Musing Crow Designs

Over at Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesdays the theme this week was 'Light". This image is one of my personal favorites and I remember how I felt when I saw this on the way to work. The pixels are lacking but I am SO glad that I took the time to stop and snap the photo. Can there really be any question about the divine hand of nature?!

What have I been doing since that amazing natural dyeing class? Playing of course! It's been difficult to top the joy that Michelle Wipplinger and the class brought my way but the days keep spinning onward at an utterly unreasonably fast pace! I have a large set of ATC's due in a week or so and some class notes to get ready for our next local ATC  gathering/class. The work of these incredibly talented members of our little local ATC group will be highlighted in a post soon. I'm finding 'teaching' (this group seems to teach itself though!) is so much fun! Discovering how naturally gifted these new ATC devotees are is a gift! So - what I've been up to is planning an art quilt in honor of one of my favorite early women's rights advocates and the first acknowledged French female, Court blessed, writer,  Christine dePizan (1363 – c. 1430). I've found that trying out some of my ideas on paper helps me to decide if an idea has potential or n

Tending to our drying skeins of wool. silk & cotton. Each skein had to be labeled wit the formula that was used. This was time consuming but very necessary. Lush rusts, reds, deep purples & browns One of my favorites that I will making a batch of soon - weld with a bit of Osage orange to mellow the vibrant weld yellow Writing and checking the labels Yes! We were a group of very happy dyers! Gently separating the silks skeins from the wool and cotton. I love this blue grey seen with a deep rust color of Quebachero Red and my favorite weld/osage The deep, mysterious, bubbly depths of the indigo vat Red wools (front) and cotton (rear) Carol Strum created a knock-out scarf. Her first time to try some shibori techniques using some small rocks she found. Yum!   The weather was utter perfection during the entire workshop. Screaming blue skies and lilic bushes in full, fragrant bloom. The "bunk-house" that we stayed

Right: Mary Lynn (ML) Whitley, our very patient, very organized & very wonderful class facilitator and Left :  Michele Wipplinger, owner of Earthues,  our instructor) I've just returned from the the most magical three day workshop with Michele Wipplinger of EarthHues ( NOT to be confused with a company that has a somewhat similar name, 'botanical colors').  Fifteen of us began this glorious color journey last Thursday. This workshop taught me SO much in these few days! The occasional agony of having 15 people make decisions and then the ecstasy, joy, and amazement when we saw the utterly amazing array of colors that resulted from our collective labors. We dyed an assortment of wool, cotton and silk yarns. They arrived pre-mordanted (which was a really good thing) and ready to dye. The room was set up with a myriad of large, stainless steel dye kettles, propane burners (what a marvelous invention!), plastic covered work areas and tables and a mind boggling a

I really anticipate Kat Sloma's monthly Photo-Heart Connection themes. Her choice of themes for April is "lighten up". A good reminder for us all ! I think I chose to use the theme more literally this year. When I saw how the lightness of the stone contrasted with the lush, deep, color of the flowers I knew that this would be the image I would use. Welcome Spring - indeed !