A bonanza of books

While I’ve been working on the dress, a bonanza of books has appeared on my doorstep:

• Design! A Lively Guide to Design Basics for Artists and Craftspeople – Steven Aimone
• Color and Fiber by Patricia Lambert, Barbara Staepelare, and Mary Fry
• A Joy Forever: Latvian Weaving by Jane Evans
• Interaction of Color by Josef Albers
• Art & Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland
• Weavers of the Southern Highlands, by Phillis Alvic
• Transforming Fabric, by Carolyn Dahl
• Dye Painting by Ann Johnston
• plus 24 back issues of Fiber Arts magazine

This is a bit overwhelming, especially since I have a confession to make: I’m not much of a reader.  I mean, yes, I can read, and read/absorb pretty fast, but lately I have much preferred writing or working with my hands to devouring books.  And I have quite a backlog of books.  I think this means I need to carve out some time in my schedule for reading.  Perhaps I’ll combine this with my new resolution to  get to the gym more often, and read books while on the exercise bike.

But where to start?  I’m already halfway through the design book, and don’t really feel I’ll benefit more without doing some of the exercises.  And I can’t start the exercises until the wedding-dress is safely done and put away.  (They involve paint, which does not come into the house until the wedding dress is done.)  I think perhaps I’ll start with Albers’ book on color, as I’m told (by multiple people) that it’s one of the best such books out there.  I also like the way it is written, with the concepts broken up into separate lines, as in free verse.  It’s refreshing.

In other news, I’ve been having discussions with two people about the possibility of getting a bunch of silk sample skeins made for me (by someone with a big skeining machine).  This is extraordinarily exciting, as it means I’ll finally be able to do more sets of samples with acid dyes.  It is a royal pain to have to wind the skeins myself, one at a time, and it takes 66 of them to do a single set of samples.  So I am really excited about this, and considering adding some more dye types and colors to my palette.  In particular, I am thinking of combining Jacquard acid dyes with the Sabraset dyes I’m using  now, primarily because Sabraset does not seem to have really bright colors, always slightly saddened.  But I’m not 100% sure about that, since I also did my original dye samples on a slightly yellowish wool yarn, which of course would sadden the colors.  More to think about!