Day 13 Let's Eat!

People are always amazed that I’ve lost 85+ pounds and John has lost 70+ pounds based on the photos I share of our meals. Truth is we’re allowed treat days. The trick is to not allow treat days to become treat weeks, months or years.

We’ve been following the 21 Day Fix (A Beach Body on Demand) meal plan for two years now, I’ve adapted the foods we like to eat to the containers and to the meal plan. It works for us, this however, doesn’t mean it would work for everyone.

The containers work very well for me, with my being a very visual person. Imagine that a fine artist and also a visual person, lol! John has gotten so used to it now that if he isn’t sure he’ll ask me where he’s at with his containers.

Some days we go over, and other days we're woefully short of meeting the containers, for me it’s fruit that I have a hard time meeting for my weight bracket. And this is where my coach, and the BOD support groups come in handy. I can share my gains, my loses, failures, and triumphs there and always get tons of positive feed back!

Day 13 Eat the shells or don't eat the shells?

I bought some pumpkin seeds that still have the shell on them and much to John’s horror I started eating them without removing the shell. He’s adamant that you don’t eat the shells, and I’m like but it’s fiber! Whatever dude the shells are high in magnesium which I’m very short on these days and need to take multiple supplements to get my mag levels back to normal range.

The marigold vat is doing fine, I shall post photos of the vat tomorrow.

Day 12 A Little Studio Time

Set up a spot on my table today for a little landscape painting. The idea is to work on the piece for only a couple of minutes each day until the last day of December.

So far I’ve laid down gesso over which I added marks using a graphite pencil and a charcoal pencil.

Still haven’t added the heater to my Marigold bath, I really should get on this as I’m approaching the point of no return and rather quickly.

Day 11 Getting Control of my Studio

I finally got a space on my table cleaned so I can start drawing and painting again, I'm hoping to have some photos later this evening of what comes out of this afternoons studio session.

I still need to add the fish tank heater to my marigold vat, it’s starting to smell swampy but I’m not worried about that at the moment. It should be fine for a couple of more days.

Day 10

Time to put the heater into the vat it’s growing some serious mold after ten days.

I haven’t forgotten, the weekend got away from me. I’ll be back later today to update.

Day 6 or is it Day 7???

I’ve been so busy cleaning the family room that I forgot to post yesterday, and deal with my marigold vat.

Cleaning has been quite therapeutic for me, I’ve been thinking a lot about this past year, relationships, and the like. I need to sit down this evening and write out some thoughts, I’ll be sharing a few of those here over the next few days.

Painting by Laura Jonas, it hangs above my easy chair in the family room.

Day 5 There's Mold!

The vat is a beautiful amber color. Tomorrow I’ll add a heater, and possibly a fish tank bubbler to deal with the mold situation. All is good, I’m not worried, yet anyway.

Day 4

Not much to write about today, the vat is a wee bit darker than yesterday so I’ve decided to hold off on introducing the wool samples to the vat.

Today was leg day in PT (physical therapy) I swear my therapist is making up new ways to make me hurt, sigh. I’m hurting in a good way because I’m developing better muscle tone, and my balance is about 80% than it was this time last year.

I’m off to clear off my sewing table, got an idea for some new pigment painted pieces in the wee hours of the morning that I’d like to start exploring tomorrow.

Day 3 It's Monday!

This is the marigold vat approximately twenty-four hours after I put the flowers in to soak. I’ll be adding the mordanted wool samples later this afternoon.

It’s Monday and I really don’t have much to say at all, other than I woke up thinking today was Sunday.

I weighed myself yesterday, I was 254, which is good it means I didn’t gain any weight during the thanksgiving holiday, but I didn’t lose any either. Am I worried? Somewhat it tells me I’ve plateaued, but I’m also exercising now with a medicine ball and I know I’ve been converting fat into muscle., I’m losing inches but not weight.

The solution is to re-evaluate what I’m eating, I’ve slacked off on the veggies and need to add those back into my meals, and for a variety of reasons. I slacked off due to food exhaustion, I eat the majority of my meals alone and it’s really easy to just not eat a meal and replace it with a can of soda pop instead.

Day 2 Let there be Marigolds!

Time to make the Marigold Fermentation Vat!

I started out with a clean one-gallon bucket (you can pick these up at any big box store that sells paint) and filled it with screaming hot water out of my tap. I don’t use boiling water, but you could use boiling water if you wanted to do so.

I then added my two cups of dried marigold heads, you can put them in a piece of pantyhose if you don’t want debris on your final samples. I gave the marigold heads a good squish in the water and have covered the vat with a plastic plate. I’ll check on the marigolds in an hour to see if they need to be squished with water again, they should sink to the bottom of the vat within a couple of hours.

Tomorrow I’ll add my wool samples to the vat.

Off to get groceries and do meal prep for the week. Two years ago, yesterday, I started my weight loss journey. I’m down almost 100 pounds from 331 pounds. I made a decision to change my, actually our lives that day. He’s down almost 75 pounds. We both have additional weight to lose for me it’s 85 pounds, and for him, it’s another 45 pounds.

