Luna's Baublebilities

First let me make a ritual apology for my pitiful offering of Halloween photos.

I only have three from Halloween because of the stupid Energizer Bunny. I'm not sure if it was the batch of new Energizer batteries I had or if my charger had gone awry or what, but I was only able to take two to three photos at a time with both of my sets of batteries before they would die. I totally missed getting photos of Molly's great Gypsy(?) costume that she created. It was a strange hybrid of Tia Dalma, Captain Jack Sparrow and the traditional Gypsy thing. She looked prety wild and she decorated the back entry way with draped silk, candles, incense and sundry small eclectica to make the place look a little mysterious. We hung a sign out front that said "Treats, Fortunes, Destiny" with an arrow pointing to the back door. It sort of freaked out her 5 trick-or-treaters, which is what she was trying for.

After Halloween, Bry went out and bought me some Duracell rechargeables and a new charger so I'm happily back to getting hundreds of shots in before the juice runs out. Hooray!

So - here are photos of Maxx scooping out his pumpkin and in his Halloween costume. He would not communicate with me about what he wanted to dress up as this year so when I was out shopping, I picked up a Robin Hood costume. It looked quick, easy, cheap and involved a sword. I got home, made the costume and he refused to wear it. "I want to be a Pirate!" he said. Great time to tell me, kid. You can be a Pirate next year.

As you can see from the photos, he was sullen about the whole thing until after the third or fourth house when he realized that the costume magically enabled him to get candy from all the neighbors. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a photo of the big smiles upon his return home. Curse you, Energizer Bunny!









Here are photos of the classroom at the Arts Council where I set out my wares for Studio Tour. Another ritual apology here - it is pretty durn tricky to get a good photo of all these satin and velvet scarves. The photos just can't convey how lovely these scarves are. I love it when people walk into my "booth" and say "Oooooh! How beautiful!" or "Wow! This is so colorful!" It makes the backache from dyeing, washing, detangling and ironing completely worthwhile.











This is my favorite scarf of the season. The photo can only give a hint to how incredible these colors are together on velvet! It was a bit of a longshot to put these colors together because browns are often very chancy on silk.

Since these fiber reactive dyes are created for use on cellulite fibers, the ultimate outcome of any given color on silk, a proitein fiber, is unknown. Browns are created using some mix of at least three primaries so they tend to shift much more than a primary or secondary color will and the shifts are more unpredictable. Most browns I have used end up looking muddy or sallow and not beautiful at all.

But Molly and I desperately wanted to try a Peacock color scheme for this pattern. We debated for a few days, studying peacock feathers in various lights and we agreed that the most important thing was to get a good, rich brown with at least two shimmering purples and a brilliant teal/blue. Peacock feathers actually have a predominant green flash but I didn't want to risk putting brown, green, purple and blue all in the same scarf. Plus, scarves that are predominantly green simply do not sell. I decided to try 4 colors - a brown, a purple, a specially mixed pale orchid and a specially mixed blue/teal. It was an astounding success. I'm ordering more of this design today so I can make a few more of them for Etsy and my other galleries. And, I'll be honest, one for myself.

Now I have to run and get some long neglected housework and budgeting chores done. Velvet silk painting tutorial coming toorrow or Wednesday!