dear mom,

I am touched by all the heart felt words of encouragement I have been receiving lately! Most of the time I don't talk about the negative stuff much because I honestly try not to waist my time thinking about the negative stuff.  I'm normal, and enjoy a good ol' venting session, and I have my share of family squabbles. When it's all over, I brush it off, and center my thoughts on the positive.  I strongly believe that affirmative thoughts are more powerful than negative thoughts, and our thoughts become actions.  I keep myself on track with positive thinking by recognizing what I am grateful for, visualizing the future, and I remain open to receiving achievements.  Starting my own business is a whole new experience for me and I realized this week that I don't need to know exactly how I will make it work, I just need to believe it will happen.  So cheers to thinking happy thoughts! 

 Having a pets around the house has become a constant reminder of happiness in my life.  I love my little rabbits, Timmy girl has the biggest bunny personality I have ever meet.  I took these pictures of Timmy one evening after she was out playing in the backyard all day.  I carried her into the house and set her down on the floor, she hopped right up on the couch, plopped down in the middle, and stretched out.  As if she had a long hard day and needed to relax on the couch.  I grabbed my camera and told her how much I loved her.  The quilt she is laying on is an old ragged quilt I have had for years,  it's nothing special but definitely a nice burst of color.

Dear Mom,

 

This is a Folk Fibers  line sheet for the month of January.  The quilts are all in the final stages of being completed, so they are not for sale yet.  I am hand quilting some with Japanese sashiko thread, and machine quilting the others by using a long-arm quilting machine.  

I enjoy hand quilting so much, but it is becoming a dying art.  Mostly due to the time and labor required for completing an entire quilt.  I find it can be daunting especially if the quilt is a queen size or larger.  One of the reasons why I love making baby quilts is because it is a justifiable size quilt to hand quilt, and I love hand quilting!  The hand stitch adds so much to a quilt, with the slight irregular stitches, along with the care and attention, it creates a one-of-a-kind quality that is treasured and passed down.  I consider them heirloom quilts.  

I found a source in town that rents a long-arm machine by the hour, allowing me to have full control over the entire process of making my quilts!  I am very fortunate to have found this opportunity because it is rare. Now days the majority of folks piece the tops of their quilts and then have them "serviced" by somebody else.  It is costly and gives up the actually quilting process to a computer aided machine.  No fun, and most of the time the results appear to have a cookie-cutter look and feel.  There are a few reasons I have decided to use a machine on some of my quilts.  Some of the simple lines and patterns achieved on the machine can be tasteful in moderation.  My finished quilts will have a clean and modern feel to them.  

dear mom,

Today I feel "busted".  A word I picked up from a seven year old boy named Jaxon.  I was picking Jaxon and his little sister Lola up from school one day and Jaxon jumped in my back seat, buckled his seatbelt, and profoundly stated that "my car is busted"!  What he meant is my car is in poor condition through long and hard use, and lack of care.  I told him, "yep, we bought it like this because we couldn't afford anything better, and don't believe in having car payments".  The response was a little over his head but who knows maybe not. 

I don't usually use this blog to share my times of distress, but I feel like being real and talking about the hard times today.  I swear I have felt all the emotions already of trying to start my own company and basically it feels like I am starting a company with 10 people but 9 people never show up to work, so that leaves just me. There is so much to juggle and I am constantly having to edit my schedule and remain hopeful for higher productivity tomorrow.  Out of survival I have had to prioritize my life and forgive myself often for neglecting maintenance around the house.  All my sunglasses are cheep and always bent up and crooked. Our lawn hasn't been mowed in over 6 months, we are getting flyers at our door step for lawn services.  Our lawn mover is broken.  Our Christmas tree is at least out of our house but hasn't made it all the way to the curb. Grey rabbit has started to pee on my rug, a lot.  The big worry I have recently is the fact that I need about a half acre of land to farm, but not sure when or where or if that will happen this year.  I could go on but that's probably enough to relate to what I'm feeling. 

Chap is a great husband, but he has also developed into a great source of knowledge on start-up businesses. His main advise has been to keep creating and making.  He said that the biggest mistake new business make is investing all their time in the administrative details.  It's so easy to be distracted by all that stuff because it is important.  Though, the actual work produced is the backbone, and if the work is strong than people become interested, and the branding will evolve naturally.  

The truth is when I feel stuck I look to my vision of the future and think about my mortality.  I remind myself that I  believe in what I am doing, and feel passionate about growing natural dyes and nontraditional quilting. In the botanic dye field I have only heard about a handful of pioneers,  and I admire them all.  The majority of them are all 60+years, no longer living, or located in India.  This fact gives me the sense that I have a duty to fulfill, by educating and sharing the craft and folklore with my generation, and the ones to follow. 

dear mom,

I gathered up some "Folk Fibers" inspiration today from a great junk store here in Austin! Now back to quilting!

dear mom,

Cochineal is probably the first dye that comes to mind whenever I think of Mexican natural dyes.  I first dyed with it in college and remember the brilliant hues of red it produced, as well as the horific smell of the dyebath.  Living in Austin, I have access to this dye source all around me!  I remembered seeing the cochineal insects all over the prickly pear cactus last year but I didn't make note to exactly when they appeared, so I asked "Mr. Smarty Plants"!  

"Ask Mr. Smarty Plants" is a free service provided by the staff and volunteers at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, located here in Austin.  I am very impressed with the thorough answer I received!

My Question:  I am a fibers artist that would like to harvest the cochineal bugs from the prickly pear cactus. I would like to know what time of year should I expect to find the cochineal bugs around the Austin area?

The Answer:  Although I've often seen the fluffy white evidence of the cochineal bugs on prickly pear cactus, I guess I hadn't really paid attention to when they were most abundant so I checked with an entomologist, Valerie Bugh, and here is what she said:

"The females live inside the white fluff and squishing their bodies is what produces the red dye. The highest concentration would be when the fluff is most numerous and each piece is rather big and clean looking, indicating mature females inside. Because it is a slightly water-resistant waxy substance, the white stuff tends to last a long time, but I've seen old remains that are dried out and wouldn't be very productive because the insect inside is dead. The time of year for the best harvests will vary depending on rainfall and temperature. If we have some very hard freezes, that will delay the insects' development, as will heavy rains or scorching summer droughts. I suspect that conditions are more important than dates."

Howard Garrett's The Dirt Doctor.com page on the cochineal says that females are harvested when they are about 90 days old.  Considering that mating and egg laying would happen when the weather is warm enough, say mid-March in the Central Texas Area, it would be early to mid-summer before the females would be ready to harvest (mid-June to late July).

You might be interested in reading about how modern cochineal farmers operate currently in Oaxaca, Mexico in the article, "Red Gold—Raising Cochineal in Oaxaca."

Do not be confused by the red color here on the cactus, that is the prickly pear fruit that the cochineal is feeding off of.  The cochineal is located inside the white waxy coton substance.  The liquid/blood of the insect is what produces the color.  There are so many different ways to process the insect after harvesting, all of which produce variations of color. 

One of my goals this year it to cultivate and harvest a small batch of cochineal.  

 note: photos on this post are not mine,  I pulled them from a goggle image search.