#INKtober Earrings & Knitting

Here's another page of #INKtober sketches from the 17th through the 23rd, this time of earrings belonging to my mom, with one exception. You'll have to read the story behind my delicate gold and diamond earrings. These are pretty much drawn actual size, and in checking for maker's marks, I did find one. Since following Antique Road Show and seeing so many instances of people thinking they had relatively worthless costume jewelry only to find it might have been made by Tiffany or some other big name, or at the very least, contain real gemstones upping their value, I've often checked my mother's jewelry just in case, but to no avail - no riches hiding in those jewelry boxes. As for the maker's mark I did find, it is for a costume jewelry company called Pakula which was started in the 1950's. I found out a little about the company's history including this description:

Without exception, all Pakula decorations demonstrated their impeccable quality and expressive design. Traditionally, the Pakula craftsmen used metal alloys of gold and silver tones, faux pearls and high quality rhinestones. Also, they used fashionable material at the time – colored enamel, which, in combination with the gold surface formed an unusually beautiful duet. 

Though high quality, vintage pieces I found on the internet are only selling for $25 to $50. Makes me wonder how much they cost when new. A few examples have similar design elements as mine.

Sleeves being lightly blocked

After doing much dragging of feet plus company interruptions, I hunkered down over the weekend and got the second sleeve of the eyelet cardigan sweater finished. I am so glad to have the knitting done as it has been hard on my hands - the combination of worsted wool yarn and pattern requiring knitting two stitches together over and over was more work than the pattern used in the lavender sweater. Will have to remember that when I choose a pattern for the denim blue worsted wool still waiting. 

So now that the knitting is done, I'm giving it a "light blocking" before joining the sleeves to the body and joining the sides, along with a small join at the back of the neckline, per instructions. Not a favorite job, but not particularly onerous. All looks a little questionable at this stage, but after joinings are done, it will get one more good block, probably with a soaking of that Olive Knits product per her instructions. One thing is puzzling me. You might remember that I ran short on yarn when knitting the lavender sweater which put me in a panic. Somehow calculations on how many skeins I'd need was off. I think I added an extra skein to my calculations for this sweater, and I have 3 untouched skeins left. I give up!

The two binders are full of loose photos with info on the back

I meant to share this picture in my last post when I mentioned my company poring over old pictures and photo albums. These are most of what I am the keeper of that we spent time looking at. I've digitized some, would like to digitize it all but that project has turned out to be much more time consuming than I anticipated. I have so many other interests that it is hard to find time for the scanning  and adding descriptions to the scans. A lot like the slides I'm part way through. I wanted to do the digitizing partly for my nieces and nephews but that nephew who visited wasn't waiting; I caught him snapping away with his phone whenever he saw a photo that interested him. Good for him!

Company, Decorations, #INKtober Pins

Me and my motley crew

I survived the few days of family visit pretty well and had a better time than I'd anticipated. Maybe it was because I spent so much time gabbing with my brother's step-daughter while "the boys" immersed themselves in watching Dodgers baseball games. :-) We also spent an afternoon looking through the old family photos and albums that I am the keeper of. I took them all out to dinner on my brother's birthday, to my little town's famed steakhouse, The Hydra. It has been in business at the same location since 1975 and it did not disappoint. I was pleased that my brother thought their Filet Mignon was the best he'd ever had and that since it was his birthday, he got a huge slice of Mud Pie which we all got a taste of. In the above picture I'm sitting in between my step-niece and her husband, while we are bookended by my brother on the left and his son, on the right.

After they all left, I caught my next door neighbor girl and her mother out surveying the Halloween decorations they had put up. We sort of share that tree and I am always happy to see them putting up holiday decorations, something I just don't do. This year they put goblets in the hands of the skeletons. There's even a skeleton of a cat!

I skipped a few days of #INKtober sketching while company was here but quickly got caught up. This page is all about pins - a huge angel one and a variety of circle pins that were popular in the 1960's. Including a lot of storytelling and speculations.

Page Two of #INKtober Sketches

This so describes me and is pertinent right now as I do some panic cleaning in preparation for company, panic because I thought I had another week before they came so plenty of time to pace myself with the cleaning. Instead, on Thursday I stared at the calendar in disbelief. No this can't be. They are due on the 13th; how did I miss, as I wrote the date on each #INKtober sketch, that the 13th was just a few days away? Well, procrastination thwarted and I'm nearly ready!

I missed a few days of sketching because of this but I was able to catch up yesterday. Couldn't do these pieces of jewelry without adding some color with colored pencil Also couldn't resist including the heart-shaped box that the ring rests in. As always, click on the picture for a larger view.

That ring is one mom received for Christmas in 1951 - before I was born. I love it when I can find pictures from long ago of objects I still have. This is a scan of a slide, thus the poor quality, but you can clearly see the ring on her finger along with a compact and lipstick holder that were also Christmas gifts that year. I do remember those but no idea what happened to them. I suspect the fancy pajamas she's wearing were also Christmas gifts. It was sort of a thing every year to get mom new pajamas, and then me too when I got older. And after gift opening pics like this were also a thing with our family. How about yours? 

