COMING SOON!!!

Coming very soon, I'll find out hopefully today or tomorrow how many more days it will be before Compost Dyeing and Other Fermentatition Technuiques will actually be in print! I was told the turn around is 10 days, I can hardly wait!

More Fabric

The only part about producing fabrics, scarves and the like that I truly dislike is all of the ironing/pressing, it's a necessary evil however.

Now to get the notebooks done for the workshop. I'm hoping to have the book in print, yes actual real print and not a cd rom, by the time we go to New Jersey but I have a feeling it won't be done until we get back.

Composted Velvet

This piece was dyed with osage orange first, then compost dyed using red yeilding dyestuffs. It turned out gorgeoust! Too bad it's only a fat eight, and not say three and a half yards.

Mark Making with Nature

I'm teaching Mark Making with Nature: Surface Design with Natural Dyes at Peters Valley the end of this month, July 28th to August 1st, 2006. Peters Valley is in New Jersey and from what I hear the area is just incredibly gorgeous! I'm hoping to get a few hours of R&R to take some pics of the wooded area, new tree bark and lichens, just give me 15 minutes I tell you and I'll be a very happy camper.

Part of this classes emphasis is Compost Dyeing and Screen Printing with Natural Dyes. We will do immersion dyeing as an aside while we wait on things to compost, cure and/or dry. I am anticipating a bit of fabric painting with natural dyes as well.

I teach this class online so if you really want to take the class but can't come to New Jersey then purchase it at Prairie Fibers I will be teaching the class again beginning mid August.

large transfer prints

Sounds easier than it really is.

Some like it...

It got really hot here today, it's about time actually, it's a nice hot but it's hot none the less. The corn needs this heat to grow so it's a good thing, it's been unseasonably cool the past two weeks actually. I finally turned the central air on, about 20 minutes ago, I couldn't take it any longer it was 90F in the house. Mainly my dehumidifiers can't keep up with the heat, it's only 76 in the basement, however even with two dehumidifiers going it's still damp feeling down there.

In about an hour it'll be fine again, and I can go back to dyeing fabrics, been doing a lot of video taping of the dye pots, and making digital prints.

Speaking of prints, I've been wrestling a 24x36 transfer print for two days now and finally figured out it wasn't me but then new transfer film. I am unable to purchase the film I had been getting before, I'm not sure if the company (HP) quit making them or not, anyway... I'm getting my execrise wrestling with the new product. I guess the upside is I have lots of samples of what happens when you don't do it right the first time, and I'm writing it down on my samples of I know for future reference.

Franklin Ground Squirrel Again

Hey this baby is rare, as in endangered, won't stop that subdivision from going in though, never does.

Click here to see Franklin Ground Squirrel

For more information click here Franklin Ground Squirrel

Franklin Ground Squirrel

Was Prairie Dogs

Check it out, this is exactly what they look like!!!

Prairie Dogs Again

Well the verdict is still out, they are not the kind of prairie dogs we call prairie dogs, but they sure act like prairie dogs, but they are definately NOT 13 or 7 striped ground squirrels either (commonly known as chipmunks). What we are suspecting is that they are a hybrid strain of prairie dogs bred for the retail market that have been "naturalized" if you know what I mean. What that means for the local environment is anyones guess. My neighbor is going to look up a few other native ground squirrels to see if by chance they could be one of these. Prairie dogs are a member of the squirrel family in case you didn't know. These creatures h act too much like meerkats, another scary thought, but are too small, but who knows maybe it's an import set free to naturalize. If we find out for sure what they are I'll post what we find. I'm bummed because I was really hoping for prairie dogs, of the non--hybridized variety.

Portrait Pic

This is the pic I chose, she doesn't sickly in this picture. Now I just need to figure out how to enlarge it to something like 18 x 24 inches in size so I can pick fabrics and shiny objects and get her done. I'm hoping to have it done by Sept 22nd, her birthday. I'll be working on it on the way out to New Jersey and back at the end of this month.

Shiny Objects

I've decided to make a portrait piece of my mother, she died last year at the age of 57. I was thinking quilt but I have a feeling it's going to be a bit more mixed media, though all stitched down, now.

