Cherokee Syllabary Cherry Silk Scarf

Here's an interesting new design.  I made this silk scarf using syllables from the Cherokee language.  I won a benefit auction for a used working Nacho Cheese heater, and converted it to a soy wax heater.  I keep the was there all of the time, and when I am planning to do soy wax resist batiking, I flip the switch.  Like a double-boiler the water heats the wax to a low melt, and I don't have to fiddle with the dangerous microwave in my utility room-slash-art studio.  I rarely work in reds, but was making a peppermint swirl tiedye tee for a custom order and had prepared the soy wax resist lettering in advance.  This is made using analine dyes of 3 blended shades of red, so it has shading and is not just a solid vat red.

Most of the clothes in stores is made from cloth which was vat-dyed.   The cloth goes thru a batch of dye and is highly agitated (although not mad ) in order to achieve a consistent monotone of color.  If you've a friend who tells the same joke over and over, you can appreciate how I feel about solid monotone colors.  It is just boring.  It is done because vat dyeing looks better when fabric is dyed before the clothing is constructed.  Or, only after clothing is constructed does nonvat dyeing "look right."  Basically, its easy, quick and cheap to vat dye... if you're doing millions of, ie, yards.

Much more time-consuming and thus expensive is anything ombred (ohm-burred) where the colors shift like watercolor, or tied and dyed as in tiedye and mudme.  This scarf was time-consuming because of making each syllable and its pronunciation.  (Not all Cherokee Syllables are there.  My chart shows 13 rows of 6 columns and some columns have 2 syllables as in Ga Ka and Dla Tla.).  The dyeing itself was rather simple compared to some dyes I use which are prepared with exotic stuff like inner bark, heartwood, fungus, bugs and the like.

This sweet cherry scarf is being listed at Island Retreat on etsy.  You will find a link on the right, perhaps to this very scarf if it is listed.

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Arms Of The Angel

For ten years I worked for the Cherokee Nation until last week.  In 2000 I was practicing law when a friend who worked for newly-elected Cherokee Nation Principal Chief invited me to apply for a post in Policy, Planning and Development.  I was hired on and worked as Planning Analyst V,  Strategy Researcher/Writer, and then Environmental Programs Researcher/Writer.  Last week I got the bad news (at 4 a.m. one morning) that my mother had leukemia.  By the next day, the security of a steady paycheck and a predictable routine was overshadowed by the realization that each and every day of life is profoundly precious and irreplaceable--- thus we have a chance to savor it.

Since I resigned, I've gotten over the feeling that the days are flashing before my eyes as if under a strobe light.  Would it be awesome to be a professional artist, and let creation flow thru my fingertips becoming bright cheery warm tactile quilts???  Several years back I wrote an article for fiber artists, "Don't Quit Your Day Job," about the economics of art and how we live in a wage-world of globalism where the markets are seeking a level, and dollars are draining from us on the deep end, toward  shallower countries where labor is often still uncommodofied (my theory anyway) by a shift abandoning subsistence farming as a fall-back.  Here I am not taking my own best rational advice.

 I'm a quilt collector.  Its a rather bad hobby left over from a time when I lived in a huge house.  Now I live in a modest home, and quilts bulge from the cedar chests and trunks, linen cabinets and stacks.  With no great camera at this moment, I'm promising some day that you'll find a gallery of the seven-pointed start quilts I have acquired over the years.

So these days I am now in the financial care of my beloved sweet smart funny talented husband, Dennis Tibbits who is a Speech Pathologist, educator, business man, musician, dragon slayer, and Cat-Daddy.  I am beginning to get legal work already.