dyeing

(reposted from elisem's question)

elynne came over yesterday and we dyed fabric. I was pleased with lots of what I did, but there was one piece that made me go "oh, LOOK." I don't know if the beautiful part will be there any more, but I have it floating near the front of my mind.

It was a pink dress of my mom's, just t-shirt material, scoop neck, longish. She'd spilled some hair dye on it, so it had a little light brown streak that she wanted me to cover. One of the dyes I had was called "Sunrise Red", so I thought I'd try to make a sunrise-like painting out of the dress. I didn't have a large work surface, so I had to hang part of the dress over the edge of the table, and when I pulled the top third of it back up I found that the Sunrise Red had decided it was the star of the show. It bled up toward the neckline in a red aurora going to yellow at the edges, which was wonderfully dramatic against the pinks and lavender and purple. It was just amazing.

The dye has to sit for 24 hours, so I don't get to find out until tonight if it's bled more, if it still works or if I didn't manage to preserve it when rolling it up with plastic to keep. Dyeing has more of the hand of coincidence in it than my other crafts. It is about random effects at least as much as skill. Frustrating but exalting.

(no subject)

Quick, I need a reason to be grumpy so I can use this userpic.

Oh, wait, there's the whole politics thing. That'll do.

make a little drawbridge in your soul

I was just reaching the bridge when a sailboat blew its horn, one long, one short. Wanting to get back, wanting to keep whizzing through the air, I made my mind up that I'd keep going if the light hadn't changed by the time I got to it. It was yellow. I stopped.

I crossed the road once cars had stopped and all the gates were down. Well, I needed to be over here, I silently challenged the drivers (who were looking at me a little oddly, or maybe their eyes wanted stimulation after the scenery's sudden stop). I took up my station just forward of the shadow-band cast by the bridge's proscenium, next to a bouncing, dripping, shiny man who held his white shirt wadded up in one hand.

There were half a dozen sailboats waiting, most of them coming from seaward. As the bridge reached its highest extension, it just barely blocked the sun from my eyes, and I dreamed I could see wild shapes in the corona, like flames painted on the front of a car.