Blog
On a day trip to Dinosaur National Monument, I finally got the chance to see my tapestry, Emergence II, installed in the permanent art collection of Northwestern Colorado Community College in Craig, Colorado. I was quite taken aback at how different the piece actually is from what lives in my memory. Woven in 2010, the colors have shifted around in my head to be something quite different.
When you fly into Memphis very late at night, Budget may well be completely out of Kias. The agent asked me (rather skeptically I might add) if I could "drive a stick." Heck yeah, I replied. Shortly thereafter I was driving away in a 2016 Ford Mustang headed for the Mississippi Delta. I was a bit self-conscious about the car. I got a lot of looks and most of them seemed to say, "hey, what is that middle-aged white lady doing driving that Mustang?" My brother-in-law did enjoy it during the ten minutes I gave him the keys. (I held my breath the whole time.)
You don't expect to find fine art tapestry in a thrift store. At least I don't.
But one day last winter, I happened to check my email at 9:50 on a Monday morning and had a note from a friend in Santa Fe about two tapestries by James Koehler that were spotted over the weekend at a thrift store called Look What the Cat Dragged In. After I got over how mortified James would have been to have his tapestries in a store with the word cat in the name, I looked up their website. They opened at 10. A quick call later and I owned this tapestry.
I've been dyeing for a long time--over a decade. I use acid wool dyes, sabraset and lanaset dyes from Earth Guild and PRO Chemical and Dye. They are the same dyes, they just have different trade names. And of course the colors are slightly different. For some reason, the last time I did a lot of dyeing, I decided that I was going to start using just one company, PRO Chemical and Dye. I guess I thought it would be easier and a little cheaper to source my dye from one place and I was using Deb Menz's dye books and formulas for some of my experiments and she uses their dyes.
However, this led me right into this weekend's rookie mistake.
That beautiful blue yarn is made in part with Blue 2R, a dye made by Earth Guild. I have been using this lovely dye for a decade. I love it. Why would I abandon it?
I started dyeing the blues for the next tapestry late last week. As I began measuring the dyes for the first eight colors, I started to panic a little bit because the jar was almost empty. Searching through my two small boxes of dye powders, I realized there was no new jar.
No. New. Jar.
Then I remembered the aforementioned clearly delusional decision to stop using Earth Guild dyes.
I realized I had enough for the eight colors, and thought, oh great, I'm going to make it!
Only to remember that I had nine more blues to go for this piece and there was no way any other dye could be substituted.
And this was all I had left.
Thankfully Earth Guild was fast. Yesterday this little box was on my doorstep and I'm off to dye the rest of the blue.
In penance I promise to continue to use Earth Guild's Blue 2R for all eternity... or at least until another delusion steps in.
Thanks Earth Guild.
