Color Lovers

All the work I do with black gray and whites makes me greedy for color. I hoard tiny scraps of silk and bright crewel yarn. I have boxes of embellishments and little dye samples made, stolen and gifted. Putting the color on the insides of my garments somehow makes me feel much more free about using it strongly. My own closet is taken over by brown, grey, olive and navy blue, so clearly I'm not a huge fan of ostentatious color for myself. The fact that it's there for the enjoyment of the wearer, and those closest to them means that I don't really need to worry about the colors in terms of anything other than just that.


Okay, my diatribe is over, suffice to say, I've been enjoying a temporary reprieve from black and am relishing in making things as bright as possible.

There's been a really fantastically ugly sweater at Philly Aids Thrift for several months now, and since it dropped to $3, I bought it and unraveled it. It'll be a good source of wool for fair isle knitting.


You can see the sleeve right behind there. I was sneezing and snuffling the whole time I was taking it apart. Apparently I can work with wool in fabric form okay (though sometimes it gives a rash near my wrists?) but the wool is a little rough.


All that remains. In this case, I think the parts are much nicer than their original sum. I'm thinking of doing some sort of gradated fair isle with it, just don't know what to make it into.

At the very end of the school year, as we frantically tried to clean out our studios, I was incredibly grateful to be gifted a chunk of dyed silk and cotton from my studio-mate Astrid. If any one loves a gradation as much as me, it's Astrid.


The cotton gradation.


The silk gradation--the colors are really amazing in this, kind iridescent.


As a little thank you for the gift, I made a pillow out of some of it to give back to her, so she can at least keep a little bit of it around.


I also made my self a little belt-bag (let's not call it a fanny pack, even though it basically is) for my trip to South Korea. Which I am just now realizing I never really mentioned on here. Well I'm leaving in 10 days on a two-week trip to South Korea with a few of my teachers and classmates. YEP!


It's made of the remnents of the giant pile of army bags I have lying around. I bought 8 of them to get enough nice looking D-Rings for Leoh's arm-pieces, and now I need to come up with a use for the rest of the bags! Hand sewn with jean thread, ostensibly because it was too heavy for the little sewing machine donated to me, but mostly because I'm more comfortable doing it that way. Which is dangerous....


Back, that loop on the back hooks into an optional Han-Solo style leg strap.


Velcro fastening, used as much of the original strap's structure as I could.


Inside, with pocket. It's a perfect size, and pretty comfortable, I'm happy with the effort. Pictures of it on to follow.