Geek! How I Spend my Free Time

I was halfway through a tango when it began. A muddled lead into a waltz twinkle broke my concentration enough to hear the siren's song. Moooo.... come see me, Mo, come see how I turned out. . . I fought through the urge while I practiced my cha cha fan and had no trouble ignoring the call during the rhumba, my favorite dance. It was the salsa that did it. I can't salsa to save my life, except the basic step and this funny throwing turn that my favorite dance partner does with me while we laugh hysterically the whole time since it's the only thing either of us know in that dance. I had to go, I just had to. I knew it had only been 4.5 hours, instead of the "at least 5 hours, even if I don't wait the 8-10 recommended" I'd promised myself. I was almost sucked in by the samba line dance, and had already cha cha'ed with my coat on with a girl looking lost. Samba line dance be damned, I must GO!!

To my intense relief, the dye had picked up the yellow dye (at least enough to turn the color from purple to the brown family, the desired result) in the final hour... or, 5.5 hours since I'd seen it last. (a friend watched the pot the last hour of cooking so I could go do kid pick up) I should note, based on my earlier rant, that this is *not* a soul sucking brown, but rather a beautiful brown that defies description, vaguely referring to itself as brown for lack of a better english word to describe this brown that edges somehow into purple, but can certainly not be called such. Its purple nature is brought out by the failure of the silk gauze to dye the same way the wool did. The absolute purple of the silk gauze had me sighing somewhat smugly, "this is why we do color samples." On the piece that had felted wool on it, the colors go together nicely (I should hope, since they were both in the same dyebath) but they are distinctly different. I'm assuming the yellow left in the water is the yellow that failed to absorb into the silk.

So, it's 10pm and I think... hey, I don't have the kids, I should dye something! Internally, I'm taunting myself, "that's it, art geek, go dye some stuff. You got no kids, you're dressed up for dancing and looking good, why don't you spend the next 2 hours sweating over a dye pot and trying to keep fabric dye and acid off your clothes instead of going out and getting a life." Hmm... good idea, I think I will do just that. And I did. My hands are covered in dye (of course, gloves are for wussies!) but I did manage to keep my clothes unscathed. I'm rather amazed by that.

The light green skirt was asking for it, and the black tank top, suitable for keeping me from sweating *quite* as much in the oven they call a dance studio, (which, naturally, wasn't actually that bad today since A) it wasn't warm outside and B) I was actually dressed appropriately for the heat) was begging for an acid splash right onto that tender exposed cleavage. I could have been somewhat less appropriately dressed, but it would have required me being topless and wearing white. I actually was wearing white earlier in the day, dressing without any real thought about what I'd be doing today: dyeing. I did manage to keep *my* dye off me, but walked into the dye room at the exact moment my friend was shaking a jug of dye whose lid was not as secure as one would hope. The blue explosion resulting was such an amazing surprise that one could hardly jump fast enough to give it credit. The two blue spots on the right side of my white jeans are worn with pride, since one stride later and somewhat less fast reflexes would have had me as smurflike as my friend ended up being. While annoyed that she got dye on me after I managed to keep from getting it on myself, it's hard stay peeved at someone who has blue teeth. I hereby declare those jeans (getting too big for me, and with loops chewed off by my crazy australian shepherd some years go) as dye and/or paint jeans now, and there we have it. There's something intensely satisfying about getting color on white clothes. It's so incredibly apparent.

Ok, my hour is up. The wool turned the exact shade of purple intended, and the silk is an infuriating (if lovely in its own right) blue. We'll see how it looks tomorrow morning when I have the pleasure of getting up at the butt crack of dawn to rinse out the dye (mine, and smurfgirls)... likely, still blue. Stupid silk. What again was I thinking to set up a dye bath on the night before the only sleeping in day I get every other week? GEEK! Yes, it's true. When I choose art over sleep, there's something deeply wrong.