Well, off to complete my preparations for company . . . 

It's #INKtober!

I can't remember exactly why but I skipped INKtober last year. This year has been doing a good job of slipping away from me so I wasn't thinking about it even as October quickly approached. Then my goddaughter made a comment that she was looking forward to my INKtober sketches. Oh dear . . . and that was mid September in the midst of my big dyeing project. Would I be up for a daily sketch come October. Yeah, she sorta shamed me into it, at least thinking about it - lol. I've always done better keeping up all month if I have a theme and as soon as I settled on one, I got excited about INKtober again. Remember my year of shoes? Well, this is going to be my year of jewelry!

Here are the first six days. I'm starting with favorite pieces that belonged to my grandmother and going from there into pieces my mother wore and some of my own favorites. Click on the pic for a larger view. Hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane. 

Wrapping Up The Dyeing

Gads, could it really be the first of October? Seeing this tree when I pulled into the library parking lot last week left no doubt about how far into the year we are. However, I found some solace in this quotation from an essay by Joy Williams on the truth-telling of fall: 

 

 

“Fall is. It always comes round, with its lovely patience. If in the beginning it’s restless, at the end it’s resigned, complete in its waiting, complete in the utter correctness of what it has to tell us. Which is that we’re transitory. We’re transient, we’re temporary, we’re all only sometime.”

 

Another nudge toward acceptance might be the colors of the final dye runs for my friends. The reds, oranges and golds are definitely of the season. I'm very pleased with how these turned out, although the golds could have been a little deeper towards an orange. I think it's an old dye to blame.

I'd been holding back some earlier runs that had been rinsed but not put through a Synthropal wash because I knew I'd have more fabric in similar colors that could be washed with them. Here are the greens, sort of lime greens in the middle (struggling with camera to get every color right) but nothing that was very teal green even though I tried some overdyeing. On the bottom is the "teal green" that in no way is green. At the very top is a half yard dyed with some leftover purple and fuchsia dyes I think (I sort of lost track of the combinations I tried using up leftover dye solutions). That fuchsia makes it almost neon!

In the same way that my friend kept repeating "lime green" she also repeated "folded fabric". So I did two fat quarters folded different ways and put them in the "teal green" dye solution. The lighter portions do look like they are trying to lean towards a teal.

With the "precision" dyeing finished, I had fun playing with leftover dye solutions and came away with some stunners I may have a hard time giving up. This is the technique of stuffing a fat quarter into a tall narrow jar like an olive jar, covering with soda ash solution, pouring a little dye solution in and letting that set for about ten minutes while the solution starts settling to the bottom. Then pour a little more soda ash solution and another dye solution color on top and let sit overnight or up to 24 hours. 

Trying to get a closeup of the subtle texturing in the white part. 

Here's another one, the sort of thing we literally dye for.

And still with plenty of dye solution to play with, I dyed up three linen napkins that go with a linen tablecloth used at my grandparents' golden wedding anniversary reception. I've seen the pictures of its otherwise uninteresting yellow as it peeks through the lace tablecloth thrown over it. Not something I ever thought I would use but it came with a cedar chest full of other family treasures after they died and I've hung onto it out of pure sentimentality for over 50 years. But with the newfound skill of dyeing, I've often thought about cutting it up and overdyeing it, and now I know it can be done with excellent results. The upper two were done in bags, the lower one pinched in the middle to create folds falling down before putting in a glass jar.

I still have some dye solution left, and being raised in a "waste not want not" household, I feel I should do a few more one of a kind pieces rather than toss it. On the other hand, my dye powder supply overfloweth, and I have company coming in about two weeks which will require that flurry of housework in preparation. Maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead . . .

If In Need Of Encouragment

Blue Heron by Ellen Anne Eddy

I just read a wonderful post by quilt artist Ellen Anne Eddy and thought some of you might enjoy it too. Not to mention that it features many of her beautiful and quite different quilts. She certainly has a style all her own. Words of wisdom about tackling tasks (where are my big girl panties?) You can read it here.

I can relate a bit. That dye session for my friend looming before me was intimidating. As Ellen says of her own intimidating task, "So it sat in the corner. And I became afraid of it. I made a myth of it." I too had to reach a point where I had to find my big girl panties. And I'm having to do it again because I am not done and have ventured now into experimenting with greens and oranges, some with recipes, some without, some with dye powders that may have lost their potency. I am more comfortable when I can depend on the results. Case in point: my friend asked for teal which I assumed she meant teal green (some refer to a teal blue but not me) and I have a perfect recipe for that. Yet look at the fabric soaking in the bin pictured above. Does anything about that look green to you? I honestly don't know what happened.

