dyeing with shabd

class this past weekend kicked complete ass. shabd was really cool and a really good teacher. she so obviously has a love for this process and can do it totally second nature. she taught us little tricks to make our lives easier along the way and how to save resources and make fewer messes too which was awesome. the first day of class we learned about the chemical processes and different dying techniques, and the second day we got to make projects using whatever methods we wanted which was awesome.
she had some garments for dyeing that we could buy and we could bring in stuff too. luckily i planned ahead (for once) and nabbed 4 yards of organic cotton voile so i can make a particularly rad maxi dress out of it. so here are my project pics! i'll be decribing the image above the caption.
above and below are pics of the 4 yards of cotton voile. it's scrunch/circle tied single immersion dyed

scrunched double immersion silk swatch, def the coolest looking thing i made

scrunched bottle dyed silk scarf... i'm wearing it right now, it's rad.

accordion folded double immersion cotton swatch
the very necessary bottle dyed swirl cotton swatch
single immersion, folded and clamped cotton swatch, a traditional shibori technique
scrunched bottle dyed cotton swatch

it was so amazing, i can't even describe it. i absolutely love how it's like a team effort between you and the materials to make something beautiful together. opening up each swatch was like a cool little surprise, and since that's how i like to work anyways in my painting and in life in general it really jived well with me. i'm so happy i just went for it and did this it was so inspiring. i want to do it again! i can't wait to buy supplies to dye more rad stuff, i have some pretty cool plans for this knowledge, what an awesome thing to do with a weekend.

class with Shabd Simon-Alexander!

ignoring all of the madness going on around me right now, i'm trying to get in the zone for an amazing adventure i planned months ago... this weekend i'm taking the train up to Brooklyn to take a fiber reactive dyes and shibori techniques course with Shabd Simon-Alexander at the Textile Arts Center! i'm going to learn how to make something beautiful like this picture, it's totally exciting! ever since i discovered Shabd i've loved her work. it has a very space phenomenon feeling but is beautiful and soft, it's a gentler version of what i do in my paintings. she uses color so boldly, i'm a fan.

as you all know i'm sure i LOVE fiber and textiles, specifically natural fibers. i've always wanted to learn how to make my own textiles beautiful because color is kind of my biggest thing in life. when people find out i'm an artist and ask my medium i should really stop saying painting and just say 'color' because it's more true. so when i got an email from Shabd's website saying she'd be teaching dying techniques on protein and cellulose fibers i had a little fit and started trying to figure if i could go. could i even get to nyc that weekend and if i could could i even afford it? i decided even though i knew we might be moving this week (and i was right) and it would be super inconvenient that missing this chance would be absolutely lame and wasn't an option. also, my parents always give me christmas $ specifically for art/craft classes so i dug it up and made it happen, thanks guys!

i am absolutely beyond excited for this class. i'm going to learn from an amazing artist, i feel so lucky! this is going to be a cool one guys, i can't wait to post what awesome disasters i create this weekend.

pic

dirty doz: uzo's new wurstwärmer!

yes. i started a dog sweater the day before 100℉ weather is going to hit, that's just how i roll apparently.

so when i was frantically packing up two weeks worth of dresses and boots and other very important things like db and my fave bottle opener we got from santa last year, i managed to stuff the makings for a new project into my fabulous miso crafty knits project bag. it was pretty exciting, it's the first time i've gotten to use my project bag for actual traveling with knitting and so far it's awesome. i love that all my stuff is safe and looks cute at the same time (sorry hefty, no more plastic bags for this girl). i knew i'd likely be stranded in south jersey in a super lame extended stay hotel and man was i was right! the second i found out this place didn't have a pool i knew i was screwed. i also knew we weren't bringing uzo for these two weeks while we apartment hunt (very, very sad), so since i can't cuddle with him at least i can make him a present. something that's obviously very neccesary... a second wurstwärmer!

seriously, i love yarn for keeping me endlessly entertained. along with the fancy new hardcover copy of lord of the rings db bought for me yesterday i'll never be bored again! now when i'm being ignored by everyone i email about apartments i can make uzo a sweater he really doesn't need and pretend to live in the shire. pretty rad.

father's day!

my dad = pretty rad. this year for father's day he wanted to go strawberry picking which is only the most fun thing ever. i was hoping we'd pick 50 lbs (ha!) but 7.78 lbs was still pretty good, plus who knows how much weight the 4 of us gained eating strawberries out there. pick one, eat one... that seemed to be the system. the rest of the day was completely fun too, yay dads!

