New Things and Old Things

Recently I have been very interested in time and its effects on surfaces.

How time changes things

How time reveals

How time is

Based on this idea I designed a sculpture for a national competition.

And got shortlisted!

(Hope I win!)

Light through linen

I love the colour and the texture of natural linen. 

It has to be one of the most wonderful fabrics.

Beginning stiff and crunchy and aging to soft and creased.

Watch it being made here: http://vimeo.com/16474921

This piece I plan to make into a simple bag... though I rather like it just as it is.

In the strange twilight of midday

The Haze has a strange quality.

Its in some ways terrifying and some ways beautiful. 

Is this the sublime?

The smoke was so thick the landscape turned into a painting of itself.

The sun turned into a glowing orb of pink through the thick air.

Avoiding products with Palm Oil in them might help.

Strange and Wonderful

This strange and wonderful 'bird' by Sergey Tyukanov caught my eye while I was looking for something else. 

I love it when that happens: you get lost and find something lovely.

Paper + Craft

A lovely book I came across while looking for something else in the library. 

The photographs are clear and the projects are quite easy-looking.

They have two nice birdy-related projects too.

These would look lovely for Christmas ornaments.

The bag template is going to be rather useful for packaging gifts.

The marvellous thing is that the templates are available for free download online here: http://www.chroniclebooks.com/papercraft

Finally - Success with Purple Cabbage!

After several attempts on different yarns: cotton, wool, silk, soy, mohair, I managed to successfully dye yarn with Purple Cabbage.

It doesn't sound remarkable except that the Purple Cabbage gives great colours in the pot and then they wash out (cotton) or fade out quickly in light (silk) or hang around for a while (wool) then fade to greige or take only the slightest tint (mohair).

Then there is soy yarn. For some reason Soy loves to be dyed. I am yet to understand why but it is so easy to dye its amazing.

Unfortunately I had only about 20 grams of soy yarn left, so I needed more for a proper test. After months of searching, I found a 70% wool 30% soy yarn. I decided to give it a go hoping the percentage of soy was enough. And yes, it was.

Furthermore the soy enjoyed all the things the wool didn't like such as changing the acidity of the dye bath to make different colours.

So happily I have blue, purple and pink from one dye bath just by adding different things to alter the acidity. I added soda ash to make blue, nothing to make purple (clearly my tapwater is fairly neutral) and a little vinegar to make pink.

The darkest shades were the first dye batch (24 hours) then the paler shades were the second use of the same dye bath (48 hours).

Unfortunately I made the decision to solar dye rather than refrigerate the dye jars. In this nice tropical heat the dye baths fermented and smelt rather like rotten eggs. Not pleasant, but the colours were worth a little nausea!

Searching for the perfect sunset

Sometimes things are just perfect.