China Bolillos and other daydreams

Here's what I want to do:  I'll ask my friend to record a slow motion version of the China Bolillos video.  It's a 26 second long video on You Tube, and I've watched it hundreds of times. It runs too fast, but I've woven a ribbon that looks like the one in the video.  I am hoping to put together a loom for this type of weaving.  It's a beautifully simple loom, or maybe it would be better to call it a braiding stand.  I can't wait to find out what else you can make with this type of stand.

http://youtu.be/HVzepUWIgkc  China Bolillos

What else would I do today if I spent time in my studio?  We are having some extra special guests for Thanksgiving Dinner next week.  I ought to be getting ready for the holiday, doing my baking, cleaning and removing clutter.  Dyes- experiments with bright colors are on my mind.

Feathers in aniline dye -this is going to be so cool!  My hens need more space; they have been biting each other too much.  I have tried to improve the situation, but I need to do more.  So now I have a lot of white feathers.  I'm going to start with red food coloring, citric acid, water, and about 10 minutes at  180 degrees F.  It should be easy to do in the microwave...

There is also the Walnut Dye project.  I want to figure out how to use my walnut ink to print on cotton fabric.  I don't know anything about stamping or painting on fabric.  I wish I had bought a book on it that I saw the other day.  But the book focused on modern materials like acrylic fabric paints, and professional looking dyes.  Too complicated!  I want a book about mud cloth from Africa.  So far, I can't find it.

How do I apply my black ink to the fabric?  Do I need to thicken the ink to make it go on without feathering? (Is this a pun?) I have no idea.  But I do have some plain black fabric paint from Walmart, so maybe I can practice before I open the walnut ink.  Last time I used my walnuts, it didn't go as planned - the color on cotton was permanent but much too pale.  Eventually, my goal is to print black leaves on the edges of very thin cotton scarves.  I'm going to make my own "yazmalar" : Turkish veils.  Someday, I'd like to make my friend, Nermin, famous in the States.  She showed me how to crochet a very simple lace edge for a veil.

I hope to write a tutorial for Nermin's lace in another blog post.  The key idea is that you crochet using a knitting needle to hold all the picots.  Nermin uses her smallest size knitting needle so the little picot loops turn out all exactly the same size: tiny yet easy.