins and dusky grays of trick or treat eve. cozy wool felt and silver edged tulle, remind me of the coming cooler days.

they won't be going in my etsy store, as i will be away for some time and have put it on holiday mode; but if you would like either one, just email me before the 27th of this month.

stitching together

well, i decided to go ahead and just do some simple stitching on the mini quilt to finish it. there really weren't any disastrous needle incidents; besides the moment i sewed my thumb, but luckily there was no loss of blood involved.

i quite like the rippling texture, it's very much like viewing the crops lined up in fields while one is in a plane overhead. the backside came out okay, but not really photo worthy. i decided to create the whole piece by hand sewing; it's so small as to be a completely accomplishable task.

will i do another one? i'm not really sure, perhaps not anytime soon. but there is a stack of wheat and lavender fabrics i've been collecting.