Colors Lately

Jonny and I were heading out the door the other day to the pottery studio, and I said to him, “You know, I find myself becoming more and more-” at which point he interjected the word, “Weird.”

“No” I told him,  “I find myself becoming more and more interested in insects!”

Anyway, we are at the pottery studio a good bit these days, but more about that another time.

I have really been missing playing with color, so recently I started dyeing organic cotton gauze scarves again. I wear these scarves through the fall, winter, and spring and love them so much. They are definitely my favorite accessory. Over the summer I dyed a ton of samples, because I am trying something new. As much as I love plant and insect based dyes, they became limiting, if not prohibitive when it comes to dyeing my scarves. I found myself in a place of giving them up, or making changes to make the process more sustainable for me so that I can continue to dye and sell them. The samples you see in my photos were all dyed with Procion dyes. Rather than write out a description of what Procion dyes are here, if you are interested you can read this article written by another fiber artist. She does a good job of addressing the environmental impact of using these dyes. For me, the list of pros is long. Whatever route I take, creating these scarves is a many stepped labor of love. However, using Procion dyes is less labor intensive. They eliminate the multiple step mordant process necessary when dyeing cellulose fibers with natural dyes, and as a result I use far less water. This dye process doesn’t require added heat beyond warm tap water, so my electricity usage is hugely diminished as well. Because I should be able to reliably repeat colors, I won’t have to take and edit new photographs every time I dye new scarves. I can’t tell you how huge that is. One of the most time consuming parts of running a little shop like mine is staging and photographing products, editing those photos, and creating listings. If I can have one listing that I simply renew, that saves me so much time. I wondered if I would still have fun dyeing this way, and yes, I’m having a lot of fun. I am fascinated by color and am loving this process. Mabel has been my sidekick and it turns out she has a really good eye for color. She has helped me decide what colors to mix to achieve certain results, and I’m not ashamed to say that my nine year old daughter might be better at that than I am! All this fun with these new dyes means that I will be offering scarves in my shop sometime in November in a really gorgeous range of colors.

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Puzzles are back, mostly being worked on by Mabel who loves them. She recently completed The Walled Garden by Lore Pemberton and Nature Anatomy: Birds. With the arrival of fall, we are pulling out some more seasonally appropriate puzzles and they are so pretty! I’m sure I’ll be sharing those soon.

I’m currently reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde for book club (it’s fascinating and a little bit eerie) and recently finished listening to Miss Benson’s Beetle for fun. I have been trying to knit more as the list of gifts I have to knit is too long to manage, and audiobooks help. This story was particularly fun because it incorporated insects! It’s also just sort of outrageous. There are some mature themes so it’s not one that I could have playing with my kids in the room, so that was the only tricky part. (Nothing too racy or graphic that I can recall, but please research that yourself if you are sensitive or email me for more detail. I’m always a little nervous to recommend anything that’s not a classic or along the lines of Anne of Green Gables-ha!)

I finished knitting Elsie’s birthday sweater with plenty of time to spare, which isn’t saying much since I started it last spring, but I am pleased nonetheless. I also just finished knitting another of these hats for Beatrix, but realized I wasn’t happy with the decreases, so I had to rip back and am redoing that part now.

Mabel, Ambrose, and I did a little natural dyeing project with some yarn I had stashed way, so next up they want me to knit them hats and mittens with their respective skeins. I’ll share that project soon.

After finding a new home for Keats’s giant organ, I was able to reclaim our library room. Jonny painted it a very comforting shade of mushroom at my request but it needed a little color! That brightly patterned sofa in a couple of my photos above cost me $40 and a few hours with a borrowed upholstery cleaning machine. I’m so pleased with it! It has a slightly curved shape and an art deco feel, which I love. It’s just what the room needed. The library is still a work in progress, but I’ll have to show you sometime. I think it’s very pretty so far and I’m just grateful to have it.

Today is a perfect fall day: gray and drizzly and cozy. I think I will get out a new puzzle to work on with Mabel before we head to Mass.