Fabrics To Dye For Blog

Adventures in Carpentry

Here we go---yet another shot at understanding the wonderful world of textiles. You probably have all figured out by now that I don't know very much about this sort of thing. There was a lot of quilting going on in my family when I was a little guy, and all the womenfolk in the family sewed, but that's the norm if you're from rural North Georgia. Add that to the fact that I possess a certain seniority on life, and have actually watched several of my aunts sewing on leftover 19th century treadle machines to make utilitarian garments intended to be worn by assorted nieces and nephews, and you can figure that I know a little, but only a little, about the kind of stuff that Jenny does. With that said, I won't go so far as to say that I'm baffled by any of the hobby, but I must admit to the occasional bout of confusion.

That brings us to the subject of this little tome; A New Experience in Fabric Painting. Jenny paints fabric for a hobby, and sometimes for sale. She's good at it, and she does some neat stuff. People sometimes pay her for her work. I painted some fabric once, when I was in second, or maybe third, grade. I was not paid for the results of that particular escapade, but I digress. We aren't talking about me---we're talking about Jenny or, more specifically, about painting fabric.

My somewhat curtailed career as a fabric painter involved the creation of an artistic work while the material was resident on the person of one of my friends. It was not, even then, an effective way to get the job done. Jenny took a somewhat more rational approach to the topic and asked for the creation of a couple of painting tables. Painting tables, huh? No big deal, right? I've had artsy friends most of my life, and a lot of them were painters. Some of those easels are pretty big, so this must be the same sort of thing. Well, maybe not. It turns out there are a couple of different kinds of painting tables; open and closed (or at least that's what I'm calling them---I'll bet they have real names but I don't know what they are). I was told that a couple of tables were needed, and the back yard would be a fine place for them to live. OK, sounds fine to me. I'll call my son, the carpenter, and he'll make a couple of all-weather fabric painting tables. No sweat, GI! 

Patrick came over. Jenny and Patrick designed the tables, and Patrick built them. They are well crafted, and substantial, and BIG. The one that I'm going to call the covered table is four feet wide and sixteen feet long. The open one is much smaller, only four by nine feet, but there are two of that one. They don't crowd the back yard much, because the back yard is really big, but they're large enough to be a hazard to navigation during lawn-cutting season. They do seem to be multifunctional---the labs have taken to using them for shelter on warm days. (This is Texas. We have warm days in March. And February. And every other month of the year. Don't tell the Global Warming folks.) Birds seem to like them. Airplanes and helicopters flying over Texas hill country are using them as map references. There's all that, plus a lot of people have taken to staring at them as they drive down our street. We haven't had any painting table-inspired wrecks yet but I figure it's only a matter of time before we do, what with all that rubbernecking going on. Nobody's asked what they're for, but it's bound to happen sooner or later. When it does, I'm going to tell 'em we're trying to contact space aliens with it and just wait til they see the antennas we're going to put up! Or maybe I'll tell 'em we're doing it to combat global warming, or maybe to forestall the dawn of the new ice age that's just around the corner, or maybe I'll just tell 'em we're trying to counter the ongoing threat of wooly bear caterpillers to mankind and therefore to civilization as we know it. I'll tell you how it all turns out. 

Oh, and Jenny still hasn't painted anything on the tables, though I'm sure she will some day. Ain't life grand?

   hasta bye bye,

      phil

Technology; Ain't It Grand?

Technology; Ain't It Grand?

Well, here we are; another beautiful day in rural Texas. The sun is shining, the birds are singing outside the window, the Labradors are dozing on the patio, and Jenny is steaming. Not steaming as in vegetables, not steaming as in putting a crease in my trousers, but steaming. That would be mad, to those of you unfamiliar with the term.

It wouldn't be out of place for you to ask yourself "What did he do this time?", since I am an adult male and am therefore more than capable of annoying those around me from time to time, or maybe even more often than that. The answer is: This time it wasn't me! I didn't do it! I'm clean!

Now, Jenny doesn't display unhappiness often. In point of fact, she's one of God's more consistent and even-dispositioned souls. It takes a lot to get her riled. She's riled. It's a technology thing, you see. Fabrics to Dye For exists because of technology. Jenny paints fabric, dyes fabric, designs fabric, and quilts too, but the primary business is one of selling stuff to other people who are similarly inclined. That means e-mail. That means telephone calls. That means FAXes (which, in turn, means more telephone calls; think of the way a FAX works). That means, at the end of the day, a substantial reliance on The Goodness of Technology.

Technology ain't cooperating these days.

We need to talk about this because it impacts you---our customer---too! Sometimes it's tough to get through to us. We know this for a fact because we hear it often. Why, you might ask yourself, is that the case? Why can't you get through? Therein lies the tale!

