I Feel Like A Squirrel!

We’ve been granted some more gorgeous fall weather that leans on the sunny side!  As long as the sun is out my outdoor studio is still warm inside. My last few days have been mostly involved in preparing more fabric for dye and printing, mostly reprinting so that I don’t have to worry about getting it ready on lousy weather days when it won’t dry for days.  That means I made another batch of soy milk and each piece of cotton is getting at least 2 or 3 soaks of soy in addition to 2 soaks in alum. Each stage needs to dry, get rinsed and dry again – a pretty tedious prep routine but worth it in the end.  Hey! Hey! for the sun and breeze! And my long clothesline!

As I do my fall foraging, I’m seeing more red and orange everywhere – it’s so beautiful here during the autumn foliage months.  I’m also seeing lots of new growth on a lot of the trees and shrubs I’ve been picking branches from, so I got quite a few small oak leaves and sumac, which tend to be quite large and unwieldy at this time of year.

I’ve also been making up some new batches of tannin and dyes to store in my tiny fridge for the next month or so but I seem to be using it up almost as fast as I can make it. I feel just like a squirrel!  Check out this brilliant yellow below!

I love that goldenrod!  But it gets really hard to snatch away from the bees that are getting their last fill of pollen!  So, to make up for my small amount of goldenrod, I added tumeric and wow did that pop! I love the combination of yellow and black so this silk  received a light blanket of ferrous sulfate and magic happened!

This is one of those fabrics that I have no idea what it is but it dies a little like silk and a little like linen, so it’s some kind of blend. And I used a more conservative yellow, the last of the previous batch of birch and goldenrod. Look at that giant oak!  They are so big now they dominate whatever they go on.

Linking up again with Off The Wall Friday! See you over there!