I've got a call out for shiny objects as I don't collect those sorts of things, I'm into straight fibers myself, but mom was a bit of a crow - she liked bragging on that fact herself actually. The only one that could out do her in the shiny department was her cat Bandit.

I started to make a piece, it was of a pic I took right before she died, the day after my grandmothers funeral, and have decided against it, she looks horrible in the pic though it was her natural way to dress. Instead I've decided on a pick from the 80's she looks pretty healthy in the pic, and I'd like to think that she would prefer that pic instead as well.

Prairie Dogs

Ok your never going to believe this, I know my neighbor didn't and she works for the DNR seh's now way to go check it out, we now have prairie dogs IN town! Big deal, ya betcha! This is prairie pothole/marshland the town is sitting on, the entire county actually, and while drained prairie dogs are NOT native here. So this is just so so exciting! The dogs are moving east! I've been seeing more jack rabbits as well I think the climate is becoming more westerly here.

Wet Dog

This is the one that was sick yesterday - Angie Lou

No Fair!!!

This seems to be what Angel is saying to me, she sure doesn't like having her picture taken right after a bath. Poor baby she's been very ill all day, so she got a bath because she was starting to smell like she's been on a three day drunk.

If she's still sick tomorrow I'll take her to the vet, yes she will ive hat long. Based on what I'm seeing (do I really need to give details here? I think not) she's got a super bad case of worms, I wormed her this morning we'll see how it goes.

Needless to say I haven't gotten anything done as I've spent the entire day either cleaning up after the dog, or cleaning the dog herself, she's not as neat and tidy as the cats when it comes to getting sick, I've never seen a dog get itself so messy before.

Anyway, back to the grind.

Todays sunset

Well it's not quite sunset here yet, but it's going to be a beauty. It's been absolutely gorgeous here today.

Out on the line

Ok it's hanging out on the line, what I see when looking at the whole piece are figures, or a single figure walking in a strong heat along a path, slowly fading, or dissolving into the horizon.

Table Dimensions

Btw my screen printing table is 9'l x 4'w x 3'h. I'm going to do some serious thinking on this piece over the next hour, it's definately going to be a whole cloth experience, with lots of layers of goodies piled onto the surface, ala my style. I just need to get the logistics of how I'm going to assemble it down first. I really wish I had access to my old design wall it was 12 feet long, now my office lives on that wall space. I guess there's always the clothesline outside.

Holy Cow Batman!!!

That's gonna be one huge piece! I have to go read the rules for a few upcoming compeitions but I"m thinking that two layers is suffecient enough. Both layers are compost dyed, top layer is silk organza, bottom layer is cotton lawn/batik.

Ok my table is 9 foot long and is 3 feet high in most places, and the end of this quilt is haning off of the table somewhere around 30 inches, it's also over 54 inches wide, I'm still not sure how I'm going to handle all of the stitching, maybe some hand stitching will be required.

The lighting sucks in these pics, I need to get my daylight bulbs out and put them into the photo lamps. The piece is mainly purples, mauves and light oranges, you'd never know that by looking at the pictures.

So my mission tonight is to get this bad baby together, along with another super sized quilt, and put everything back onto the table and get ready for tomorrow. Yeah right and who needs sleep right.

SP Table

This is the screen printing table without the vinyl and felt laying on top of it. And a view from the other end of the table.

Studio Mess 2

There's no room in the inn literally! I'm going to have to do some serious cleaning and organizing.

Hey I'm listening to Barrow, AK right now and it's Cold THERE!!!!

Wet Studio Mess

And it was even cleaner a few minutes ago, I need the table to put a large quilt together. I'll try to post pics of it in progress but can't promise.

New Cabinet - Sorta

This was hiding in our attic, well it wasn't hot pink when it was in the attic, it was varnished, now it's pink! It'll get two more coats of primer, cause I have lots of hot pink primer for some odd reason, and then two coats of lady bug red semi-gloss paint. It is going to be hung in the kitchen, I'd rather have it in my studio, and I"m going to put all of those pill bottles we seem to collect in there. I'm not sure why it happens but it would seem that as a person ages the number of pill bottles also increases in number. Why???

Btw hubby doesn't know that I painted this cabinet, he will when he gets home from work and I"m wanting him to hang it on the kitchen wall!

