Missed Opportunities

I have embarked on a natural dyeing project. There is something gorgeous about naturally dyed material, as if the essence of the original plant or animal shows through. I’ve long wanted to learn to do this. With summer here, it seemed a good time to begin.

The process of marrying color to fiber usually involves using a mordant, a substance that helps the chemical process of dyeing and creates light-fastness. In the case of cotton and natural dyes, there are three processes that greatly aid success--scouring with washing soda and detergent, using a tannin mordant, and using an alum mordant. All need heat for a length of time. Even with the ideal dye kitchen, each process takes a good half day to a full day for a pound of cloth or yarn. And dedicated pots, utensils, measuring devices (a gram scale being necessary for accuracy), a good place to clean and rinse, dispose of liquids, and hang dripping cloth.

Although these dyes and mordants are from nature rather than synthetically created, it doesn’t mean they are safe for humans or cats to ingest or breath the dust of the ground stuff. And the smell of some of the cooking dye materials ranges from unpleasant to downright disgusting, depending upon your nose, so the location of the simmering pot is important to consider.

Once again, however, there is the illusion of fun in the thinking of the project and its results, and there is the fact of doing. Like weaving, this is labor-intensive work. It helps to have a strong body that has a lot of endurance. It also helps to have a mind that is into organizing the doing of things. Both are currently lacking to a certain degree in this body-mind.

Nor do I have the ideal dye kitchen. I have a potting bench outside with a Coleman stove. In the storage shed that has mostly been taken over by cats, I have a locked metal cabinet where I store utensils and dye stuff. There is a lot of carting things about. My water source is a hose, which means there is chlorine in the water. The clean-up and disposal situation presents even greater challenges. If diluted, most materials can be poured around acid-loving plants, but there are only three. Pouring the diluted liquid on the ground or down the drain are the other options. A few days ago, however, I turned to watch Oh-Oh drinking first from a bucket and then from the puddle. A little bit now and then surely isn’t a serious health hazard, but over time these things can add up. Fiber artists who didn’t know to be careful early in their careers are susceptible to bladder cancer and other dire health problems. And even though I don’t think these things need to enter the physical system, I don’t know that either Oh-Oh or I have the knack of conditions not affecting health. I’d just as soon not expose us to the experiment.

I do know that my body is reacting to the materials, as benign as they are and as careful as I am about handling them. My eyes swell a bit and my throat gets a little sore after I have handled the mordanted cloth.My body protests too in the carrying of buckets and buckets of used mordant water into the house to pour down the utility sink. This effort isn’t fun.

It has become the same with the weaving. I acquired more tools to make it easier, but it hasn’t worked out that way. The warping wheel I purchased to ease the task of warping is inconsistent in the tension and I haven’t been able to sort it out to work the way it ought to. It’s a great idea, adapted from industry, and it means one doesn’t need to invest in spools and and a spool rack and tension box, all of which take up room in the studio. I think it simply needs some tweaking, but I find I’m not interested.

Both weaving and dyeing take time, physical effort, and a willingness to problem solve, not unlike gardening. “Failures” are certain. In this time in my life when I prefer to simplify, I have insufficient ambition to engage in labor-intensive complex endeavors and the figuring out of how to overcome obstacles.

“It’s too late,” I mourn to a friend. “I don’t have it in me any more and I feel so deeply sad to let this go. I really wanted to see it through.” She listens a bit and then offers wisdom. “Missed opportunities,” she suggests. Yes. There was a time I had the ambition and stamina, but chose to do other things. Now they are gone.

“When I think about clearing out my studio, selling the loom, maybe getting a small one with only four harnesses, maybe doing without, and passing on the dye stuff, I feel relieved.”

“What do you see yourself doing?” she inquires.

“Making big stitching projects,” I reply without hesitation.

“Do you see how your body lights up when you say that?”

How simple. How elegant. I can breathe easier.

Still, there is resistance to the letting go of unrealized ambitions. I bow to the resistance and let mourning arise.There are layers to this, an unexpected depth of subtle concepts. This is a point of choosing between happiness (as conceived by the mind) or truth. This is the point of celebrating with gratitude the missed opportunities.