Mother Earth and Green Man

The counterpart to Mother Earth is the Green Man.  The embodiment of nature as sentient beings.  These are both redesigns of ones I had done previously.  I wanted a couple that are more similar and complement the style of each other better.  The smile of the Green Man makes him look like he has a secret.

Waxing

When waxing an item I like to use a colored, flexible cutting board to keep the wax from getting all over the table or the other side of a shirt.  These two pictures show how the color will show through differently after the wax is applied.  It makes it easier for me to tell where I've put the wax already as well as if it soaked in properly.  If the wax is too cold it will look different.

Mask

Another new design.  This one is an angular mask.  I know, I'm stating the obvious.  But it seems odd not to describe it some.

It is kind of a cross between (or interpretation of) a few different tribal masks.  My grandparents were in Niger in around 1970 for work and brought back several masks.  It is also influenced by Native American masks and totem poles.  Some of the other new disigns I worked on this summer had a lot of flowing hair so this was a good way to balance it out.

Now that we have our kitchen remodel done enough that I can start cooking in it (and the dishwasher is hooked up and works!) I promise I'll do more blog posts.  I've been busy doing new designs, I just have been bad about sharing them.  Someday, I'll even take the stove off its wheeled cart.

Well, that isn't what I expected

Some days things just don't turn out the way you expect.  Both shirts were dyed in chocolate brown dye.  The pirate one is what I would expect.  The ninja one is a nice olive green.  The dye was from the same container.  I thought maybe the mixed up dye solution had sat too long, but I had a problem with the fuchsia not taking in batch of black and purple at the same time.  The black was a greenish gray and the purple was blue.  All looked good, but weren't what I was trying for.

The best guess I have is that it is related to the water softener and how long between recharging and dyeing.  We moved in April and there is hard water here.  The softener recharges based on the date rather than volume of water used.  But I'd dyed since we moved and it turned out so I didn't think much of it.

I think the next time I'm going to do a batch of shirts I'm going to have to either manually recharge the softener or order some add in softener.