Two good things

Posted on July 10, 2009 by HappyGoth

1. It is Friday (yay!)

2. I picked up the Rivendell socks again, and have made it to the toe! Progress feels good. Also, watching my husband play video games is good for my fiber productivity.

Happy weekend, all.

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Because

Posted on July 9, 2009 by HappyGoth

I’m kind of a grump today, I’m sharing more of what I learned.

In that, as an unintended consequence of blogging about the print process, I have a good start on documentation for the project!

Hooray!

I shall explain.

SCA documentation scares the crap out of me. Mostly it’s because I tend to overdo and overthink everything, but also because it’s kind of intimidating if you’ve never done it before, especially if half of your Society friends are Peers (you make friends with one, others shall come along). So there’s a pretty high standard.

I have not as yet entered a single thing in an A&S competition, mostly because (a) I have not created anything worth entering yet and (b) I have no documentation to support the things I’ve made.

Not so anymore. The block printing project has opened a wide world of documenting my projects, which is relatively easy and painless and something I can do!

Last night I found myself discussing things with Robbing Peter that I need to record because they, too are part of a good set of documentation.

The main point that needs recording is the fact that I should not beat myself up about what I didn’t do with the project so far, but should rather applaud myself for what I did do. That is, the work of several people. Even in modern block printing shops, there are some things that no single person undertakes that because of limited and Western resources, I had to do by myself.

I drew and cut the block myself. Then I prepared the pigment myself, and printed the thing myself. I prepared the fabric myself.

Another thing to take into account is that in reality, if I were doing this on a mass-production scale (or what passes for mass-production at the time the originals were made, in that with a block you can make many identical copies of one textile), I’d have used something larger than a small folding table as my printing surface. With six yards of table, you simply pin the entire length of fabric down and print it all at once. There’s no moving and repinning. The issue that arises from repinning the fabric is that fabric, unlike paper, has a lot of give in it. Though the lines you printed on the first bit might be straight, when you move the fabric, it stretches in some places and not others, and the line becomes slanted or wavy. Perhaps if I had used a big table I wouldn’t have had the gap and overlap problems I encountered (probably). So a lot of the little nitpicky details that bother me are ultimately not a huge deal at this point (and will potentially go unnoticed by the casual observer).

I do plan on recutting the block for the next round, though, this time incorporating the small dots that line the edges of the medallion. I have neither the time nor the patience to put those in by hand.

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I pass on knowledge

Posted on July 8, 2009 by HappyGoth

To you.

So. I learned many things this weekend, but here is the summing up, so that in the future, others can learn from my mistakes.

1. Soft-soft, hard-hard. That is, soft blocks print better on soft materials and hard blocks print better on hard materials (rubber/cloth, wood/paper). Not that you can’t work around it, but it’s definitely easier.

2. Pad your surface. If you don’t, you’ll get uneven coverage on your print. This isn’t an issue when printing on paper, but fabric is a much more flexible material.

3. Pound the block. I tried printing straight and again got an uneven print. You’ll need to pound the back of the block, to make sure the middle hits the fabric. I recommend a mallet instead of your fist; you’ll hurt yourself if you use your fist for too long (though printers in India do it; I imagine they’ve long ago lost feeling in the side of their hands).

4. Don’t cut a square block. This is perhaps the most important lesson I learned. While seamless blocks that are in square or rectangle shapes work well for a small area on paper, when you get to the point where you’re printing more than half a yard, you’ll want to carve the block so that parts stick out past the edge. If not, when you get to the yard mark, unless you’re really good and the block is perfectly square, you’re going to get gaps and overlap, which show up really well on your finished piece. I thought that the textile I was looking at was printed with a square block, but I’m realizing that the medallions probably extended beyond the square, resulting in a block with four or six complete medallions instead of one complete one and several half ones. I’m not sure how the squiggly lines were made, but I have a feeling they might be wax-resist. Or maybe they’re on the block. In any case, I need to rethink this.

5. Wood works best. I have some already-carved wood blocks that I used to test with, and they print great. My linoleum block fills in with the sort of stamp pad I’m looking at creating, because the printing surface is not raised very far off the backing. The wood blocks do not fill as badly, as they have holes drilled into them. The holes soak up a little excess ink. If I had filled the holes with cotton, as you’re supposed to do, they would soak up even more.

