thelmasmith

It is so pleasant to come home and review all the posts on Planet.textilethreads. So much is going on. The synergy is building. I am really enjoying all the images.  Many thanks to all the artists who are building such an exciting community.
I had planned on using my vacation to be more disciplined about posting. However, life gets in the way. Here’s a late nineteenth century advertising sign; apparently thelma is a southern name.

A southern first name, and an uncommon one, at that, is okay, now that I’ve lived with it for more than sixty years. My great great grandparents left Virginia in the early nineteenth century. They anticipated the need for the Emancipation Proclamation.

This is a sealing iron, probably 1930s to 1950s vintage. I bought it to go with the beeswax.   I haven’t tested it to see if it works.  It will come apart easily.  I can probably rebuild it if I need.  It’s a nice companion to my 1950s GE iron.

I have not had the time or self discipline to work yet. I have two more excursions this month.

Beeswax and collagraph are calling my name.  I’ve an embellisher that I want to spend time with.  I’m also going to do some more focused study on abstract design.  I think that being forced to commit to design principles in abstract will enhance my work all around.  Once I have the design principles I’ve been using for fifty years reinforced, refreshed, and updated, I hope to use that active information to jump start my work again..

I hope I will have found both the direction and the ability to close out more mundane reality and work.

The dye board was almost clean. I was down to pressing freshly washed silk gauze and organza. Life intervened, again. A chance note on a list brought two lovely ladies to my door. Two, vintage, restored, 1955 General Electric mangles have new homes. A good, 5000º Kelvin, twin tube, fluorescent on a rolling stand, the one I kept falling over, went to a new home.

So, I continue working on my spring cleaning. I did get the silks ironed and put away until I get time to dye and paint and use them for a nuno base. Look at the silk I found in the cleaning. There should be enough to make a very classy tunic.

Then I ran across this off cut.

Good thing I got so much cleaned up. Here’s what the dye board looks like after removing all the things that were stacked on top of the mangle.