Something new for the infinitely strong women I know!

Today is International Women's Day.
Tomorrow, I am stocking a little something for the women... circle or 'infinity' scarves!
I always try to do something for the mamas each spring~ we work hard and we rarely treat ourselves..

These pretties are hand dyed (by me) and can be worn in so many ways.
I am a big fan of a pretty scarf and have dyed up a few for myself, as well.
Each scarf is 14.5" wide and 67" long (that is 5.5 feet!).
The scarves are lightweight cotton jersey, easy to wash and wear!
The names for the scarves have all come from a lovely hymn/ song "Called by Earth and Sky"
The scarves will be stocking at 9 am (est) at FRESH.
(Fresh is a group shop I share with a bunch of amazingly talented, strong women... take a peek!) ♥

Tidy Up Gnomes are fun little guys and gals made for keeping your child's boots (or mittens) together and reducing clutter.  (Now if only I could hire some laundry gnomes!).   My daughter insists that they *are* related to the Underpants Gnomes, which I can neither confirm nor deny.  All I will say is that they make tidying up FUN!


Suitable for children age 3+ with help for the needle and hot glue-y bits!
Materials

• Wooden clothes pegs (the old fashioned kind)
• scraps of fabric, felt, old sweaters etc.
• embroidery floss & needle
• hot glue gun
• beeswax polish (optional, directions for making HERE)
• bits of curly fiber, cotton fluff or yarn
• scissors
• hooded cape template 

 To PRINT TEMPLATE: right click, choose 'view image' and either right click + print or copy, paste into your preferred image handler and print at 100%

1)  Once you have gathered your materials, use your beeswax polish to seal the pegs.
This is optional. You can see a sealed vs. natural peg (right side) below.
Set them aside.
2) Print out and cut out the cloak template.
Measure the template against your clothespin.
As they vary in size, you may need to trim the template.
The hood portion (v & w) should meet easily around the 'head' of the peg as pictured below.
3) Once your template is sized to your pegs, cut out your fabric.

Any fabric will work, although the thickness of wool felt (or felted wool cut from recycled sweaters etc.) provides a more attractive cloak (and  I am not a huge fan of acrylic felt... but anything will work!) that will last through more handling.
4) Thread your needle with 3-6 strands of embroidery floss.
Make a running stitch from x to x, leaving a 2-3" tail on either end.
 Do not tie off or knot, you will use this thread to gather the cloak.
Customize your gnomes with fabrics, embroidery, colours, patterns, hair dos... whatever it takes to make tidy up time a little more magical!♥

Please ask permission for use.
Finished gnomes are yours to do with as you please~ credit to the author is always appreciated!

My daughter is sensitive.
In every sense of the word.


Kids like my daughter are sometimes referred to as out-of-sync (The Out of Sync Child). They can also be 'highly sensitive children' (The Highly Sensitive Child).
And they make for sensitive, out-of-sync parents!


Last week I was reading an old blog post from when Rowan was 3ish.
About how she would have a meltdown because her socks were 'fligged'.
She still does this, although 'fligged' has slipped from her vocabulary ~ which is too bad, it was a perfect word for what she was feeling!

When I talk to people who are not 'sensitive' in the neurological/ temperamental sense (like my mother) it seems odd, lax or ridiculous to be a little panicked that your child has outgrown the one style of sock that didn't evoke tantrums for the last three years (and to be hoping for an early spring and the arrival of barefoot weather!).

But talk to another sensitive person or parent of one, and you laugh and commiserate over that perfect pair of socks, or the long list of foods that look too much like worms, or the stockpile of the favourite cereal that makes your mornings go more smoothly.


Several weeks ago we had an incident at skating lessons.
A boy was wearing a scary mask.
I cringed when I saw it, and then calmly (oh-so-casually!) mentioned it to Rowan.
She looked at it and declared it 'funny'.
Five minutes later, as the boy roared and chased the girls, I had a six year old wrapped around my neck in terror.
All the other children were enjoying the game.
For whatever reason, two mentions to the coach, one a direct request that the child take off the mask for the lesson, went unheeded (by the coach).
My daughter could not set foot on the ice.
I had to ask the boy's mother to remove his mask so Rowan could participate.
She did so, kindly and quickly.


And I was left feeling as out-of-sync as my daughter.
It was the right thing for me to do.
But I did it with the awareness that most of the other parents have no idea what it is like.

My daughter's sensitivity makes her kind and compassionate.
Creative and artistic.
Animals are drawn to her and trust her because she, like them, leads with her feelings.

It also puts her out of step with her peers.
It leaves her easily overwhelmed and easily hurt.
It saps her confidence and raises her anxiety.

It is tough.
We are on the verge of moving to homeschooling for at least the remainder of this school year because she has reached her threshold.
We are excited and terrified.
It is one more step out-of-sync, but it feels just right. ♥

It is no secret that I love colour and I love dye things pretty colours.
I kind-of-sort-of want a poodle~ a white one, just so I can dye it!

I am also blessed to have good friends who share this passion (and who also go out in public with multi-coloured hands on occasion...) that I regard as colleagues in the tribe of mom/artisans.
And I decided to ask them some questions about their dyeing, to get their perspective on our shared passion/compulsion for colour!

First, I asked Kristi of  Tickety Bu ~ hand dyed bamboo luxuries for home and family...
 What do you dye? Any plant based fabric. Seriously, I'll dye just about anything.
How long have you been dyeing? If I told you that I'd be giving away my age and a southern gal never gives away her age. Seriously though, I've been dyeing for 13 years, professionally for 5.
Do you wear gloves? If not what colour are your hands most often? I wear gloves all the time. I occasionally will see something I want to fix and start poking around in the dye with my bare hands, and it always seems to be the blue colorways that call to me that way. My shirts tend to be spotted with pink, apparently I get a little too crazy when stirring up the pink.
What is your favourite shade of green? Chartreuse. All the others pale in comparison to the fantasticness that is chartreuse.

