Shibori dye day

I folded, stitched, clamped and knotted fabric in the centuries old Japanese tie dye technique called Shibori, working from two books I bought in Tokyo. Here's a sampling of round one, cotton dyed earlier this week with Procion MX fiber reactive dye in "Indigo" (not true indigo, but a synthetic dye in an indigo color).

Here's a few pictures of the mess before it went in the dye bath. These were really time consuming; not sure if I want to do them again.

But there were a couple techniques (not pictured) that yielded fabulous results with very little work; I'd do those again. And the multiple circles? Definitely worth the labor. I have a small collection of folded and clamped ones ready to go into dye later this weekend, in another colorway.

 

Yesterday I picked up my Leclerc Cendrel, which is a combination inkle loom and warping board. I got it for free some someone in the guild, but someone had thrown away all the pegs. I couldn't get my regular loom wrench to whip up some new pegs for me (hey, he refurbed a loom, so I'm not complaining), but Hannalore at Custom Handweavers has a guy who does stuff like this. He did a great job, and he cleans reeds, so I may take him the rust encrusted reed that came with my loom.  So now I have no excuses that include "but I don't have a warping board".

On the food front, we're continuing the cookbook challenge we started a couple of years ago. DH picks a cookbook each month, and I cook something from it. January was the Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook; I made the pinto beans, which were the best pinto beans I have every cooked, then a spice rubbed chicken with a raspberry chili sauce. Tasty food. Tomorrow is a Valentine's Day meal from Commander's Kitchen; I'll post details after. I'll leave off here with a V-Day picture from the macaron class I took today with J at Sur Le Table; this is before they went in the oven, later to be filled with either chocolate ganache and brandied cherries, or maple-bacon-salted-caramel.