as promised: roy g. biv

I think I may be ready for Nancy Crow's class next week. Behold:

^That's about 90 yards of solid color, 100% cotton fabric in at least 1-yard lengths. "Do NOT," Crow says, "bring marbled fabrics." Well, some of the greens are a little mottled because I'm not wildly skilled at hand dyeing. And I tried doing some hand dyeing in an effort to be somewhat economical about this extravaganza.

^Red, orange, yellow. In the back, that lovely wood-rose color I like so much (and because the store had a clear run of 6 shades). Tan to brown, and not enough gray. In my usual palette, you can never have enough gray. The pieces in the front are the hand dyes (Rit), the ones on top and in the back I bought.

^Green, Blue, Violet. I tried to buy blue violet and red violet, but in life they're closer in tone than in the picture.

Plus (not shown) 4 yards each of black and white.

Plus, Crow says, "bring bold graphic commercial prints. Do NOT bring fat quarters. We will be working selvage to selvage." (For those of you not up on the jargon, a fat quarter is a half-yard cut in half to yield a piece roughly 18 x 22 inches.)

Ai-yi-yi.
"Bold graphic commercial prints" is so not my usual thing. So I'm packing pretty much anything for which I have yardage and -- ever the iconoclast -- some fat quarters. Because in a class with Carol Bryer Fallert, she said that if she needs a bigger bit of something, she just pieces it. "And," she said, "no one has ever called me on it." If it's okay with the woman who has many, many more awards and accolades than cats have lives, who am I to argue?

The class is next week. I'm very interested to see how it goes. I've been away from color for a long time. Not out of anxiety, but because I think color is so seductive, it can overwhelm, or overcompensate for, other aspects of the work. I like the way a limited palette forces attention into the other aspects of design. Nancy Crow, on the other hand, asserts that she uses a palette of 500 colors. This is going to be so interesting.

in the summertime

I'm pumping my word count -- 12,000 and a little bit. Of course, I started with about 8,000 for the most recent NaNoWriMo exercise, but still, I'm chuffed. 12,000 down, somewhere between 38K and 53K to go, depending on how things shape. For example: The Great Gatsby is about 50K. TC Boyles' The Women (which is on my nightstand now and which will likely stay there since I'm finding it tedious) is about twice that. There are about 250 words to a printed page.

Beau, on the other hand, has about all he can manage just working on his tan.

as I was saying

Remember that the blog has been languishing since -- eek! -- April. Check.

Think that it might be well to get started again, howsoever modestly. Check.

Remember how to sign in. Check.

Sign in on the sly while my collaborator is gone walkabout (shh, don't tell Stella . . . yet) in this heat. Check.

Post a recent work from her String Theory series because when she finds out I've been blogging without her there will be sulking. And in this heat.

Realize that it has taken way too long to remember how to do this, but then it was never one of those so-called intuitive processes in the first place. Check.

Consider announcing that I've quit my job and that before looking for another, I plan to finish a draft of the novel I've wanted to write since I was 14. Not this particular novel since I was 14, but a novel since I was 14. [check?]

Mention that I have been collecting a huge pile o' fabric in anticipation of taking a class during the week of the 18th with Nancy Crow who is some kind of genius and who requires this. Promise "more about this later." Check.

That's probably enough for now.
Did I mention that it's hot?

Check.