First of all, there's the internet. This is an internet business, so having a functional internet is desirable and, perhaps even, dare I say it; imperative. Our internet service is functional, but it has a mind of its own. It's always there, or at least it's usually always there, but it isn't always as fast as it could be. It's a wireless service, and the sending antenna for same is less than a quarter mile from this very spot, atop one of our community's water towers. A straight shot, as it were. It's like that little girl who had a little curl; when it's good, it's great. When it's bad, it's horrid! The problem is, you can't ever tell when it will be good or bad---it just sort of comes and goes. It's our misfortune and none of your own, to turn the tables on an old trail song, but it's still a problem, and mere mention of the internet in any context will bring clouds to Jenny's horizon on even the best of days. (I'm pretty sure it's birds pooping on the antenna way up there on that tower, but maybe it isn't. I've been wrong before, although it was only once and a very long time ago. Still, my money's on the birds.)

You'd think that would be enough, birds or otherwise, but then there's the phone. It's a business phone because, after all, this is a business. Telephone technology isn't very tough, you know. The basic principles of it have been well-known since the 1880s. The hardware has improved by leaps and bounds since then (don't send your sarcastic comments to me---I'm being optomistic here!) and the telephone as an invention is relatively bulletproof, except that ours doesn't work too well. It's a selective thing---some of the lines work all the time, but there's one that works pretty much when it pleases. Jenny's had The Big Phone Company out to have a look. The Big Phone Company will assume responsibility for the phones as far as the structure and their box, at which point it becomes an FTDF issue. Fair enough. The Big Phone Company has checked things out and assures us it's not their lines. (Not unexpected, that.) That, in turn, led to a call (on one of the functioning lines) to The Little Local Phone Fixer Uppers. Their conclusion? It's not in the building. It's a Big Phone Company Problem. After due consideration, I've come to see it as a paradox, worthy of inclusion in Joseph Heller's classic Catch 22.

This is pretty frustrating all the way around, and we know it annoys you folks too. We apologize for it. We're working the problem---we really are. Meanwhile, every cloud has a silver lining, and Jenny says this whole technology thing has one too. When things were all said and done, the mess inspired us to go out and buy the first season of "Green Acres" on DVD. The stars of that show were also trying to deal with technology in a small town; Kindred spirits, as it were, and something to laugh at and to keep us sane. Remember when they got their new telephone, and it was hooked up at the top of their telephone pole so they had to climb the pole to use the phone? 'Nuff said!

But don't mention internet in Jenny's hearing, please!

  hasta bye bye,

     phil

Musings From Fabrics To Dye For, or What's Happening Here Anyway?

Howdy, Ya'll!

It was an easy enough concept, at least it seemed so at first consideration. Meet the girl, fall for the girl, bring the girl home to Texas, live happily ever after. Of course, the girl has a business too, which means The Texas Boy has to learn about same. It's the right thing to do. It goes without saying, of course, that the business isn't anything The Texas Boy has ever been exposed to except in an extremely periphial manner, so there's this tiny learning curve. Boy, Howdy; is there a learning curve. Still, the girl's here, and so is the business, so here we go:

First thing, right off the bat, there's The Sidewinder Issue. What, you may ask, is a Sidewinder? It's a fair question, and one asked more than once by The Texas Boy, who happens to be somewhat thick regarding such matters. After all, there are sidewinders aplenty in Texas. Some, but not many, live in extreme West Texas. They're a couple of feet long, give or take, and have vile dispositions and fangs. They shimmy on their bellies like a reptile, to steal a phrase from an old Ray Stevens song, because they are, after all, reptiles. The other kind live mostly in the big cities of the Lone Star State and make their living by lying, cheating, stealing, and generally defaming the good name of a relatively innocent reptile. It's a stretch of sorts to understand how in the world rotten people acquired the name of a largely innocuous snake but they did, not that it matters any, because this ramble is about neither snake nor scoundrel but rather about a sewing implement of the same name; The Sidewinder, by Wright.

I'm told it's a nifty little product and makes winding a bobbin much easier than it would otherwise be. The Girl That Came to Texas has a bunch of orders for them, and a lot of customers anxiously anticipating the arrival of same. ("Same" being the bobbin winder and not the girl!) Well, they're here now, and The Girl is working herself to a frazzle making sure they get shipped. That's good news, or at least I'm told it is. All of you folks who ordered one should be seeing it in a couple of days, which beats the dickens out of the couple of months everybody was thinking it was going to be. Progress of a sort! (Pack and ship. Pack and ship. All we ever do around here is pack and ship!)

Why, you might ask, am I telling you about bobbin winders in my first installment of what may, for better or for worse, turn into an ongoing series of disjointed rambles about almost anything you can think of? It's hard to say, except that I wanted to help out and maybe explain that the Sidewinders are on their merry way to your house, presuming, of course that you ordered one in the first place. That being accomplished, I shall now move on to even greater endeavors, like trying to pursuade Jenny that it's really ok for me to buy a Ducati.

Meanwhile, I do have one question to ask---a parting shot, if you will. What's a bobbin?

  Hasta Bye Bye,

     phil