on a totally unrelated note, db and i survived the long and boring drive down the jersey last night and in choosing the extended stay hotel we chose, we continued our streak of having highways on two or more sides of where we sleep. i am also stranded! it sucks. at least there's internet and my parents gave us a care package with sumol :) plus an endless supply of pop tarts, wasabi peas and fresh picked strawberries. i have a feeling living not in ri i'm going to totally dork out about how awesome it is there to everyone i meet. "there's water! and del's! and coffee milk! we don't pronounce words the boring correct way like you AND we have masses of this very exotic race called 'Portuguese' and they have tasty food and hilarious accents!"

now to wait for db to get back here so we can go buy some hot pockets, because we know how to live.

peonies

peonies are the best.

db got me these for our ♡. someday i'll have a huge bush of them in my garden, i'll make sure we can see them from our favorite sitting spot. we'll sit in our adirondack chairs just being and listening and smelling good smells. sounds pretty nice doesn't it? i absolutely love this time of year, i'm going to miss being able to steal away to my parents' amazing backyard to just soak it all in. i think one of the first things i'm going to do with my free time in philly is see if i can nab a little bit of dirt in a community garden. we'll plant tomatoes, strawberries (for next year), greens and a little light pink peony plant.

yay nh! boo moving!

so, completely ignoring the fact that db and i have an absolutely massive amount of stuff to do before we move 300 miles away THIS WEEKEND, we went to nh for three days to celebrate our wedding being an entire year behind us. we drank tons of champagne, listened to the bird concert, chased uzo around (because he refused to just relax) and sat in the sun.

it was awesome.

i just want to live somewhere like this, you know, trees, birds, a porch, a garden... SPACE. but instead we're moving even deeper into a city than we live now. why this seems like a good idea i'm not sure, but it's definitely more appealing than moving to the jersey burbs. now to pack, why didn't anyone tell us june is the busiest moving month of the year? this is such a gigantic disaster! burning the apartment down seems like the easiest option. the amount of heavy sighing between db and i right now is fairly absurd...

last day of school

so this is it. this is the last day of school.

i didn't think i'd get misty about it but i totally did. these kids taught me so much this year and i don't think i ever went more than 5 minutes without laughing when i was with them (and yes, sometimes it was poop related). they made messes by accident, made messes on purpose, asked me the same exact questions every single day all year, got glitter everywhere all the time and never ever went any slower than full throttle.

things i learned about kids
- put glitter on it and it's as good as gold. literally, anything.
- even if they have the attention span of a ping pong ball, they're listening and they'll remember
- everything is fact to them, "my dad is allergic to noise" is a personal fave
- sometimes peeing yourself seems like a better option than taking a 5 second break from playing to use the bathroom
- no one has to teach them to not like goodbyes, they already know that one

it was a totally amazing year and i'm really sad to leave them all on our adventure to philly, but at least i got to become friends with them this year. it never occurred to me that i could have had a teacher who missed me until yesterday when i was already starting to miss having all my little friends around to laugh and make messes with. i hope i get to see a few of them again and find out who they become, that would be so amazingly cool. there wasn't a bad one in the bunch, i feel totally lucky. i wish there was some way i could thank them all, i hope me trying my hardest to be a good teacher for them is enough. i know preschool is a funny age for remembering things, so i don't expect them all to remember me, but if they go into big kid school thinking learning and art are fun and knowing that there are teachers out there that genuinely care then that's more than good enough for me.

crazy, crazy life

so i haven't been able to post much lately for a few reasons which can be rolled up into one reason: my life has been fucking insane for that past few weeks.

i have been working SO MUCH
db and i went to Radiohead WHICH WAS AMAZING but also made me borderline incoherent for a few days because i never got to sleep to recover from dancing like a lunatic for hours
i have spent all of my time online searching for places to live because we're moving

where are we moving? no, not to a new apt in Providence or anything simple like that...

to PHILADELPHIA!

so here's the big scoop, db got a job at a rad company doing something he's really excited about and we're moving away from our lovely ri in which we've lived our entire lives (yes even college). it's crazy. we have one friend there and he's moving to maine in september which is a bummer. we have to learn about the city enough to pick a neighborhood and find a place and move into it in two weeks, just a mere three weeks from when db got the job. we're actually going there for the weekend this weekend to re-scope things out since last time we only went to places that we didn't realize we could absolutely not afford. it should be fun, it just so happens to be Philly Beer Week and that will be some consolation for missing the American Craft Beerfest in Boston this weekend which is a bummer. we've had plans with friends to go to that for months :/

on the bright side, our horror (or my horror) has subsided and now i'm just excited. we get to find new bars! restaurants! the art scene is cool from what i've heard and it's warmer than here! just warm enough for winter to suck less and summer to suck less because every place i've found for rent has central air. score.

if i never post again it's because our plane crashed. wish us luck!