6. Rubber brayers work with linoleum ink, but something softer is necessary with a thinner ink. Like a trim roller. I don’t know how this applies to liquid ink, but I plan on experimenting.

The one thing I have left to learn is how long I need to run things through the dryer on high heat to heat set the ink, because using an iron is Right Out. It’s 3 minutes per square, multiplied by 60 squares per yard, over four yards. I don’t have that much time or patience. I think enough time in a hot dryer should do the trick, but I don’t know for sure.

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Why I knit, #25

Posted on July 7, 2009 by HappyGoth

Wow. 25 of these.  I thought when I started that I’d only get maybe 10, but here you have it!

I knit because it’s something I can do.

The block printing project was very rewarding but also very taxing, both mentally and physically. I do stuff like that because I like being challenged. I like figuring things out and learning new ways of doing things. I like making things by hand.

Knitting was like that when I started. It frustrated me and made my hand cramp up, so much so that for the first six months I did it, it could only loosely be called “knitting.” It took me that whole six months to finish a garter-stitch scarf (of course, I was doing it wrong, so that didn’t help, but whatever).

Now, though, it’s great. I did the block printing project, and knitting is a total breeze. It’s challenging (because if it wasn’t, I’d get bored) but I have a good foundation for what I do with it, so ultimately it’s learning how to improvise with something I’m pretty good at, instead of learning something totally new, and that’s a huge relief.

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I have conquered Gaul

Posted on July 6, 2009 by HappyGoth

Well, no. I haven’t. I have done something monumental (for me) this weekend, though.

I block-printed 4 yards of fabric.

Allow me to say, though, for the record, that although I freaked out completely that the madder I ordered hit some snags in getting to me (btw – Griffin Dye Works is awesome, and the Georgia branch of the USPS sucks), I am glad it did not arrive until this morning. Along with printing a whole lot of fabric, I also learned that fabric printing is tricky business, and the thicker the substance you’re using, the easier the printing is. I still don’t know how to apply liquid pigment to the block without it bleeding, nor do I know how to process madder root, nor do I know how to use mordants properly, and many other things.

I do know, though, how to block print fabric.

Lea (still no blog) and Yul came over and I taught them to carve blocks. I taught them on Speed-Y carve blocks to start, which are fiddly and irritating if you’ve been doing this for a while, but are less likely to help you stab yourself with a carving tool. Yul listened to my preliminary instructions and then just went for it, which was great. He sort of freehanded his design (he used a compass) and then carved it almost before Lea had finished choosing a design. And it was excellent, and it prints pretty seamlessly:

yul's print by you.

(the little brown thing is a test I did using Dye-Na-Flow and a wooden Indian block, and the results on paper are much nicer than on fabric, by the by)

Lea chose a design and after a false start (did you know that Speed-Y cut blocks and carbon paper do  not mix? well, they do not) Lea carved her  block:

lea's block by you.

And then printed it. She was pretty pleased and I think that she’s going to be a whiz at this.

lea with her print by you.

(I didn’t realize she blinked until later; sorry, Lea)

While they were doing their thing, I tested my own block. The Dye-na-flow is really bleedy, and so I was glad I bought paints. I tested them:

test print by you.

This was a real challenge. The rubber brayer I have doesn’t roll through the pigment well, so Yul and I made a last-minute dash to Ace Hardware (I love you, Internets) for some foam paint trim rollers, which work much better. You can see the one I used in the upper right corner. I will have to see how a soaked pad works in the future; in the Indian block print videos, it looks as though the guy with the blocks is inking from a pad. I do not know, though. This will be researched and experimented on some more. Something else I learned is that I need a more heavily padded table. Originally I assumed this was to soak up excess dye. However, I found out that no padding = uneven image, so I put a stack of shop towels under the fabric as a temporary pad until I can put quilt batting under my canvas on my table.

print padding by you.

And then Lea experimented with Lino cut ink on fabric (which is lovely, but can never, ever be gotten wet):

lea's prints, on fabric by you.

Her prints are awesome.

