Getting by

I got a message yesterday saying that it will probably be a month in total that I will be without my car as it gets repaired. I'm crawling out of my rut and yesterday we harvested indigo (later than I wanted to, thanks to the accident), with big help from Emily (right). Charity (left) is shifting into studio work so it's great to have her back in that capacity.

Radha has been under the weather but came in after we harvested to help de-leaf. All the steps after that were slow and in the end, a bust. Next time, we'll divide the batch to do two kinds of fresh leaf dyeing in hopes that one works. We'll also do a summer harvest (I have no idea what happened this summer that made us forget to do that).

This was when we knew it was not looking good, because the solution did not change color. But we finished it all the way to the end, to confirm the failure. So sad, too bad. But it was still great to work together with people who love to do this kind of labor.

A tour of the new Creative Fusion artists came through later in the afternoon, and we found out about Zygote's special event with Adrienne Lichliter that evening. The energy at Zygote is welcoming and exciting as they always work on improvements. Adrienne loves Asian papers, so it was a treat to meet her first at the Morgan and show her our papers before her wood litho demo.

This week, I'm playing catch up and writing a massive article while preparing for my own show (in less than a month!), a hanji forum in NYC (in just a few weeks!), and a trip to meet Patterson Clark at SUNY Fredonia (next week!). My eyes are on the milkweed pods, trying to decide when I'll harvest and freeze them for my November milkweed papermaking class. Next week, I'll help out at a yellow-flag iris eradication, harvesting the leaves and stems, and felt better yesterday morning deadheading flowers for dyes in the morning before anyone arrived.

Lately, I've seen so many monarchs downtown and in urban places where I don't expect them. I like to think we helped a little with our milkweed. Here are some wonderful images of their migration through town.