Betsy Phillips's Blog, page 42

Colors

I opened the solar dyeing jars. That was unpleasant. You know what happens when you put a bunch of plant matter in water and then heat it for days? The same shit that happens when you stick a bunch of plant matter and water in an elephant and let it work its way through the system: a smell from the outskirts of hell.

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These guys live in the garage until I’ve decided they don’t smell too bad to include. The idea that I might have to overdye them with Kool-aid just to make them smell okay is cracking me up.

Anyway, in my neighborhood, it seems the easiest color to make is yellow. I keep making it almost by accident. And it got me thinking about the outfits people wore before commercial dyes, what folks’ clothes would have looked like. And I have to imagine, for the people who had to make most, if not all, their own clothes, there was probably a lot of yellow.

And it got me thinking about the colors that have magical properties. There’s an old African-American hoodoo belief that to sleep under a blue blanket will bring prophetic dreams. And to get a blue color that stays? The person who can get that for you has to seem like magic, that blanket or quilt has to seem like magic. Blue is hard to get and hard to keep, until you have indigo.

Red, black, and white are also tricky colors to get (and to keep) with plant materials available to most people.  Yes, madder, but look at how much skill it takes to get red out of madder if you have to do it yourself. Black is… I don’t even know. I think you could dye a lot of things for a long time to get a dark, dark, dark brown that might pass for black, but pure black naturally would be hard. And white, a clean white, requires a lot of processing as well. So, it’s no wonder you find so many charms that call for thread or yarn in those colors.

If magic is about gathering energy and expending it in directions it doesn’t normally take (think of the sailors who kept winds they needed tied in knots in yarn they kept in their pockets), then red, black, and white have a lot of energy put into them.

But I live in America, so I also can’t wander around with the dog thinking about color without thinking about race and I got to thinking about how much of a fear of the “secret” black person there has been in American popular culture. And smarter people than me have written about how “black” is seen as corrupting and spoiling.

Corruption and spoilage are both powers. And black, in color, is hard to get.

Yellow is common and easy to make.

And I feel like there’s a revelation about a facet of American racism right at the tips of my fingers that I can’t quite articulate yet.

But it’s commonly accepted that words have meanings and associations that color (ha) how we see the things those words are describing, meanings and associations pulled in from other uses of those words. So, saying that a bad person is blackhearted or has a black soul or has a dark morality or that these are dark times and then saying that person is black or has dark skin can lead us to associate that person’s skin color with all the ways we think of black as meaning bad.

So, I wonder how much to an 18th or 19th century white American, black would have also resonated as powerful (much to the eternal tragedy of black people) and yellow as common and easy to get. And I wonder how that shaped the expressions and their own understanding of their racism?

Also, speaking of black, look what black beans gave me!

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Who Am I?

I’ve just kind of been in a weird daze since Monday. I don’t regret quitting. But I do feel so sad about it. Partially because I wonder how many people will find me interesting without it.

Which also pisses me off at myself.

But it’s just been a part of my identity for so long that it’s hard to imagine what my life looks like without it.

And I know it’s early yet, but I want to acknowledge that it’s hard, and that I am not sure what my value to others is, if I don’t yell and make people hear me.

One Less Muddy Path to March

I quit the Scene today. There was a lot of weird stuff going on, but then there was some bullshit, and, well, either I mean the things I say or I don’t. And if I mean the things I say, then I don’t work for a guy I think is a dumbass lacking in good judgement.

I haven’t really processed it yet. I don’t know what it means for me. I’m sad but also relieved. But a lot sad.

I love the people at the Scene and I have so much respect for the hard work they do. And I’m going to miss the fuck out of being their peer.

Blah

I wonder how much longer everything is going to feel like marching through mud?

My Delighted and Confused WTF?!

Okay, so yesterday there was red cabbage at Kroger. I bought a head for dyeing. I read up on how non-colorfast it is. I fretted some. But I’d already bought it, so… I mean, this is a long-term project. If the colors start to do something funky before my dyeing is done, I’ll just redye.

I split the dye bath into three and made one acidic, left one neutral, and made one basic.

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There they are. The pink is the acid, the purple the neutral, the bluish-gray is the base. That makes sense to me.

But, as I picked them up out of the water, they began to turn colors. The blue became a weird mint green. The purple became a Band-aid pink. The pink became… and I’m not even shitting you… yellow.

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Note, this photo makes the Band-aid color look almost like a pretty pink. It was not in real life. I ended up throwing it in what was left of the basic bath to turn it greenish.

Why did this happen?! Could it be something in the acrylic yarn I used to tie the skeins? Something having to do with the pots? I washed them, but the yellow was in the pot I used for tumeric.

Also, I am a mix of delighted and chagrined that I am some kind of “dyeing things yellow” savant.

I’m going to have to pick a pattern that works with these colors and also takes into account that many of them will fade. Or possibly change color over time. It needs to look good with these colors and look good with the antique versions of these colors.

The Afghan

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I did just need another week.

Yellows

Y’all, I had a revelation yesterday. I hate crocheting figures. It’s hard and I hold my hook wrong to make it easier. I hate that, by the time you realize something isn’t quite where you want it, it’s too late, because you’ve sewn it down. And, if you don’t like it in the end, you can’t fix it. You just have to make another one. But I didn’t like making the first one! Now I’m suckered in to doing it twice?!

Anyway, this is the last figure I’m going to be making for a while.

