Here I Am Again!

Well, I'm finally back.  My silk order came in and I had to play a bit.  In between, 2 more of my cousins died, one 89 and one 36.  It's been a tough month on the Dennisons.  Ma is still hanging in there (she's 95) and is still in good spirits.  She is fascinated by my dye experiments, and she tells me stories about the old days when her grandmother would dye clothes before handing them down to the next user.  Ma has got a lot of common sense, and can make some good suggestions.  By the time you reach 95, you've tried most things and learned a bit about the right way to approach them.  If I listen to her advice, I figure it will save me a lot of trouble.  I thought she would bust a gut though when I told her about getting fabric rusty on purpose and burying it in the compost pile.  But after she thought about for a while, it seemed to make sense and she started making suggestions on things to try.  I told her about a friend printing with cut up avocado pits, and she said she wanted to see one.  So I did one.  A photo of it will be on the left side of this page, entitled Avocado Pinwheel.  She has a big old Podocarpus tree and I told her I picked some berries from it to dye with and she wasn't sure the berries would do much as they had never stained her clothes.  Well, the print turned out kind of nice.  It is on the left also, entitled PodoBerries.