Stitch Rabbit

The Dye Shop ( a work in progress )

 

 

It ain't pretty, but it's workable.

 

I've moved into the shop in our backyard. I couldn't wait till the interior walls were done. Also, the dye pots and plants and mordants were taking over my kitchen, and staining the walls and floors. So, I moved in early!

 

There's still a lot to do to make the space workable as well as (ahem) pretty. And there's a lot of room and possibility for more. This concrete sink came up from the basement and will one day house an indigo vat.

In the meantime, I've been clamping and dipping and playing with cottons and linens. I'm pretty happy with my new space. Can't wait to spend the summer with the shop doors wide open and my hands covered in color.

 

Railway Spikes and Cherry Trees

 

On my last trip to Yale I scavenged for some old rusty railway parts along the tracks and came home with a nice collection. Using one part vinegar, two parts water and a few rusty old railway spikes from the Fraser Canyon, I made an iron mordant a few weeks ago and has let it ferment till now. And it worked!

 

 

This week I harvested the suckers from the cherry trees in my yard and used the bark and leaves to make a new dye. I boiled both bark and leaves separately and came out with similar shades from both.

 

 

Playing with swatches I got a really good look and learn from comparing how the different mordants react to the cherry dye. A teaspoon of the homemade iron solution into the pink dye and suddenly we've got blues and purples! Amazing.

 

The far left is cherry bark with alum. Then, with some copper pennies I was able to pull the second shade. The blueish grey in the middle was made with my homemade iron mordant and the last with a store-bought iron from the supply shop, Maiwa. I'm especially pleased with the shade I got with my homemade iron mordant.

 

 

My Daughter And The World.

 

She will be seven next month. On the cusp of some kind of girlhood that is racing through childhood and not yet adolescence. On the brink of bigger things, a sureness of herself is stirring and showing itself in tiny glimpses as she makes her own breakfast and ties her own shoes and chooses her own things and makes up her own mind. She knows more of what she wants. She knows more of the world, she knows more than just the things I have taught her.

 

 My daughter is finding her way. She is careful and thoughtful. She is also daring and unafraid. She switches back and forth from big girl to my little baby as she reads novels in the bathtub with her feet propped up and yet still crawls into my bed to find me in the night. She snuggles a stuffie and paints her toenails. I can hardly pick her up. She can lift me off the ground.

 

 

My daughter is growing, and I guess that means so am I. Learning about her... it is impossible to know everything. Every day I am learning about her, as she discovers more and more about herself. Understanding more complex thoughts and coming to her own conclusions. Disagreeing with opinions. Feeling empathy for others. Thinking first about her planet before she thinks about what she'd like. She is seeing things on a bigger scale, she is part of a community. She is more aware of the people in her life. And she loves them fiercely.

 

My daughter is competitive and trying to understand it. She is learning tools that will guide her in so many ways in her life. She is gaining the confidence she ought to have - that every girl ought to have in a world so intent on exploiting women. I do everything I can to teach her how to be strong and powerful, and then she's got to do it for herself.

 

She is turning seven and I am watching her with eyes wide open, astonished by the wild and the love and the heart that comes beaming out of this child.

 

And then, each night, I tuck her in to bed so she can lose herself in worlds of fantasy and story and tall tales and beautiful endings... and it's the end of the day and she simply doesn't want it to end.

And I am filled with her hunger for life, for learning, for knowing, for caring, for loving...and it inspires me to do the same.

A Steady Constant.

 

It seems to me that there are not often times in my life when things stop, for even a moment. And there are times when I cannot find a room in my house where there is not something perched on a table or shelf or armchair waiting for me to return to.

And I like it that way. Idle hands I have not.

 Frankie's long-awaited quilt will be finished in time for her birthday. I am only a few stitches away from the hand-quilting being finished before I bind it for her seventh year. I can't believe she's about to be another year from the moment I laid eyes on her.

 A growing collection of buckets and pails of dye and yarn and linen and cotton are finding their way to the shop outside, recently emptied and ready to become my garden and dye studio. Scrap and salvaged wood is collecting as well, ready to become the interior walls of the shop. I can't hardly wait to have such a great space for all the mess and glory.

The garden grows and grows, and so do the trays of seedlings in all the windows. Perhaps it's time to build a greenhouse.

It seems that every space available there is something going on. It is spring. It is change, it is growth. It is making and creating. It is doing. It's how I like it.

It is a steady constant, and it is love.