Dyes, designs, and drafts

Had a couple of friends over today to play in the dyepots. Mostly we did tie-dye, but some cotton and silk yarns got dyed, too (and turned out gorgeous!). And a wonderful time was had by all!

I only dyed two shirts and some socks, but was very pleased with the results. One shirt is still drying (a simple turquoise/fuchsia/purple scrunch dye), but here is the other, which is now my new Favorite Shirt:

I had always wanted to dye stars/mandalas, but couldn’t figure out how to do it. Then I saw an awesome book at Dharma Trading Company, How to Tie-Dye Stars, and bought it. It took me a long time to figure out how to tie them and apply dyes, but oh! the results were totally worth it. I have one more T-shirt which is tied and ready for dyeing; I’ll dye it tomorrow morning, using the leftover dyes.

And here is an awesome pair of socks, the result of mixing Royal Blue and Golden Yellow:

Meanwhile, in Phoenix Rising land, I have done several more rounds of Design Poker and begun fleshing out some designs. Here is my current favorite:

The idea is to have diagonal flame shapes on top and bottom, with the brightly colored diagonal in phoenix fabric. I haven’t thought about the back yet. Going to try draping this design this week – I have some lengths of muslin which I plan to scrunch dye in fiery colors, then use with some black fabric to create the design.

And, finally, I had a writing coach look at the draft of my book proposal. She said it looked really, really good, and I could send it out immediately – but a little more fine tuning would bring it to a “written by a professional” standard as opposed to “written by a very good writer who doesn’t do this for a living”. So I am doing some fine-tuning tonight, then sending it to her for another run-through. Once that is done, it will be time to send it to the copy editor. I’m guessing another month or so delay before I start taking it to publishers.

Whew! Do I ever sleep? I’m starting to wonder that, myself.

But so many wonderful things are happening!