My midterm needs to be ironed...

How many people can say "my midterm is drying"? Well, then it had to be ironed. Here's a photo of a part of it. It uses Shibori,  block printing, batik, and some dye crayon drawing. I LEARNED A LOT, including that a scale drawing with color would have pointed out that the brown rock wall makes the piece unbalanced... I'm still pleased with it, and turning it in on Friday.

We also did monoprinting; I failed to pre-mordant my fabric. Here's a photo of one before I accidentally washed the dye out.

I finished the scarf in the weaving class (I love it) and the silk one on the home loom (love it too).

What's next? Spring break, some napkins on the home loom, a double weave sampler on the school loom, and maybe some dishtowels for she who likes wolves.

March food challenge was Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking.  I made the Lamb Biriyani (it's called something different in my edition) and yogurt with eggplant. The taste of the lamb was good but the texture was off; I think it would have been better with basmati and I used jasmine rice. The yogurt was excellent. We had a Doennhof Tonschiefer Riesling with it, which was a good pairing for the spices. The next day I made the cauliflower with tomato and onion to go with it; it was very good.

What color is Pompeii anyways?

I am finally weaving on the supplemental warp "eyelash" scarf on the school loom; I got a lot done this week and I am in fact nearly 1/3 of the way complete. After previewing 3 yarns, I picked a 8/2 tencel for the weft in a color called "Pompeii". It's a dark rust color, maybe a little more towards brick than towards dried blood, but frankly my mind went on overload trying to figure out how they named the color. Anyways, here it is, at the beginning of the piece. I slid my scissors under the part that will get cut as eyelash. I'm changing the treadling every inch; I'm going to change to every 3 inches for about 2 feet, then go back to every inch to match the first end. Note that the hand painted warp will be showcased when the floats are cut; those sections will also be a little more transparent, since they won't have the wool woven in. I'm very excited about this.

I'm finished warping and started weaving on the home loom until I was interrupted.

Last Friday we "stamped" in my Textile Design class. I was taken by surprise when the teacher asked us to carve a block. How surprised can one be, with carving tools and a rubber block in one's school bag? Anyways, I'm lousy at designing on the fly but came up with a repeating design that I found pleasing. This class is nearly all technique, which is fine; we're learning about a technique a week and that's about all we have time for. I need some design lessons. How do you know when you're done? How do you know when to stop adding detail? When does more become less? Art is hard.  I have some fairly pleasing fabric, I'll post pics once I set the inks (we were using textile ink). Midterm is due on March 18; I need to design a yard of fabric.