Also a new - sorta kitchen cabinet/counter top. We're removing the enamel table top from the metal table base, it has casters on it, and DH is mounting the table top to a wooden cabinet, two doors behind which lives two shelves, just under the top three smaller utensil drawers for his thermometer collection, and the little graters for spices and cheese. Finally I'll have a place for my cast iron skillets to live, they will no longer be out in the open collecting dust. It'll be painted lady bug red as well, the wood was all curb side salvage! Gotta love a man whose more than to willing to stop by a pile of junk and pull out primo wood.

Problem Solved

Well sorta. With two studios the invariable storage issue always arises, and more often than not, needing a free or very cheap solution to the problem. Mine was accessibility to my color pencils t hey were stored way back and I mean way way back in a cabinet so you can imagine my excitement when I found this old tobacco tin to store my pencils in. In my other studio my other set of color pencils, yes I have two sets, lives in a flower pot - a square flower pot.

Now to just figure out where to put all of the fabric and the very very large sheets of paper, while they are waiting for the next surface treatments.

Awaiting beeswax as well

Awaiting Wax

I decided to paint the cover of my small paperchase journal tonight, I love the canvas covers as they are the perfect medium for altering. This time I chose shiva painstiks as my medium of choice. And of course there is always the inside of the journal that needs a bit of paint as well.

My Scarves

By Request: Here's a pic of one, I'm hoping to get them all ironed and photographed this weekend. Each scarf is named, signed and dated. I'll have to look the name up for this one.

Normally I sell these at trunk shows and when we are on the road vending for the business. And I sell them right off of my body as well, helps to wear a really nice jacket or turtle neck with the scarf though.

Compost Dyed
Silk Crepe de Chine
15 x 45 inches
Price is $200.00

Latest Fascination

Internet accessible radio! Here's a link to an interesting station KBRW AM/FM Barrow, Alaska. Click on the bouncing radio to listen live. Nothing like music from the top of the world huh!

Another station I like to listen to is KTNN AM 660 To listen live click on the Listen Live link on the left hand side of the screen.

I'm starting to collect a lot of radio stations, I'm still trying to figure out how to get them into Media Player, till then they are in my favorites folder.

I've also found a few with some celtic music, bluegrass, and mandoline music, oh and my dads current favorite southern gospel. I rotate them out depending on my mood that day. I also find Canadian radio to be a lot of fun CBC Newfoundland and Labrador My mom is from Newfoundland so it's nice to have the tie there, adn they play some pretty good Newfie jigs from time to time very reminescent of my childhood - mom was a pretty mean harmonica and accordian player.

Oh and I should also add CBC North This is for the far North Eastern part of Cananda.

Highlighted links

If anyone knows the html code so I can created highlighted links, in the body of my blog, please let me know. I didn't realize when I change my blog format that I'd lose the automatic settings, and now I'm not sure what they are.

Well I at least was able to figure out how to make the text bold!

Copper Iris

Beeswax, oil bar, copper leaf on Baltic Birch plywood. 8 x 8 x 2 inches.

If your interested the in more information about the piece I created, I teach an online class called Encaustic Painting for Fabric and Collage

Printing 101

Can you guess which piece, I printed on, is cardstock?

Wounded

Well I'm wounded so am now officially done for today - studio wise, or at least until I stop bleeding. I'll go take notes and write up curriculem instead.

And the wound didn't even occur in my studio! I was picking up one of the fiesta ware bowls, it has a chip in it, and got a huge sliver of ceramic, or whatever the stuff is made of, in my finger. Of course when you want an xacto knife to be razor sharp it isn't so that made removing it even harder. My fingers are very calloused a needle wouldn't have done what I needed for a piece of ceramic this big.

It doesn't help that my printer won't cooperate, I've spent the better part of two hours aligning the heads, cleaning the heads and the nozzles and I'm still getting lines in my print jobs.

More on that later when I can type better.

Dottie

I met Dottie at the local watering hole today - it's literally a watering hole, see my other blog Survival Kitchen for a picture of said watering hole.

Dottie is a mule, she's only a couple of years old and apparently her coloring is highly unusual. I have a fancy for mules for some odd reason, ditto burrows and donkeys. I think it's the ears and the soulful face - and maybe the challenge for stubborness.