Is there one colour that you really dislike working with? why? Honestly, I hate working with brown, which is a darn shame because I love it so. I keep at it though, mixing new browns in search of the perfect neutral shade. It's my white whale.
What keeps you inspired to dye again each time? I don't have to search far for inspiration. Being a visual person I automatically either see colorways in things or I see numbers in things. I'm always going back and forth between the two, math on one hand, color palettes on the other. Math, color. Math, color. It's a little crazy.
What was your worst dye spill (you must have had one?) I am too anal retentive to have bad spills and I keep a set of kitchen cloth around to catch the little ones, but I have poured a color for one bin into another that was already complete. A new colorway was certainly born that day!
What is your favourite colourway that you dye right now? Katie because it's so different in the dye bath than when it's all dried and done. I'm fickle though, I don't keep one favorite long.

Then, I asked Angela of Wild Coconut Wear (formerly Wild Child Woolies) ~ dyer of diapering wool, applique artist and embroiderer....
 What do you dye? Mostly wool interlock fabric, sometimes plant fibers like cotton or bamboo.
How long have you been dyeing? for business, about 5 years.
Do you wear gloves? If not what colour are your hands most often? Nope. If I'm LWI (low water immersion) dyeing I'm probably sticking my hands in there multiple times so probably a rainbow, but it ends up just looking muddy. Right now they're kind of blue/gray. The cuticles are always the last to hold color so that makes me look like I don't wash my hands or something, or maybe have been working on a greasy car.
What is your favourite shade of green? I like bright colors, so probably in the lime green family.
 Is there one colour that you really dislike working with? why? Hmm...probably red because it's hard not to end up with pink.
What keeps you inspired to dye again each time? The curiosity of wondering what mixing new colors will look like.
What was your worst dye spill (you must have had one?) Oh I spill lots of dye! I spilled yellow dye solution on the dog last summer. Recently I spilled about 1/2 a jar of blue dye in powder form all over my washer/dryer. I'm constantly getting dye on my clothes because I don't wear an apron, either. I never seem to learn my lesson about considering what I'm wearing first.

And finally, I thought I would answer the questions myself as a silk painter and dyer for Beneath the Rowan Tree...

What do you dye? Primarily silk, but I began as a cotton dyer and I also love to dye wool and bamboo.
How long have you been dyeing?  I have been dyeing professionally for 5 years with many years and many home and camp dyeing projects before that!
Do you wear gloves? If not what colour are your hands most often? Never. I have chronic eczema as a result, but I need to feel my fabric.  The blue seems to stay the longest~ I once had to meet a family about doing a funeral with one entirely blue hand. And when I have been needlefelting, the dye works its way into all of the little holes in my fingertips, creating an interesting pointillism tattoo effect!
What is your favourite shade of green? I love celery green~ a washy watered down chartreuse, I suppose!

Is there one colour you really dislike working with? why? Purple.  I have searched high and low, blended and mixed and I still can't get *quite* the shade of violet I am after.  And purple is very touchy on silk~ heat, amount of acid, tides and the alignment of the planets (not really...!) all seem to change how purple comes out of the dye pot on any given day.
What keeps you inspired to dye again each time? The choas and the beauty of the colours.  My method means no two pieces are ever the same, and while I know that colour theory always applies, it is still a wonder to unfold a finished silk and see the colour playing across the fabric in a new way every time!
What was your worst dye spill (you must have had one?) I am very careful when silk dyeing, because I do it in the kitchen.  But I did have a nasty spill when dyeing cotton~ a large container of deep brown dye was knocked off the basement table INTO a pile of clean laundry~ my good work clothes.  thankfully I was doing LWI and had not added the soda ash (which creates the binding reaction) and was able to wash most of it out right away!
What is your favourite colorway that you dye right now? I have favourites that I love because they are reliable, ones that I love because they are not.  But right now I am enamoured with a new colorway (to be named), pictured below.... orange and blue do wacky wonderful things together!
I hope you enjoyed this insight into the colour addled minds of three dyers! 
I would love to do more interviews about various artistic processes... any volunteers or suggestions?
Add them in the comments!♥♥

Really?
'Cause I am exhausted already!

I have a few blog posts in the works, and some guests and features coming up... but until then, you are stuck with *me*.
Here's the happs:
~working on orders AND getting some Sweet Somethings™ done up to list this week!
~ I am doing a play with the community theater in April (acting), so I am beginning to think and speak in character (a silly fun British farce).
~ We have decided to homeschool our daughter for what will likely be the remainder of the school year and we will see where that takes us and how we are doing (more on that to come)~ so I am working on that transition and all it entails (yikes!)
~ It is Lent and then comes Easter,always a crazy time in the church.
~ And on Friday last I fell in love (that is how Rowan puts it, my take is more that I was temporarily insane!) and brought home guinea pig #3. Lemon is a sweetie, but three pubescent boars is no easy feat when it comes to introductions, adjustments and the pecking order.  Right now, they are all having 'dates' in a common neutral space to learn to get along.... yes, my life includes guinea pig dating.
So blogging is on my mind, but between curriculum, piggies, felting, dyeing, memorizing (and did I mention the sinus infection?!) and oh, my job... it is tough to find the time to pull it together!

What are you up to? ♥♥