A Big Sack of Bugs

I haven't written much in the past couple of days, both for the blog and to friends and family, because I've been terribly homesick and lonely. Every time I tried to sit down and peck out anything the tears would start and then it would all go downhill from there. 


Having a migraine kind of stops you from feeling sorry for yourself and just makes you wish you were dead, so while it may only be a lateral move, I can at least say I'm not sobbing. 


Today was actually okay. Instead of sleeping in until the glorious late morning hours and prancing around dusting things and drinking tea at home, I hauled my cold and miserable ass out of bed and went in to the studio for a colour theory workshop taught by the fabulous William Hodge. 


You can never take too many colour theory classes. It's fascinating and invaluable and you always learn something new. William is, in a way, responsible for my residency. He's also blunt and hilarious and knows colour inside and out. TAKE ANY COURSE HE OFFERS BECAUSE HE IS AMAZING. Did I mention I like him? 


So I got a brutal migraine about an hour and a half into the class. Someone gave me some advil and it helped take the edge off, but it's pretty hard to work with colour when light itself is trying to kill you. There were some upsides:


1. William Hodge is awesome for a lot of reasons. One of them being he gave me a god damned bag of cochineal. Just picked it up on a trip to a cochineal plantation during a vacation, heard I liked natural dyes and thought I might like half a pound. No big deal. 


2. Spending at least half an hour in the solarium's tropical plant-filtered air does a body a world of good. Two goldfish live there whom I will name, befriend, and consider pets for the duration of my time here. 


3. Due to my raging migraine, three people took pity on me and offered to drive me home. 


Let's get back to the cochineal. I had planned on using natural dyestuffs from the neighbourhood for my colour duing this residency, but let's be honest here. When life gives you free cochineal, you grind up those bugs and dye things red. I've got unlimited access to cochineal, walnuts, horse chestnuts, rose hips, osage orange, and a number of other potential dye plants. Obviously cochineal isn't a plant, but it'll satisfy my need for red and flesh (ha!) out my palette. 


Again, I wish this was a dyeing residency and not a weaving one! I made up a couple of fine cotton warps yesterday to get the ball rolling with the weaving thing. The Christmas sale is coming up and I want to weave some scarves and colour them with natural dyes and eco-printing. I've barely done anything on cotton, so I'm very much looking forward to testing it out. 


William mentioned one of his students made a ten-step colour triangle using natural dyes. Insane? Yes. I want to do that too.