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Sorry about your boobs, Venus, but I suck at figures.

In happier news, I spent the day dyeing (and finishing up the afghan for my cousin and making that thing and doing laundry). Queen Anne’s Lace smells amazing at every step of the dyeing process. It made my house smell amazing. Why that’s not the go-to for potpourri, I don’t understand. I followed up with turmeric, which smelled fine, but not as surprisingly wonderful as Queen Anne’s Lace.

Here are my four yellows–fruit tea, Queen Anne’s Lace, turmeric over Queen Anne’s Lace, and plain turmeric:

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Ha, I love how the camera can pick up the slight variations in tone between the two turmeric bundles, but has made the two lighter yellows just look like beiges. The one on the far left is actually a light gold. And the Queen Anne’s Lace is a light greenish yellow.

I don’t know if I could have gotten it darker with more plant matter (though I didn’t really have room for any more in my pot) or if I had plenty of dye, that was just the color it was. That’s the thing about natural dyes–there are a lot of variables you don’t have any control over.

On the other hand, I really love the idea that I can point to that yarn and say, this is the color I could get on this day, with these plants grown in this spot.

I want to make something unique to this spot at this time. So, that’s what these colors are.

For Solar Dyeing, You Need Sun. Just Saying, Mother Nature

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Yesterday, I rehomed all of the fruit-tea dyed yarn I didn’t like into these jars for solar dyeing. From left to right we have black tea, the last of my day lilies, willow leaves and twigs, a mystery bark I found in two big strips by the fire pit, oak bark with lichens, sumac sticks and leaves, and motherfucking privet sticks and leaves.

If anything comes of the privet, I am going to laugh and laugh. God, I hate that shit. If it turns out to be a useful dye, that would be amazing.

I also learned that sumac smells good. It’s got kind of a spicy smell. Not spicy hot but kind of like Indian food smell, like just something with a lot of different spices in it.

But then I look at the weather and we’re not going to break 90 all next week. Which is wonderful for people trying to live their lives, but it’s July in the South! I expected the sun to unmercifully beat down upon the contents of these jars.

Anyway, today I try Queen Anne’s Lace.

Twisting Makes it Beautiful

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Work has been a nightmare ball of stress. It’s no fun to think about let alone write about, but these past few weeks have just been putting one fire after another out, trying to keep others’ morale up, and hoping I’m not forgetting anything terribly important. I feel like I can’t even plan things, because I have no idea when the higher-ups are going to immediately need me to drop everything and do this other thing.

On Monday, I was at the gynecologist, just sitting on the table, naked except for a paper robe, and I started thinking about work shit, which caused me to kind of sit there in a frazzled daze, so much so that when the doctor came in to do the exam, she scared the shit out of me. Like, how do you lose track of being naked in an office building and that means that someone is going to come into the room?

But I had.

Anyway, last night, I put the tea-dyed yarn I didn’t like in a mordant bath. My first time using mordant. Everything went fine. The alum didn’t make some toxic fume that immediately gave me black lung. The pot that my dad found for me is really easy to heat up slowly and it holds heat really well, which is great and pretty much the definition of what you need a pot to do for dyeing.

I don’t really know how to tell if it worked. But everything seemed to happen like the books say it should.

So, I’m planning on solar dying these little skeins, just going out this weekend and finding various things in the yard (or up on Lloyd, due to the mowing of my road), stuffing them and the yarn in a jar, and letting the sun work on it.

Plus, I want to do some Queen Anne’s Lace this weekend, because, if they are going to start mowing regularly (getting a city councilperson has done wonders for improving city services out here), I might not get another shot at it.

And I am ready to move on the poke berries the instant they go black.

So, I’m working on the afghan, thinking about all this stuff and I started feeling this weird flipping in my belly. My first thought was “Have I forgotten something?” and then “Am I having a heart attack?” Then, finally, no, I realize, I’m excited.

I’m feeling pleasant excitement and anticipation about this wool dyeing project.

And it’s been so long that I didn’t recognize the feeling.

Learning

I very rarely crochet with wool yarn, because when you give someone a wool afghan, you’re giving them an ongoing commitment to some kind of ridiculousness. At the least, to having a big flag place to dry the fucker.

Acrylic is like “eh, whatever. Throw me in the wash. Throw me in the dryer.”

But sometimes I want to try new things. So, I’m learning about the difference between hanks and skeins and why you shouldn’t store wool in balls. (Basically, you want to give the wool room to move, so it doesn’t get misshapen.)

Also, look how beautiful it looks in hanks!

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And the broken purple is drying:

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I will twist that into a hank soon enough. And then I can marvel at its beauty, too.

In the back of my mind, even though it’s months away, I’m trying to decide what pattern I want to use for this yarn. I want something simple enough to really show off the color variations, but also not just a square, because I’ve done that before.

I think I’m just about at the end of my day lilies for the season, so I plucked the penultimate bunch last night and threw them in a jar with water. I’ll add whatever shrivels up tonight. Once I get some yarn through the mordant bath, I’ll throw a small amount in there and see what happens.

The city mowed down my Queen Anne’s Lace yesterday so I’m going to have to go up to Lloyd and get what I can. I hope they don’t mow up there before that.

And I’ve got my eye on the poke berries at the back of my driveway. I’m waiting for them to turn black and then I’m going to snag them.

I feel like a witch. It’s so much fun. And it’s letting me rest my wrist, which is not happy about last week’s failed push to finish the afghan.