Went for a stroll out in the drizzling rain, and took a few photos into the veil of mist.
The mist softens the blackened soil, but the grass is growing up through it in the open spaces now, hovering over and caressing the wound of the wildfire.
I am feeling a nearly unperceivable whispering heartbeat of optimism …
… as if the landscape is tenacious, as much as it is vulnerable.
Fog is a huge part of life on the mountain, for me, and I just love the fog show …
fog in January, 2015
I love to watch it pour over the ridge from the Pacific, fluid and volatile, and into the valley, or splashing up from it. I also love it just thickly hovering about …
So naturally, my next tweed endeavor must capture the color of fog !
It is my basic white, well, a near white, where like fog, you see faint color of images behind …
Just a tiny bit of the color-saturated neutral to start, then blended several times with increasing amount of white wool, so you’ll see flecks of blue, red and yellow upon close inspection.
I really am enjoying developing a personal hand-spun color palette, and see no end to my combing wool in different combinations, racing obsessively from blending board to the spinning wheel, grabbing my camera to photograph, wash, dry, wind on swift, photogragh again …
… then on to the next !
♣ ♣ ♣
Techy stuff for Fog (white)…
Color Saturated Neutral recipe for approx 10-15% base, primary triad of blue, red, and yellow: Blended thoroughly on blending board. Note: for a more dramatic tweed, with gobs of color splashing through, blend only once , then continue.
Lift batt, divide as needed and layer again and again with more white, repeatedly fully hemogenized, more or fewer times until white/neutral values balance as desired.
Draw off rolags.
Colorway blend: “Fog” .
See ALL color blending experiments & recipes archived in Tweed Chronicles
Spinning by a window … light flooding in to unwind my shadowy worries.
I cast my mind to a warm landscape of wild flax …
hoping to find the colors of the flowers in the wool blend …
I have been doing a lot of fiber blending, and a little spinning too, which is for now easing me slowly back into creative mood ( and am so grateful to “L” for the gift of a beautiful Ashford Traditional spinning wheel!)
Wild Flax; Linum perenne var. lewisii , Lewis Flax, blue flax or prairie flax, seen on the roadside along Mt Veeder road in July, and sometimes early August. Not the domestic farmed species for linen, but just one of the common beautiful wild flowers of Napa Valley that we all call “ wild flax “.
In closing, FEMA clean-up crews have been working rapidly in Napa & Sonoma counties since the wildfire of October, and by the end of December, maybe a clean slate for us? Impossible to forecast the rebuilding ahead, for now I find the cozy window here my joy of the afternoon.
♣ ♣ ♣
Techy stuff for my Wild Flax Blue …
2 g each of primary colors (6g tot) , for a base of color-saturated neutral , see this post; blend thoroughly on blending board 3 times Total 6g. Note: for a more dramatic tweed, with gobs of color splashing through, blend only once , then continue.
6g cornflower blue, layer very thinly one color at a time, with neutral base. Tot 12g.
Lift batt, layered again with 2g each of white, light green, teal. Tot 18g.
( I was trying to get more blended base, with a ‘dusting’ of brilliant blue on the last blend…)
Lift batt, and layered again with 2g of cornflower blue. Tot 20g.
Drew off rolags.
Colorway of blend “Wild Flax Blue”
See ALL color blending experiments & recipes archived in Tweed Chronicles
Layer 15g natural white with 5g each of amber and mustard, lift batt.
light flooding in to unwind my shadowy worries.
