Category: weather

transfer test, vocabulary words

January 9, 2008


Jan 9
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The day started out this morning all misty and mysterious, raining a little, and very foggy.

Img_3192_2Img_3193_2

About noon a front cracked through like a whip, and blew the fog and clouds away, leaving a sharp, bright sparkling afternoon. Gusty wind has been whisking around the house all afternoon.

I was thinking about transfer paints and iron on things today cleaning stalls, and came up with a couple questions. The first was whether I could mix the transfer paints to make the palette for the TIF Challenge. The paints on the paper look different from the transfered colors, so there is a certain uncertainty involved. Then I wondered if t-shirt transfers worked the same way, sublimating ink onto the fabric, or if they used a different mechanism. And then I remembered two pages of transfers I’d made in a class years ago using a color copier. How did they work?

So I started with the TIF palette. I mixed up what I thought should be the colors I wanted and tried them out. I think I got pretty close, so I will be able to use the transfer paints and keep the TIF challenge in line with the media of the moment. The t-shirt transfers do not use the same mechanism to get the image onto the cloth. Transfer paints have to dry on the paper, and heat makes them sublimate (go directly from solid to gas) and the color-carrying gas is absorbed into the fabric.

The t-shirt prints are a thin layer of plastic that peels off backing paper when ironed onto the fabric – the color is carried on a separate layer and can be peeled off with a fingernail. Which could be an interesting exploration at some point – distressing the iron-ons – but isn’t what I’m after. The transfers from the color copier work the same way as the t-shirt transfers, but the layer of plastic is thinner and the heat required to set it is higher.

Now I wonder if I had access to a dye-sublimation printer, if it would work directly on polyester fabric, or if images from it would iron onto the fabric better.

I wonder if you can paint transfer paint directly onto polyester and iron it in, so to speak.

Dec 16

December 16, 2007


Dec 16
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Anyhow – here is today’s snowy postcard. I managed to resolutely stay inside all day long. It was sybaritic.

It won’t last either. Tomorrow is a full day, with ponies and etc. and then Tues is a last circus day, with a mad race home for Alice’s school solstice assembly.

snow day

December 3, 2007


Dec 3
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

While there are many snowflake images out on the web, most are copyrighted. This is a real electron micrograph of a snowflake in false color, courtesy of the US Department of Agriculture and therefor in the public domain. I printed it out onto silk and stuck it to a patchy white background. It is a weather report for the day. Snow, freezing rain, more snow on top, and panic in the streets. The first snow day of the year. Really they give us the first snow storm off just to ease the freak-out factor, I think, because after this their standards for canceling get stricter.

So the girls had the day off, and Aerin even forgave me for looking at the only tv station that utterly failed to post any cancellations and waking her up and shoving her out the door to catch a bus that was not going to come. Alice made a gingerbread house with the next door neighbor, another neighbor came over for costuming and stayed for lunch, gingerbread house eating and sledding, Aerin went out and found some people sledding and joined them until her jeans were sopping wet and her legs were blue and it was dark out. It was a pretty gratifying day.

days go by

November 21, 2007


Nov 20
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I managed this one yesterday, which pleased me with its simplicity. The brown velvet is from a long long time ago, when we used to play at swords and swashbuckling. It is scraps from the Queen’s Winter court dress.

Alice needed me more than the blog did last night, or I would have posted it then.

I am vertical and staggering about, better but definitely not well. I can feel the coughing lurking in my future, although now it is only phlegm and snuffling.

We had this for weather:


first snow

so it was fine to be inside drinking chicken soup and watching old movies.