That’s a Wrap
There’s three things I set out to do in the last three months: bandanas, socks, and cards. October, November, December. I wanted to end the year by being the “featured artist” and send all my patreon members a thank you. That said, when you’re faced with the end of the year, you have to embrace that it’s really the end and you’ve ran out of time.
I want to take a few sentences to give you a brief explanation, as well as make a promise that things are on their way. My explanation is that I’ve been flying to Kentucky once per month to help my sister with childcare while her husband is deployed to Poland. While I thought I could handle that timeline, I didn’t anticipate one major thing: kids get sick. From my first visit in October, I’ve been constantly sick. R.S.V., COVID, the flu, possibly a cold, sinus infections and every possible illness, I’ve had it in the last three months.
My projects themselves proved difficult as well. The overarching problem I ran into is just that natural dye, as a material, is an artistic process itself. One wrong step in a series of time and labor intensive steps can lead to the color not bonding or producing an unintended color. That’s why I love the process of natural dye— it’s inherently contextual, medicinal and artistic. However, perhaps in my cold-medicine infused state, I made major mistakes with every project. Thread counts weren’t high enough, I used heat when I should have used ice, or I used the wrong tannins (did you know there are dark and light tannins? I did not.). Each mistake was costly, mostly in time. Natural dying is already a process which takes days at its fastest, weeks if done properly. If done wrong, you’ll see how weeks easily became months.
It’s been a humiliating learning experience, turning out the wrong things after money, labor and trust. What’s even more frustrating has been having to leave every month for around ten days, and then spending weeks getting my strength back. That said, all three projects are only one step away from being completed (even though all in all it took 10 more steps than I anticipated getting here!)
Here’s a summary: I’ve been makin bandanas, socks, and cards. These are my patreon benefits, and were also for the monthly artist feature in December. I’ve been delayed because I’ve been sick, but all of those benefits will be at your door in January (I’m so close!). After January I’ll be pausing my patreon to recalculate and hopefully launch something fun and new for 2023. Thank you all for you patience and support, even though I haven’t been able to deliver any products in the last 3 months I am thankful for the time to experiment, fail, and try again. Even though I wanted to deliver a special present for the holidays, looks like I’ll be delivering a special present for the new year instead!