Yul was gleeful, but Lea’s husband was not so sure.

yul and ahlric by you.

After they left, I printed FOUR YARDS of fabric, using a dead-blow mallet to pound the block so it would print evenly. Here’s the first yard:

block print, 1st yard by you.

(In the upper right corner, you can see a light spot, which is what happened when I didn’t pad under the fabric.)

I printed until 11pm, and then went to bed. My arm really hurts.

Now, before I heat-set the fabric, I get to  add in tiny little dots, by hand:

adding dots by you.

Wooo. But it will look awesome. I might heat-set it, and then add the dots later, and heat set them after that.

Today consisted of finishing a project for my mom, sitting around, and going to get pani puri with the  ChickenGoddess (did you know that if you suck the spicy pani up into your windpipe through the overexcitement of really tasty food, the burning on your tongue suddenly feels not so bad? Well, it’s true, and now I know that).

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Catching-up.

Posted on July 3, 2009 by HappyGoth

Ah, so much catching-up to do. This month is, apparently NaBloPoMo, which translates to National  Blog Posting Month, wherein you attempt to blog each and every day for some arbitrary reason, and which I have already failed since I didn’t blog yesterday.

Or did I?

Well, I don’t consider that real content, so I’m going to say no.

However, our lovely supreme leader (the boss-man at work) has given us a four-day weekend, and then the husband had to be up for work as usual, and then I woke up with him at 8 a.m., so today’s post is real.

And it contains updates of my fiber progress! The world is officially going to end at 2 this afternoon, by the way.

Firstly, I have been spinning still. I have not been knitting, because I am rather proud of my spinning (I started relatively not so long ago, so this is an accomplishment). This afternoon will see me venture into the wild world of plying (gasp!), and we shall see where that ends up. However, for the time being, here is the second spindle of logwood-dyed wool:

2nd spindle by you.

Yeah, it’s dark. My camera is kind of lame. However, if you squint, you can see my single, which is really even and really fine, and makes me really really proud. Here is another view, with different and less orange lighting:

2nd spindle, take 2 by you.

Also one of those for the squinting.

I have another whole bag of roving, plus two more wads of it in the bag I’m carrying the spindle in. I bought it initially because I was overawed by the concept of natural dyes, and there was a huge bin of them, so I picked it up even though the fiber was scratchy. This has been a really fantastic decision. This wool has perhaps the longest staple of any wool I’ve ever used, and is completely mindless to spin. I can spin it at SCA meetings. I can spin it standing in the ChickenGoddess’s dining room, chatting about Charlie the Unicorn. But most amazingly of all, I can spin it sitting in my den, watching Bollywood movies, reading subtitles.

You read that right, folks. You can read subtitles and spin this with a drop spindle. It’s marvelous.

It is  still kind of scratchy, but I’ll find something to knit with it that compensates for its non-comfyness.

Now, really this subtitle issue is important, and figures in my knitting location and project choices pretty regularly. I  get antsy sitting quietly and knitting. I know that knitting is one of those things you do to clear your mind and find inner peace, but I am scatterbrained enough that unless I’m working on complicated lace, I need something going on to distract me just a little, so that I don’t look up a half an hour later and then put the project down for good for a while.

Movies are great distractions. If it’s in English, I can knit most things while watching the movie, and it works out pretty well. I know what I’m knitting and I know what’s going on on the screen. Bollywood films are a completely different story. Unless I’ve seen the movie before several times (actually, the only movie I can knit to is Koi… Mil Gaia, because, well, you really don’t need to pay too much attention to it to know what’s happening), one of two things occurs:

(1) I make progress with my knitting, but have no idea what has transpired in the film, requiring me to watch the movie over again sans knitting, or rewind it multiple times to catch up. In this scenario, I might as well have not watched the film at all, since I didn’t really see it.

(2) I enjoy the movie but at the end I look down and have either not done anything on my project or have screwed it up so badly that I have done anti-work on my project, necessitating more time working on it without watching a film.

This wool solves a lot of that, in that I can spin it pretty much  without looking, except every once in a while, when I miss a little bit of dialogue,  but not enough to impact my watching of the film. (The Socks of Eternity are also a good project for this, as I have knit on them for so long that I no longer need to look at what I’m doing while I knit).

