It's all so last year. Or at least how it ended...

A tumble of color and pattern it was supposed to be three things but it became two.

And then the loom was done but I didn't get to weave on it...

The two that became one...

And some of the hand spun...I am feeling a nudge into red...

More red...

And then what will come next?

Costume time

A maori bird.

Orange.

Madder root, chopped washed rinsed, blended, cooked, low heat for a while nothing too precise.  Only wish I had nicer skeins of wool to receive the beautifull color.  Maybe tomorrow morning I will cook the soaked overnight roots, change the water and get red...maybe. 

The young yellow shoots  offered up a lovely pink eventually tending toward coral.  The roots a very red orange...neither quit like the picture...but it is late and I like the feeling, mysterious, never certain what will present itself from the depths of the cauldron.

rug

layered, watered, walked on, rubbed, rolled, pounded, thrown.... washed, pounded, thrown, walked on, boiled, squished...

and after it had been put out to dry....

It was a rug.
And a lesson.


A lesson in wool, in quilting batts and bags of wool from many different sheep. wool of different lengths and quality's. wool that will pill for the rest of its life. this rug, the rug that took a year of my creative life, the rug i hauled halfway up the stairs soaking wet just to throw it down, the rug of walks in the forest collecting lichens, the rug of so many walnut hulls they were moldy before i finished making dye from them,this rug, the rug that was to be art that matched my couch, lives in my garage now.