More later on how we both lost weight.

Day 1 of the 31 Day Writing Challenge

Day 1 of the 31 Marigold Fermentation Dye Vat.

Today I made thirty-five wool loops for my dye vat, one of which will remain out of the vat as my test swatch and I will put it in a journal later. I’ll remove one loop per day from the vat, photograph it, wet and after it’s been rinsed and dried.

I really don’t have much to say today philosophically speaking, it’s a wet cold day here and to be honest I wish it would snow.

I am thinking about washing the one-gallon bucket I found in my wet studio and starting my fermentation vat. I still need to go to the store to get a fish tank bubbler for my fermentation vat.

Thoughts on Fermentation: You can do the vat one of two ways, fermentation using a bubbler to introduce oxygen into the vat, or without the bubbler. If you do it without a bubbler you will need to either seal the vat entirely with a tight fitting lid which is similar to solar dyeing and you could even use a one-gallon glass jar for this experiment, or you will have to heat it up every couple of days to prevent mold from growing in the vat. Mold will definitely shift the final colors, and quite possibly in a direction that is not desirable.

I realize that using a bubbler is not true fermentation, it is however my method of choice when utilizing a fermentation dye vat. If it were mid summer I would put the vat outside in a sunny area, and let the Sun do its magic, that said however, it’s late fall here and I really don’t want my house smelling like a swamp right now, because very often that’s what a true fermentation dye vat smells like, swamp water.

After I start my vat I’ll make up an alum mordant bath and mordant the wool loops, rinse them afterward and add them to my vat.

Where did the time go?

I’m not sure how it happened but tomorrow is December 1st which is the beginning of two separate challenges.

Challenge Number One is two write a post every day for 31 days.

Challenge Number Two is the 31 Day Marigold Fermentation Vat.

Tomorrow I shall start the vat, I still need to go to the store and purchase a fish tank bubbler for my vat, which will also utilize a fish tank heater.

And finally, create little yarn butterflies for each day of the week to be removed from the vat.

The fermentation challenge will end sometime around January 5th. The wool yarn butterflies will be pre-mordanted with alum.

RSS Feeds

Several you contacted me to ask about my RSS feed, so that you can follow my blog posts via email. I’m working on this issue and hoping to have a solution and soon. Until then you can sign up for my RSS feed over at my other blog where I will be double posting and I know the RSS feed there is working just fine!

31 Day Writing Blog Challenge

Starting December 1st I’ll be posting daily for 31 days, topics include:

• 31 Day Fermentation Vat with Marigolds

• My journey of weight loss, I’m down 85 pounds and have 85 more to go!

• Eating healthy when you could care less.

• For my single friends… some tips and advice.

• My wet studio, I’m reclaiming it after a year of neglect due to multiple injuries.

• Photo of the day, for those days when I have nothing of substance to say.

Another words I’m going back to the format I was using when my blog was with Blogger.com

Save on My Stencils Today @StencilGirlProducts!

Oh the smell of the woods!

I’ve been sorting through the supplies I inherited this fall when a fellow artist went into hospice, and I’m listening to George Winston’s album Forest on YouTube as I sort. My kitchen smells strongly of the woods right now, pine cones, pine needles, and oak moss lichen. I’m in heaven.

In other news the sink in my wet studio is finally functioning again so will be starting the 30 Day Fermentation vat with my dried marigolds on December 1st. Check back soon, or sign up for my newsletter, to see my progress as I get ready to set up the vat, and as I deep clean my wet studio that I abandoned early last spring when my I no longer had water in said studio.

I am participating in a 31 Day Blog Challenge for the month of December with a group of artists, so am hoping posts here each day.

Where have I been?

Sick, apparently what I thought was a minor sinus issue was a major sinus issue! I’m now taking antibiotics, second day, and am already starting to feel tons better.

The blooms have dried nicely and I will be starting the dye vat sometime this weekend! Stay tuned for more photos.

Drying Marigolds

I dried the Marigold blossoms on the warm setting of my toaster oven, which I think may be around 100F for about an hour. I left over night, and this is what they looked like this morning. I’m going to let them dry for an additional day before putting them into water to start soaking.

Marigolds from Fresh to Dried

My fresh picked marigold flowers are resting on a piece of parchment paper and I will place them in my toaster oven on warm. In a couple of hours they will be dried enough to add to a gallon of warm water.

Dyeing with Marigolds

Freshly picked marigolds.

Dyeing with Marigolds

About twenty years ago now I did a special graduate school project where I took dried marigold heads and started a Thirty Day Dye Vat based upon Nest Rubio's article from Shuttle Spindle Dye Pot, Spring 1993, where she did the same thing only with madder root!

The result was a stunning range of reds from her vat and a stunning range of yellows to brassy greens from my vat.

Join me in the next thirty-two days as I recreate this vat using fresh marigolds from my garden (that will be dried first to maximize the color extraction) on my blog for this journey!