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The Innovator from Cineastas on Vimeo.

My friend Drew sent me this video. He drove up from Cincinnati (Norwood actually) for a visit back in December and noticed a folded piece of paper I had lying around. It was something I had done a couple of years earlier and he asked how I did it. “Oh, it’s really easy. I’ll show you!” I said. We proceeded to spend the next hour and a half in silence, except for the sound of crunching paper, trying to replicate the pattern (badly). Every 10 minutes or so someone would break out laughing when the absurdness of the situation occurred to them – a group of people intensely folding paper, in silence, on a Friday night!

The orange piece of paper in the video is what we were trying to make. The video is about Mike Friton, a freelance shoemaker, weaver, paper sculptor and innovator who worked with Nike for over 30 years. As he described his processes I noticed we had a lot of similar interests – shoemaking, folding paper into 3-D forms, weaving, I used to run track, and I also have a Bernina sewing machine. If I was an older white guy, I might want to be Mike Friton. How great would that be?

The photo up top is the original paper from a few years ago. Our more recent attempts looked like that, but less crisp, like people with severely underdeveloped fine motor skills had folded them.

New to the Natural Dye Collection – Dark & Stormy. Inspired by the drink (rum and ginger beer – yum!) not Hurricane Sandy, which has left us with grey skies and rain for the next few days. As with the rest of the Natural Dye Collection, the fabrics are hand dyed in a multi-step process using plant extracts and minerals, so shades and patterns vary with each item. Check out the Dark & Stormy line at The Made & Found Shop.

Pictured above are the Dark & Stormy Travel Kit, Travel Case, and Makeup Brush Roll.

So I was pretty excited to pull these pieces out of the dye pot the other day.  With a bit of playing around I’m getting more depth with this kind of grey marbling effect.  The pinks and purples are pretty, but I’m really liking the hint of darkness and extra dimension in these yellow pieces.

The last photo is a piece I dyed last summer.  I was at the farm picking random plants and pretty much anything I could get my hands on so it was kind of haphazard.  I don’t remember what plants I used and I don’t even know the names of most of the plants out there.  I’m going to have to keep better records this year.  Dyeing with plants is much more involved, but the results are a lot less predictable.

Okay, so it’s been 2 weeks and not a few days, but I have been busy.  Lots of natural dyeing with mostly plant based dyes, except cochineal, the pink one (bugs!) and sewing.  More to come in the next few days.

Working on a few things that I hope to be able to post here in a few days.  Here is a picture of my old sewing machines.  The Pfaff was rescued from a high school I believe.  It has half finished profanities scratched into it.  The image of a home ec teacher catching a student defacing their sewing machine with a pair of scissors makes me laugh.  Not out loud.

A few block print postcards I started a looooong time ago.  I’ve spent too much of my life obsessing over details and not enough time finishing things.  I think I will need to spend the rest of my life obsessively finishing everything I’ve started.  Here is the first of many.  I love sending and receiving real handwritten mail, and even more so if it has nothing to do with weddings or Christmas.  So these are my most un-Christmasy, unmatrimonial postcards.

In Montevideo I picked up a kilogram of this beautiful, super soft wool from Manos del Uruguay.  No idea what I want to make with it, but I think I’m going to dye it.  Back in October I took a natural dyeing class at The Workroom and learned the basics of natural dyeing, after some very haphazard, experimental dyeing with plants in the summer.  In the second photo is a racerback tank I made with some of the dyed fabric in the colour I’d like the wool to be.  Hopefully I don’t end up with 2 giant felt balls.