I remember my mother's meatloaf with pleasure.  It was delicious, and sandwiches the next day were even better.  With six kids, she must have made enormous meatloaves; I remember when she taught me how, and how I didn't enjoy mixing the eggs and tomato sauce into the meat mixture with my hands.  In my memory, her meatloaf sliced neatly and it wasn't hard to serve myself a nice piece.

In my own family, I'm notorious for making meatloaf that falls apart.  All of us loved the stuff and the sandwiches.  My daughter in law, Kristi, makes a mean meatloaf as well, and hers  seems to stay together, but Phil continues to tease me about my "meatloaf crumbles".  So this last week Kristi was away for a few days and Phil asked me to make meatloaf for him; I had a new recipe and of course hope springs eternal.  It was delicious but it did crumble a lot.  Maybe the trick is letting it sit for a long time after coming out of the oven--not just 10 minutes as advised by the recipe.  Maybe if I put in 3 eggs instead of two . . . .

On the other hand, I did get a commission to make a Pentecost stole for the friend of a friend.  It's always a pleasure to work on liturgical pieces--the fabrics are lovely and the symbolism, compelling.  So I had some beautiful iridescent red raw silk, and my quilting machine, and lots of paint.  I'm very happy with the result.  I handed it off to my friend this morning--one more project completed.

So, Fathers Day--remembering fathers and grandfathers.  Went to brunch with family and toasted "all the fathers, present and absent," ate well and enjoyed ourselves.

Last week I got a notification from my long-time email carrier, Suddenlink,  saying that because I no longer have a regular account with them, they are unilaterally discontinuing my email account.  They didn't say when, except that it would be permanently ended at the end of July.  Well, rats.  I've spent much of the last several days notifying people of the new email address (it's meruit42@gmail.com if you haven't received the message).  You can also leave a comment or message on this blog and it will get to me.  I've tried to notify most of the people who usually correspond with me, family, groups I follow.  But I don't know if all the messages went through.  If you're one of those people, send me an email at the new address above so I know you've got the new one.  Please!

Then there's the challenge of notifying all the business accounts, banks, insurance people, etc.  I'm still working on that.  For the time being, I'm apparently still receiving emails at the old address as well, which is kind of reassuring.

On a happier note, I spent this evening at the ARTS Center in Fayetteville, taking part in a "conversation" with other artists about our works related to the Willow Springs Bridge.  This was fun--I went over with friends Barbara and Nils, and there were more than 50 people there and about 40 artworks on the walls.  Now, Fayetteville is tiny, smaller than Eagle Lake, but this event had really captured the imagination of artsy folk as far away as Houston, and I think one piece was mailed from out of state also.  No jury, no judge, no competition, and we all took our work home after the conversation.  I had a lot of positive feedback about "Hunters Moon--Fayette County," which was the only fiber wall hanging in the show.  Everyone brought snacks and beverages to share, along with much good will.  There was a lot of photography, paintings, a metal sculpture, a pillow with a photo of the bridge on it, Barbara's beautifully colored paper and fiber piece, and a number of poems and a short story read by the authors.  Made some good contacts and came away refreshed.  Then to Barbara's house for supper of potato soup and salad, all right out of their garden.  A very good end to the day.  I went home with tomatoes and a jar of home-canned beets.

Tomorrow is Pentecost Sunday, with church service by the lake and a nice luncheon afterward.  I have Margot's Moroccan Carrots marinating in the fridge to take as my contribution (I just had to check on how many Rs there are in Moroccan--had it right the first time.)  Late now--good night all.

On Friday I drove up to Huntsville for another dyeing day with friend Pam.  We were particularly interested in using madder this time--in the past we've produced pinks and light rust colors but it's been disappointing, particularly when we see gorgeous madder-dyed fabrics from Asia.  Pam had researched the preparation process, and I had treated a bunch of cottons with castor oil soap, tannin and alum according to the very detailed instructions in her big notebook.  (This took weeks; fortunately there were places in the process where it was OK to store the treated fabrics until I felt like looking at them again.)  We had a nice Mexican dinner with friends, turned in early planning to spend Saturday at the dye pots.

So Saturday morning we simmered madder root pieces in a big kettle, and had to decide what "final" preparation to give to my mordanted fabric pieces.  The guy who wrote the instructions preferred using dung, citing hundreds of years of this tradition.  My sources of dung are limited--I could have saved the cat's poop, I suppose, or tried to poop into a plastic bag myself.  I don't have access to the traditional cow or horse or sheep dung.  Pam and I decided to use chalk instead.  OK, so it's the less preferred choice, but it's clean, available, and far less embarrassing.  So we made up the chalk solution and dumped the fabrics in there to soak while the madder simmered.  We also made an indigo pot, opened some jars of dye left over from the Folk Festival a month ago (old madder, cutch and something else I've forgotten).  Pam had a new yellow dye which produced a lovely golden hue, quite different from the bois d'arc we usually make up.

This little towel, embroidered lovingly by somebody's mother, is now much more attractive in golden yellow than in its original white.










In order to get green, we dye something yellow, then dip briefly in the indigo pot.  There's no particular control here--the shade we get isn't very predictable.

This machine-lace cotton dresser scarf turned out a pretty greenish-blue.  I know exactly how I'm going to use it, too!  You'll find out in time,.

Then the madder pot was ready.  Pam had some wool yarn to dye, so that went in, then my prepared pieces.  I had done machine-stitched resist on some of them; others were just plunked in whole.  We left them there all day, marinating away.  In the meantime, we mixed up some kakishibu solution and used that to treat some silk scarves and a big piece of linen damask that I brought.  Pam's new dyeing acolyte, Bill, joined us and enjoyed working with the kakishibu--it was fun to have another person in the process. The treated pieces were put in bright sunlight to dry and develop color.  Here's the large linen piece after sunning yesterday and today, and being washed and hung to dry; I'm very pleased with the result.

And here's the madder-dyed cotton with stitched and gathered resist.  It's really a bit browner than this photo suggests, but the color is nice and intense.  I left the rest of the madder pieces soaking away when I came home, as I'll be back in Huntsville later this week and can claim them then.

I think this is a real success.  Maybe it would have been better with the dung--I don't know.  I have an idea it wouldn't have been worth the trouble.  If any of my readers have used dung, I'd enjoy hearing the story.