She also keeps emphasizing she want some lime green. No problem. Again I have a recipe for what we named Key Lime and I mixed two leftover dyes that gave me exactly that. Then I started doubting myself. What if my idea of lime green isn't hers? When I googled lime green, these popped up, just as I suspected, more than one idea of what it is. At least my dye trial is in the ballpark.

I went back to the recipe to try again, doing two different amounts of dye solution with a fat quarter in each bag, and waiting a bit before adding another fat quarter in each bag (the dye solution activates once it hits the soda ash solution and gradually weakens over the first 30 minutes or so meaning fabric added later will come out lighter or perhaps really different). Pretty happy with the way this looks so far - gotta be her idea of lime green in there somewhere! However, I may overdye one of the darker fat quarters with a little blue to see if I can get something like teal green. May also take one of the fat quarters that was supposed to be teal green and overdye it with some yellow. Nothing to lose. 

Ellen again: "There’s no can’t like won’t, Sometimes we build myths about our work. “It’s so good.” “It’s no good.” “It will never lie flat” Almost all of that is irrelevant. I won’t know if it’s good for some while after I finish it. I need to stop the negativity and just step into the task". In between these dye sessions, I've had lunch with said friend, handing over with some trepidation the fabric done so far, and she loved it, said it was just what she was looking for. Whew! Exactly the encouragement I need to continue with this task. I am enjoying getting back into dyeing and trying a few experiments. Still fighting those intimidation demons (it's one thing to disappoint yourself, something entirely different to disappoint someone else) but spurred on by Ellen's words and the pleased expression on my friend's face..

Dyeing For A Friend

When a friend moved out of the area back in March, she wanted to give me all her dyeing supplies, including almost a full bolt of PFD fabric. I wanted to pay her for at least some of it, particularly all that fabric, but she'd have none of it. Instead, she asked that I dye some of it up for her, as the reason she was giving all that away was because her new home had no place for dyeing. Well, YES, I can do that, gladly! However, it wasn't until last week that I suddenly felt energized enough physically and excited enough mentally to finally tackle this task. It's been quite a while since I've dyed up some fabric so I knew I'd need to review the whole process, my notebook of recipes, and check my setup out in the garage. I initially felt a bit overwhelmed as when I asked what colors she might want, it was pretty much everything but blues. I also found the dye run worksheet from the last time I dyed and where I'd left off, i.e. what colors I had meant to dye up to flesh out my stash all that time ago. I needed to come up with a plan.

I started by inventorying my friends' individual dyes which I added to the inventory I'd made of my own dyes. Mine are oh so old now - the legacy of my late friend's and my dyed fabric business and a more recent friend's clearing of her art studio of supplies related to textiles. Even some more recent purchases I've made are getting on in years - 2017 looks like when I got them and dyed them up. Scanning through old posts, it looks like 2017 was the last year I did any dyeing except for some snow dyeing early in 2018 & 2019. Hmmm. Not like I don't have a pretty big stash of hand-dyes while my actual making of quilts, etc. has slowed a great deal which might be part of the reason dyeing has waned. At any rate, newer fresher more reliable results-giving dye powders are a welcome addition. I noted there were some I had not tried before, and those became my starting point.

I worked with half-yard pieces, using my standard 4-step gradation recipe on some and choosing select 2 steps for others. My friend indicated she didn't need a lot of lights, just mostly medium and dark values, so the 2 steps eliminated those lightest steps. I checked my old freezer bags for leaks but not very well apparently. I did six bags at a time and every time I had leakage. Guess I should just get new bags.

I got a pretty good rotation going, getting 6 bags of fabric dyeing to sit overnight each day, and while they were steeping, starting the processing of the previous day's bags of fabric. And oh look - the gloves that were fine the last time I used them to dye also now leak. Boy, soaking and rinsing takes so much time. By the end of the week and 24 half-yards of fabric later, I was totally worn out!

Results were mixed. These two were new to me and I absolutely love how the Mixing Red came out. The Jade Green not so much. Does that look like Jade to you? No, it is more aqua marine or turquoise and my friend had asked for greens not blues. 

I did 2 steps each of 3 different purple dyes: back to front they are Purple, Deep Purple and Grape. Ooo, I DO like how they came out. Hope this is not too much texturing for my friend but she did indicate she liked texture. 

These yellows were the last one I did and I'm not all that happy with the results. I think I was getting tired, a little sloppy with my measurements and not doing enough massaging of the bags. The one on top is a four step gradation from Golden Yellow dye and doesn't look anything like the swatches on my recipe. It lost all its yellow and the lighter steps may be destined for an overdye. The next one down is a four step gradation of the Lemon Yellow dye - the lightest steps may need overdying - and the last are two steps of Sun Yellow dye - a little hard to see in this picture but it's a slightly warmer yellow than the lemon yellow. 

So some successes and some disappointments - so goes hand-dyeing often. I still need to work out some greens for her - a teal green and a lime green from my recipes - and some orange and hope for the best. I've made quite the dent in her yard of fabric, will keep a fat quarter of some of these for myself and cut swatches of others for my records. But for now, I need to give my poor body a rest!