a land of bright accents

I've been on vacation in Egypt.

Now, there's a short sentence for a long, long story, but all the details don't belong in my dye blog. I do want to record a few thoughts about the colors of Egypt, though.

The colors of Ancient Egypt are well-known to anyone interested in the historical period: garnet red, turquoise and lapis blues, jasper green, and the yellow of sand alongside the yellow of gold. When you stand in the temples of Karnak and Luxor, you have to look hard to find them these days, as the years have scoured away most of the beautiful colors. When you do find a gaily-painted area of ceiling, you have to stretch your imagination -- how did this place look when every wall and column was so colorful? It is easy to see why Westerners in the 1920s looked at this beautiful architecture and carried the lines and images home to become part of the Art Deco movement.

The colors of modern Egypt are quite different. People wear browns and greys and blacks. The big cities are rather grubby and the air is hazy with pollution. But as you stand on the corner, watch for the bright accents: the older lady dressed all in black but for her cherry-blossom-pink head scarf. The man in the faded old gallibeya with the rich burgundy turban. The girl with the elbow-length gray headscarf and skirt... with slits on the sides revealing her brilliant turquoise underskirt. As you drive along a street choked with traffic and piles of concrete rubble from a construction side, suddenly you come upon a vendor's cart piled high with brilliant orange and red carrots and beautiful pale green cabbages the size of basketballs!

There is still beautiful color in Egypt. Just look for it.

the best-laid schemes

After all those veils, I took on a dyeing commission for a local dance troupe, Ashar Dance Company. They wanted some fairly specific yardage for a fusion piece they plan to present in April. I don't want to say too much about it as I don't want to give away their surprise, but let me just say this: producing this yardage was one of the hardest projects I've ever attempted.

I had initially estimated that this project would take me about ten hours. It took twenty-two hours. Needless to say, I didn't charge them nearly enough! They got a great deal. But I still feel kind of bad, because some of the silk did not turn out they way they wanted.

A section of the silk I was dyeing for them was to be light golden brown, like a sandy beach, but I was specifically warned to stay away from anything too yellow. No problem, I thought, and ordered Golden Brown from Dharma Trading.

No problem? Two problems:

1. The usual problem of getting a light or pastel shade in any of the Procion MX dyes. Even starting with a rule of thumb of a very low concentration of dye, I couldn't get a good light shade of this color. The lighter I went the harder it was to get an even tone, and this even with fairly religious stirring.

2. Golden Brown tends to the orange side on silk. Sample after sample came out closer to Florida oranges than to Florida beaches. I tried to correct it by adding different blues to the mix, but adding blue also made the brown darker!

My virtual dye friends over at Paula Burch's dye forum were very helpful and supportive, but in the end I actually had to admit defeat. I was out of time and the silk had to be delivered. Rather than sand I delivered caramel. I'm still a bit depressed over the whole thing. But now I know: browns are just hard.

Monterey Bay

Monterey Bay
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

I was trying to evoke the various blues and greens in the water around Monterey Bay... I'm not quite there yet... but I'm not going to quit trying!

Fruit Smoothie (sold)

Fruit Smoothie (sold)
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

Great veil, horrible picture, off to live at Phaedra's.

Lime Twist

Lime Twist
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

Mojito-inspired!

Blue Snowcap

Blue Snowcap
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

The long white edge moves like a ribbon when you dance with the veil, and the blue is palest next to the white.

And no, there's not a straight crisp line between the white and the blue. I don't do "stripes" and straight lines. Go see a silk painter.

Good Earth (sold)

Good Earth (sold)
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

I do try to make earth-toned veils because it seems that if you don't like Crayola primaries or the cyan/yellow/magenta brights, you can be out of luck on a veil. I still remember when our "beginners II" class clubbed together to buy A'Kai veils -- by far the most requested color was a coppery brown.

(And, of course, this one sold already. So I'll have to make another soon...)

Sunspot II (sold)

Sunspot II (sold)
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

The Sunspot mixture obviously has a lot less red in it than the Firedance, but here's the odd thing... it has the same yellow dye in it, though the Sunspot yellow looks like a golden color.

Firedance

Firedance
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

These fiery veils are great attention-catchers.

Raspberry Lava

Raspberry Lava
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

Gotta love that tasty raspberry color!

Pink Comet (sold)

Pink Comet (sold)
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

This is the ombre I did with fuchsia dye, pulling the silk gradually out of the dye bath. In person it's a bit easier to see that the all-pink end is a deeper shade than the lightest pink.

This design was semi-accidental... when I created my resisted I accidentally used a short end instead of a long end. But I think it's cool anyway, because in dance this could make for some interesting veil wraps and sharp accents could be made with the white tail in a dark club.

Teal Mist

Teal Mist
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

So I took photos of all these veils I made recently. On the camera's LCD screen they look wonderful. On the computer they look blurry!