Museum In A Box

A Gift for a Friend

Dyed Fabric

Here are the silk pieces from the cold-bundling dye project. The green printed silk (from a thrift store shirt) is patterned with Black Rice. The red piece, is dried Hibiscus flowers on yellow dyed silk. It was hard to wait a week to untie them! I really thought I would wait longer as suggested by India Flint, but I couldn't stand it and opened them with the idea that it was all an experiment anyway. Right away, I tied up a new bundle of beige silk (another thrift store shirt) with spoonfuls of rice rubberbanded into pods. It wasn't in the jar five minutes when the pods turned purple. I will wait at least a week though to see what happens. I also tied up some fallen Oak Leaves.
Stay tuned!

Cell Blocks

At long last. I think I am done with Cell Blocks (7 x 17), but I am not really sure. I had some problems with the machine thread . The machine kept making long floats on the surface and then these would get caught in the presser foot and make a big mess. I cleaned everything out, changed the needle and so on, but kept having the problem. I got tired of fighting it, so I am through for now. I will just look at it for awhile and see if I want to make changes.

Silk In A Jar

I have been playing around with some of India Flint's natural dyeing techniques. This photo shows a yard of silk spread with hibiscus flowers, sprayed with vinegar, rolled and tied. I also did a piece of patterned silk with black rice. I am anxious to see the results, but they have to stay in the jars for a week or longer.

I have also been experimenting with other plants here on my property. Victoria Blue Sage makes a lovely blue, Rosemary, a nice khaki green and Esperanza, a light yellow. I have just tried these in small samples. I have a jar of the Blue Sage flowers in the freezer so I can try the "Ice Flowers" technique. Then there are the teas. I dyed some scraps with my last Passion Flower tea bag.

Too much fun.

Birthday Cake

I made a Tennessee Jam cake for my Brother's birthday today. I bought the ingredients this morning, the spice cake mix, the buttermilk, the blackberry jam. When I took the cake out of the oven, I left it on the counter to cool before making the caramel icing and putting the layers together with the Blackberry Jam. Even though the cookbook was open on the counter to the page with the Caramel icing, while I was out of the room, my Mom decided to ice the cake with chocolate frosting. We didn't have enough powdered sugar for that type of frosting, so it is thin and running off the cake. So much for the Caramel frosting and the chopped peanuts I planned to sprinkle on top. That will teach me to leave the kitchen with a cake in work! I've never had spice cake with chocolate icing. Have you?

My Shadow

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me......................R.L. Stevenson

I made the mistake of taking my Mom with me to the bookstore this morning. This is always frustrating. She follows me about so closely that I am afraid she will step on my heels. When I stop to look at a book, she stops too. When I pick a book to look at and then return it to the shelf, she picks it up. If I bend down to look at books on the bottom shelf, she bends down too. She stands so close to me I can't move without bumping into her. If she is crowding me on my left side and I move to her left, she will then turn toward me and crowd me on the right. She is not really looking at books although she pretends to be interested. Indeed, she has no time to look at books because she is too busy shadowing me. After 15 to 20 minutes, I can't take it anymore. I want to go smoke or drink Bloody Mary's or something. But I don't smoke anymore and it is really too early for a Bloody Mary (can it be?), so I just hurry us home and escape to my room to decompress. Maybe I will try the book store later--by myself.