Friday, January 30, 2009

Dyeing wool with fustic

I started a post earlier, which turn into a saga about college and art and all this stuff, so for the time being, here's a post about dyeing merino wool with fustic!

I've been doing sporadic natural dyeing experiments - I started with random plants and moved on to a kit I had that included brazilwood, logwood, and fustic. The logwood dye came from logwood bark and created a bluish purple dye. The brazilwood actually came as an extract from brazilwood bark and made a red violet dye. Natural dyeing is a whole blog unto itself - water PH, types of pots, mordants, it's a complicated business. Fascinating to me, but more chemistry and science than I can really process. I was generally happy with my brazilwood and logwood results though, so I figured I'd try out the fustic, which is supposed to make a yellow dye.

If you're extracting dye from bark, you need to soak the bark and then boil it (The logwood came in similar form to the fustic, the brazilwood came as a powdered extract).
From 1/28/09


Keep an eye on the cat while you're at it!
From 1/28/09


From 1/28/09


From 1/28/09


From 1/28/09


I love it! I'm really into yellow lately, and this fustic makes a really beautiful golden yellow. After the initial dyeing, I added iron as an after-mordant, which is supposed to make a mossy green with fustic, and make the color more light- and wash- fast. I'm pretty happy with the results.

From 1/28/09


From 1/28/09


From 1/28/09

(Front: fustic with alum mordant and iron after-mordant, back: fustic with alum mordant)

Thursday, January 29, 2009

New Year's Eve

I know it's a little overdue, but I just realized I never posted any photos from New Year's Eve! Ben and I went to Brooklyn to hang out with some friends from Star Island. It was quite a trek for me - the drive to the train station took about two hours because of a snowstorm, and the train to Penn Station was about an hour and a half late. It was worth it though - we don't get to see Star Island friends very often since we all live so far away.

We spent most of the night inside because it was so ridiculously cold. Right before midnight we went up on the roof to watch the fireworks, but no one could handle the cold for very long. After about ten minutes (maybe less) I couldn't feel my hands!

From New Year's Eve

Annie and Jay checking the clock - almost time!

From New Year's Eve

Tom, Annie, and John (all members of my crew this summer)

From New Year's Eve

Tom on the phone

From New Year's Eve

Annie and Jay

From New Year's Eve

Jay climbing down the sketchy ladder

I didn't take many pictures New Year's Day, but we went to Tom's Restaurant, this great and very popular diner in Prospect Heights. We had to wait in line (or is it "on line?" Is on line a NY thing? Or is in line a northeast/New England thing?) outside, but waiters kept coming out with coffee and cookies and delicious cinnamon toast and other treats. The food was absolutely delicious and the atmosphere was so quintessentially New York diner. I would have taken pictures but I was too engrossed in my eggs benedict, plus there wasn't really enough elbow room for photography.

Keep an eye out, later today I'm going to post about my natural dyeing adventures!

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Busy, busy, busy!

Sorry for the prolonged absence...I've been working on a bunch of different things and of course still looking for a job. I decided I needed to keep myself busy, and that I missed making things, so I started making some nuno felt scarves and blank books, both of which I'm now selling on Etsy and Artfire. I'd love it if you'd check out my shops and send the links around! I'll be updating pretty consistently and as soon as I can get some more materials I'll probably be making some different items too. I like making wearable things but I'd like to make some more "artsy" pieces as well.

I never realized just how much effort it takes to get an online storefront set up! It seems simple at first but then you have to take photos of products and edit them and come up with names and product descriptions. It's been a big learning experience so far and hopefully it will continue to be. My biggest goal is to share my work with people and make a living with it, so I hope this is a good start.

Otherwise not much going on here...I'm trying to take more photos but it's hard when the days are still so short. Yesterday the cat tried to help me with photos for the shops, so I got a few good images of him.

From Junior


From Junior


From Junior

Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Cold Goodnight, color-corrected

I think these look much better, there was way too much red in them before.

From The Cold Goodnight@The Brickhouse, 1/9/09


From The Cold Goodnight@The Brickhouse, 1/9/09


From The Cold Goodnight@The Brickhouse, 1/9/09


Of course, it's hard to make these look really good, since they're so noisy. I've done everything I know how to do to make them better, 3200ISO on this camera just doesn't look that great. Better than the 10D though!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Trying to get better at blogging...

I know it's been a long time, sorry! The holidays were busy, as I'm sure they were for everybody. I started out in my hometown of Nashua, NH, went to Brooklyn, NY for New Years, went to New Jersey for a few days and now I'm back in Dover, NH. At the moment I'm trying to find a job and also trying to get back to working on my art, both photography and textile/fiber stuff. Also trying to eat better, move more, drink more water - all the usual New Years resolution type things, though I didn't make any official resolutions this year. Mostly, I'm just trying to take better care of myself.

Anyway, I have a lot of photos from the past couple of weeks - I attended two shows recently: A performance by The Gate at Fody's, in Nashua, and a Cold Goodnight show at the Brickhouse in Dover. The Gate is a really tight cover band that plays music from a wide variety of genres and eras. The band consists of my friends and former bandmates Greg Reinauer and Ben Geyer on bass and piano/keyboard, and Whit Love on guitar/vocals, Eric Levine on drums, and Julie Albert on lead vocals. Greg is also a member of the band Melodeego and Ben has a band called The Ben Geyer Sextet, based in NYC.

From The Gate at Fody's, 12/27/08


From The Gate at Fody's, 12/27/08


From The Gate at Fody's, 12/27/08



The Cold Goodnight is Damian Boyar (one of my roommates from college) on bass, Meri Cartmill on vocals, Matt Cartmill on drums, and Sean Joncas on guitar. The Cold Goodnight lists their influences as The Pixies, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Social Distortion, At the Drive In, Save Ferris, Veruca Salt, Bad Religion; beyond that I'm not sure how to describe them, but they're good.

From The Cold Goodnight@The Brickhouse, 1/9/09


From The Cold Goodnight@The Brickhouse, 1/9/09


From The Cold Goodnight@The Brickhouse, 1/9/09


I'm undecided about color correction on these. There were so many changing colored lights that I don't think there's really a way to make these "accurate." Should I just try for neutral skin tones? Or just leave them as-is?