My Etsy Shop is open for business once more!

Finally.  I have begun to put things in the shop.  Yesterday some hand-dyed yarn and a group of buttons, and there is a pincushion, maybe a second one, to come.  Then there are some small pieces I did in the late summer . . .  When I get a chance, I have some hand-dyed fabric to sort.

But not today.  Today we are making the round of the bookstores with The Adorables!  Wheaties for breakfast.

I'm here:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/studio508.  Would love to have you drop by.  Bring cookies.  I have tea.

Hand-Dyed Thread

After an amazing Fiber Forum (EGA) retreat with Carol Soderlund at the Atlantic Center for Art (New Smyrna Beach, Florida), my love of dyeing has been revived.  Hand-painting threads and fabric is now set for "game on" status. As I have an embarrassment of riches in cotton weaving thread (a beautiful textural addition to many of my own pieces), I added these to my Etsy Shop. I have loved and used them for years, but when I began dyeing them, I liked them even better-- the colored ones overdye to form color families, the natural whites dyed in deep, rich colors . . .

I have one more thing to take care of before I start dyeing in my normal obsessive manner, and that is to present a program to the Knoxville Chapter of EGA next week.  Cynthia has been my indispensable guide and editor in setting up the Power Point Slide Show that is the heart of the presentation.  The program discusses the eighteen months the FreeStylers spent studying Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn's "In Stitches" DVDs, with our samples as the centerpiece.  We have been pressing against the boundaries of traditional embroidery in this year and a half, and the colorful and exciting results are quite worth sharing with other stitchers.

After the Tuesday evening presentation, the bottles of dye will come out.  Carol's class, besides being immensely inspiring, touched on the way to organize and manage materials and supplies for dyeing, as well as introducing a much-streamlined process from the one I have used in the past.  She has blogged about the class here.  Check out her very colorful blog for pix of the class and notes about her own work and teaching schedule.

Etsy Store

How this came about:  On the Friday after Thanksgiving as I was walking down the hall to the bedrooms, my foot made a terrible and very loud popping noise.  The doctor said it was "probably" a stress fracture, but we wouldn't know until the 22nd when he re-X-rays the mess that is my foot.  In the meantime, my new best friend is The Big Black Boot, knee-high and serious business.

BFF and I have been sitting still a lot since then, and it finally occurred to me that  I've been meaning to open an Etsy Store for years, and now might just be the time.  Today, when I put some thread in the store, I believe I became an Etsy shop keeper and am up and running.

The thread, which is cotton cone thread that weavers use for making soft wearables and household items, became my go-to thread for texture a number of years ago.  It is soft with a small amount of texture to it, and a perfect size for beefing up lines or mixing with other threads in textural work.  I looked at my yarn cabinet one day and realized I could never never in this lifetime use it all up, so I am winding it into 30 yard skeins and seeing if other stitchers like it as much as I.

There are also boxes of stitched work that will gradually move onto the shop walls, but that takes time and a certain amount of mobility to gather all the parts in one place to mount the pieces.  Later.

In the meantime, check out Studio508 on Etsy, if you are shopping there.  The Studio508 shop will probably change a good bit as I move things around in the studio here in Woodstock.  For right now, though, studio changes will have to wait on healing.  I have a good bit of hand-painted fabric that might be nice in the studio, though . . .  Hurry up, foot!  We've got work to do!

*****UPDATE*****  It is, indeed, a fractured heel, and I have been given stern instructions about staying off the foot.  This is the time to practice deep breathing, mindfulness, and to work in my sketchbook(s), a time of ingathering for later work.

Best wishes for the Holidays, be well, and to all my fiber friends, happy stitching!