I will have to try the spinning with a French film next, which should be even better, since I actually speak more than three sentences of that language (though the other day I was watching Mistress of  Spices, which was kind of meh except at this one point when the taxi driver came in and asked “Kya hua?” and I got all excited because I totally understood him in Hindi, and I realize that’s not that fancy but this is hard work so let me enjoy it).

The other catching-up is this:

more car in park by you.

Remember that I talked about that car that hit the telephone pole? Well, this is the aftermath. You can see, in the bottom right corner, the little hole where the utility pole used to be, plus the tracks in the grass indicating the car’s path into the park. The girl in the green shirt and the girl in the yellow shirt were in the vehicle. A few days ago they fixed the old pole to the new pole using strapping tape. I really hope that’s just temporary.

And today? Well, today I’m on vacation! So that means doing some other design projects for family members, because designers never really take vacations, anyhow.

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Yul

Posted on July 2, 2009 by HappyGoth

This. Well, this is possibly the most awesome felting I’ve ever seen, and I needed to share it with you, and the world:

Jabba

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Aw man.

Posted on June 30, 2009 by HappyGoth

I am such a huge dork. See, I just had a conversation with Baobh’s husband, wherein I declared my undying love for Alexander Hamilton.

Isn’t he dreamy? Oh, you know he is. I mean, just look at that noble nose and his sensitive eyebrows!

I’ve had such a crush on him for so long.

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Not exciting in that sort of way.

Posted on June 29, 2009 by HappyGoth

My weekend was exciting, but the sort of exciting you’re glad to be done with.

I shall explain.

The good part was looking after Allison‘s cat, who is awesome and likes my husband much more than she likes me (this is generally the case). We hung out with her and watched Allison’s cable television, a real treat. Our TV is for movies only, as it is not equipped with a digital converter, and we have no cable. It is marvelous. I get lots more done this way.

The not-so-good part was the excitement preceding our takeout Thai and cable TV fest. Before we left the house, no, right as we were gearing up to leave, we heard a honking, then a screaming, then a big crash, and looked out the window to see the telephone pole across the street sort of hanging from the wires it was previously supporting, and a white SUV sitting in the middle of the park. Hm. So I called 911, and explained it, and then called Georgia Power, and then a couple of fire trucks came and blocked off the street, so we sat around for a while, watching the fracas. One girl wandered down the street, then thought better of it and came back, and the other (both were teenagers, the most skilled age group for causing spectacular accidents) was walking around shoeless, attempting to explain to her mother that no, she was not, in fact, drunk, nor had she been drinking.

It was a blast. Eventually the cops came and let us out of our driveway and we went on our way. Yesterday somebody came by and replaced the pole, and AT&T was out this morning to re-mount the phone lines. All with no loss of power in our house! Sweet.

Yesterday I felt poopy, but I finished a big craft project and then Jennie came over for an impromptu dinner and strawberry-gorging (what else do you call stuffing yourself with strawberries and whipped cream? oh, okay – strawberry and whipped cream gorging), and then I watched Mistress of Spices, which was enjoyable but not completely satisfying. I give it a solid “meh” for content. It could have been really good, but was only okay.

I have knit nothing for two weeks. I carry the socks around with me, but I also carry my spinning, which is progressing much more quickly. I am attempting to order dyestuffs, but I don’t know how much to order so I’ve emailed Griffyn Dye Works, and am waiting on a reply, hopefully before it’s too late to order (if I don’t hear something by this evening, I’m just going to guess and hope for the best). The big dye experiment is Sunday, and I’m nervous already. Eek.

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My awesome friend

Posted on June 26, 2009 by HappyGoth

Sometimes, in my self-righteous rants about peace and the government and what we are or aren’t doing as a nation, I forget that there are real people out there living through all that on a day-to-day basis (by that, I mean being in Iraq).

A friend of mine is one of those real people. He is incredibly real, and I think about him often. And he has a blog:

Mission Reaccomplished

It is also incredibly real, and well-written, and changed my mind about a lot of things I rant over (or at least gave me a new perspective).

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