Bleah

I finally figured out what made me so sick this morning around 5 am, no I"m not pregnant! It's all of the cigerette wrappers I licked last night.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy???

Well it's for a project I'll post more about it later. I just licked the last 25 of them and BLEAAAAH is all I can say, those things are gnarly. They are drying now, the glue anyway. More later.

Poor Truck

Well this is what it looks like so far, John is having a dickens of a time getting the old exhaust system off of the truck, that'll probably be all he'll accomplish tonight, and hopefully it won't take long to put the new one on tomorrow. All I need to do is find the warrenty for hte old one as it developed a rather large hole in it in less than three years.

At least it'll be ready for my trip to New Jersey, and then Oklahoma. I'm teaching in NJ July/August at Peters Valley, and then in Nebraska I think in both in August September , and Oklahoma in September/October. And I think that'll about wrap up my travel schedule for the year.

We were supposed to go to Nebraska this weekend, should have left last night. But John was unable to get the day off today. It's too bad too as I would have loved to have spent a weekend doing nothing but field research - collecting plants, roots, and fungi for NA dyeing. We were going to stay with a friend in their cabin, nice weekend off to tell the truth. Well I was planning on finishing off those last 6 (more like 20 or so) pages on my thesis while there - no phones, no computers, no pets, no interruptions - you get the picture. The place where we would be staying has buffalo/bison and all sorts of wonderful native prairie plants. Oh well, I can't drive my truck w/o an exhaust system plus it was only getting louder and louder not enjoyable for me at all.

Here's a special pic of hubby crawling around underneath my truck, isn't he such a sweetie! I'm glad he's mechanically inclined, it'd drive me batty if he wasn't actually.

Links

I'm planning to update my blog links this weekend so if you'd like to trade links please leave me a note. I'll really get it done this time, hopefully I won't have a killer headache again.

Big Sale and More

I'm having a 40% Off Storewide Sale this weekend, starts today through Sunday (Central Time USA). I've done this two weekends in a row now and it's great! I'm selling a lot of stuff I want to move, and have plans for new inventory already!!!

Also I'm clearancing some book titles so check out the Summer Clearance Sale page on my webstore as well.

I need to make room for my new products - art cloth and hand-dyed fibers.

The Prairie Fibers Company

Osage Orange Dyed Wood

These were dyed with osage orange, a natural dye material. The wood is baltic birch.

New Piece

This is a recent piece of compost dyed fabric, it's cotton, found it on the end of my table underneath everything. I've decided I need to stitch this piece, I see all sorts of wonderful natural things in it's surface. I might add some other fabrics with if I ever find my pile of compost dyed fabrics. I've found my pile of solid/mottled natural dyed cotton fabrics, but not my compost dyed ones. You know it's a good thing that the Good Lord had the sense to attach my head or I would have lost it decades ago.

Fabric Fabric Everywhere!!!

Ok occasionally one has to take time out of ones regular work schedule to do some cleaning. I have a monstorous pile of fabric on the end of my table, taking up valuable real estate. I also lost a very large pile of compost dyed fabrics, adn these are all large pieces as in 1 yard or larger, in the vicinity of 30 to 40 pieces. Who knows where I sat that down at.

Gelatin Plate

While I paint and work very fast, in fact I have to force myself to slow down so my students can see what I'm doing, my paints are still drying too quickly on my gelatin plate. It is very dry here right now, very dry.

So tomorrow I'll have to get some retarder for my paint. I can't wait. I had to stop tonight because I ran out of surfaces to work on and that's a first for me.

Actually, I had forgotten how addictive printing could be. I'm going to have to dig through my fabric stash and see what I have that can be sacrificed for the cause. I have some commercial batiks that I'm not so fond of anymore that'd make good candidates. I don't think my natural dyes will show up well on them though as these fabrics are already pretty brilliant in color, but the synthetic paints will show up nicely, especially the metallic ones.

So now I'm in the process of photographing and video taping the gelatin plate process for my classes. It's a lot of fun, and that's an understatement! Unfortuantley it's getting late here so I need to think about turning in for the night. I'll try to remember to post pics, but the memory is a bit lacking of late.

