Navigation: bundle #2

Doesn't look like much, does it?  Pretty blah.  And covered in mildew.

Looks can be deceiving.

Take an old thrift store napkin, soak it overnight in some soy milk,

stuff it's folded innards with some eucalyptus leaves, helenium blossoms, a couple nails

and a few rusty screws.

Roll the whole kit'nkboodle around a piece of driftwood, 

binding it as tight as you can with any old ratty garden twine ...

plunk the whole thing into a cast iron pot packed full with more of those euc leaves

and simmer away for a good 45 minutes or so.

Leave to air dry for about three weeks.

In case you might want some,

poor air circulation and/or lack of (drying) heat will bring on the pesky microflora.

May not be a bad thing, but I admit to going to battle with this batch of bundles

who ended up spending considerable time basking in my warming oven

and then received an extra steam treatment and a very hot hour in the dryer ...

+++++ STOP ++++++

you little mildewy buggers!

Many thanks to Fabienne for her encouragement & special steps walking me through that one ...

I had a good chuckle when I read the back side of this tag:

"Machine wash cold

Do not bleach

Tumble dry low

Warm iron as needed

Dry clean recommended"

It seems eco-printing is a made-in-heaven enterprise for rule breakers.

: : :

I have to include this one particular close-up ...

this face is for Jude ...

who still teaches me to  *see*  in many unexpected ways ...

thank you.

:::

It'll be a night for blue moon dreaming ....

let's all  just let it roll.

Navigation: bundle #1

There appears to be no direct course ~ certainly no guarantees ~ for coaxing plants

to give up their colors on cloth.

Perhaps that's part of the thrill of it, all those unknown factors

working together to give us something we could never plan ...

like a party, where the group of invitees is such an odd assortment of characters

one has no idea of the party's outcome.

Will it break out in fistfights?  Be dull as dirt? (no offense to dirt)

Or encourage happy mingling with lots of pleasant repartee? 

Surely, the best way through a (new) thing is to just  GO ...

before you realize it,

you've set a course for yourself, one way or the other.

Back in July, I wrote  this post  about our merry band of island stitchers who happened

to take a quite unexpected detour from traditional shibori and sailed away (quite joyously) 

into another realm entirely ...

the one where  India Flint  lives.

We "bundled" our hearts out.

And over innumerable cooking pots of assorted vegetation,

a few of us lost our hearts to the process ...

For the next few days I thought I would post, one bundle at a time, my results ...

a good way perhaps, to keep permanent notes on how the colors came to be

and generally place some records here about this very special kind of mark-making.

:::

Bundle #1 was a scrap of silk (no mordant) folded around purple pansies,

madrone bark, metal washers and one rusty nail,

wrapped around a piece of driftwood, secured with rubber bands,

steamed for 45 minutes,

then left to air dry for three weeks.

Biggest surprise?  That lovely peach color (below the washers) from the Pacific madrone bark.

Some great potential there in our native Arbutus menziesii !

Texture Tuesday...dawg days of summer

I've often wondered if it would be possible to successfully use one of

Kim Klassen's textures over an image that I shot with an iPhone app,

so for this week's Texture Tuesday challenge,  look down,  I decided to go ahead and try it.

Tell me what you think.

My dawg gal doesn't like the heat (she's got that whole collie fur coat thing goin' on)

so its fairly easy to find her

being quiet in the shade of the umbrella, giving me  * that look *

Originals were shot with Hipstamatic.  I loved the black and white, high contrast tones

but the plain white frames just had to go.

I chose two of Kim's square textures that had "frames" instead ...

above, I used 'printed'  and below,  'heartfelt' ...

awwwwww, thanks bestie ...

:::

Want to join in with us?  Come on over ... play along ...

lots of good stuff happening over at Kim's place!

Texture Tuesday...heat

We have been bathed in heat.

The grass has, at last, stopped growing ... bye bye, miz mower machine, enjoy your vacay.

 One thing is certain ... the beans have loved the heat.

Remember that trellis I built?   It's all but disappeared beneath beanie leafage ...

it's a proverbial jungle out there.

This was the just the kind of heat we needed for bundle drying a couple weeks back ...
dry heat to prevent mildew.

Instead,

they were banished to the warming drawer in the kitchen (not an optimal choice).

We do what we must do, taught as we are to scorn the black, spotty stuff.

Oddly, it does create some interesting marks ...

I'll show you everything in my next post.

PROMISE.

In the meantime, I've been lying underneath some whirling blades

reading the most stupendously marvelous book.
You know you've found an all-absorbing tale when thoughts of it follow you throughout the day,
willing you, enticing you, to read     one     more     page.
Ahab's Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund, has wrapped me in its watery spell.
Woven in and out and around the sea for 704 pages, it is nothing short of masterful.


My sweet companion ~ who neither swims, nor reads ~ finds other ways to stay cool

and claims the last shady spot nearest the pond.
Must keep a lookout, you see, should any wayward duck decide to land in HER territory.

On another trellis the sweet peas are running riot, but they won't last much longer ...
they are ephemeral beauties, not fond of heat
so I enjoy every moment I have with them.

They are, after all, my namesake and the reason I came to write this blog in the first place.

: : :



Linking up this week for another Texture Tuesday over at Kim's place.
Our challenge?  Anything goes ...
so I went for it:  texturizing layers of grunge, blurs & special effects using the Snapseed app.
Mosey on over and see what the rest of the crowd got up to ... so much inspiration!