Thread Carrier

Well I was offered many many ideas for toting my threads around but this one won out by far, mainly because I already owned the container. It's hinged which is great as I don't have to worry about losing the lid, a typical occurance in my studio!

As you can see I have a bit of things in my box for my projects, what you don't see are the tubs and tubs of other items that I need a carrier for to get from the design studio to the wet studio. This would include all of the silk ribbons, lace, trims, and buttons.

My dream is to someday have both studios on the same floor and somehow connected to one another, with the bathroom in close proximity. Ok maybe this is more fantasy than dream.

Cochineal

I'll tell you more about this later after I get my project done. But I dyed this piece of wool, and that's what I'll tell you about later, with cochineal bugs. Actually my dyebath is about three months old now.

Oh and this is what happens when you leave your cochineal bath unattended, needless to say my studio really stunk after the pot boiled over.

Photo EZ

If you know how to expose this stuff please let me know. I've tried everything to get my images onto the screens and nada, so either this stuff is a bad batch ...

Gelatin Plate Printing

Tomorrow is a day dedicated to Gelatin Plate and other things, my supplies finally showed up today. I ran out of materials to work with, I'm still cringing at the cost of my favorite paper, haven't bought it yet either, but I admit it I'm a Rives BFK paper junkie! Unforutantely I cannot purchase this paper locally anymore so I'm stuck ordering a carton of the paper, you don't even want to know how expensive this is going to be, trust me you could buy a lot of thread!

Here are some pieces of silk dupoini that I made prints onto using my gelatin plate, I used natural dyes, lac extract, on the plate. If I can find it I'll put the before curing and washing pic up so you can see just how much color is lost in the process. I'm still getting used to, after all these years, making my extract solutions about 50% darker than I think I'll actually need. It takes some getting used to because your eyes tell your brain it's way too dark but in the wash out phase, especially on cotton, it typically comes out where it really should be value and color wise.

Of Studios and Women

Well what can I say except Of Mice and Men was taken. Anyway...

I've been busy the last two days, and barring any brain crushing headaches that send me back to the hospital I'm hoping that tomorrow will be a great day as well. The doc still doesn't really know what happened except that it was a combination of things and it's probably a miracle that I'm even here.

So far I've had a CT scan, a MRI, an eye exam (20 20 vision what more could a girl pushing 40 ask for right) and chest x-rays. Talk about your 40 mile work up! Anyway I see another doc on Monday. I'm thinking it's a combination of being bit, twice, stress from the shopping cart refusing to cooperate, and the anesthesia still wearing off, from surgery I had 4 weeks ago. It's just a guess, but my friends and I are starting to think it's the 40 mile melt down, the body gets older I stress it out and it attacks me back - sound fair enough???

Here's a pic for some visual eye candy, in progress as ususal. I'll be sure to post a pic of the piece when it's done.

Some minor changes

I made some minor changes to my art website k. baxter packwood today so if you see something you are interested in there is additional information on my art website.

I'm in sore need of updating everything, I have some 40 scarves, all of which are gorgeous, that need their pictures taken and then they need to be put up on my art website for sale. I just haven't found the time but maybe this weekend, if I sell these scarves then I can make more. Sometimes I wish a little photography elf would show up in my studio and take pics while I'm merrily working away and put them up on the websites for me.

Next I need to get all of my links updated and working, if you'd like to share links please let me know. I'm still trying to figure out how to make logo buttons, well I have some made but I can't seem to get them uploaded to the blog, even though I made a draft of the image already. In some respects I loathe computers, they are so difficult to get things done on.

Bite Marks

I went to the emeregency room yesterday, and after a cat scan I was sent home with some drugs and told to stay out of hte light and away from noise for 24 hours. I was told I had had a "neurological event".

Well I found the cause this morning, don't know if the quacks in this town can handle it or not, but I have a bite mark, looks pretty much like the mark of a brown recluse. If so this is my third time being bit, which can't possibly be good for me.

I was in the rose bushes, trying to get to the water valve so I could water my garden, don't ask I'll take pics and you'll understand why. Anyway I felt something bite my legs, twice actually and I do have two bite marks. I shrugged it of as skeeters and watered the gardens.

I was in the emergency room a half hour later. Anyway...