Wednesday Catch-up

This is the henna I did on Monday evening. This lovely lady made me a wonderful dinner of eggplant marinara with rice noodles, with a warm compote of pears, golden raisins, and vanilla for dessert. Then over tea we listened to kirtan on her iPod as I did the design.

Monday was the school field day. A lot of fun for all involved, although I got too much sun. At this appointment my arms felt like they were on fire, so while she was cooking dinner I doodled a design on my arm in henna to see if it would help it cool down. It did.

Tuesday was the school picnic day. It looked like it might rain, so I took the students out early. It was a little chilly in the morning, but by lunchtime the sun had come out. I even went inside to get my parasol for extra protection. Oddly enough, I don't have any idea where a good, non-expired bottle of sunscreen would be in my apartment. I'll have to go get one at the store before traveling to the beach in June.

Today my friend from Japan will come to do origami with the students. I've been getting to know him better slowly, bit by bit, and as I learn more, I like him more. He's in Atlanta for the month of June, and then returns to Japan.

I went to bed early last night, although I had a hard time sleeping worrying about the tornado storms that came through last night. I've been awake since 2:30 this morning, although I stayed in bed till after 3:30.

Three more days! I know they will go so fast, and in a way I'm sad that this year's group will be over. One of the girls especially will I miss, as she's moving to Alpharetta. My mind is filled with paperwork, cleanup, and misc. end of year planning.

Lots to Say, Little Time to Write it

So I'm sitting here knowing that I don't have as much time as I would like to write in my "online journal" this morning.

Where do I begin?

Batik. My henna batik sign did not come out the way I'd envisioned. Part of it was that the green dye turned out BRIGHT green, instead of dark green. The other is that portions of my waxing turned out too thin. I'm not sure why this is, only that I'll have to avoid thin lines in the future. It just doesn't hold the color well.

This is what my tent looked like at the festival:


It wasn't until my friend B (who brought me hot chocolate on the chilly morning!) made a comment about the color of the green that I realized how correct he was. He described it as "St. Patrick's Day Green" and that he felt I should be offering beer at my table.

So I took the banner down.

I was worried about the lack of customers, and then tried to not be worried about it. So much effort and mental energy at things that I had no control over, and then at trying to stop my thoughts. Have I mentioned I'm in my head too much of the time?

Then I saw this:



A real actual butterfly perched atop the butterfly and lotus sheet (nope, didn't make it). This butterfly was just sitting there as confidently as anything, regardless of the wind that made the sheet sway. I walked up to it several times, just to marvel in its peaceful beauty. It wasn't scared or threatened by this big human coming to peer at it. It just Was.

And so I learned to just Be.

As the day wore on, the wind picked up, whipping most of the cloths and hanging designs around. Sometime around 3 or 4pm, we decided to just keep the things down that the wind pulled down.

As far as customers, it was actually a slow day. Between 10 and 2 I had a grand total of 1 customer. I'm not sure why. Everyone at the fair, who had done this one before, said they'd made about a third of what they'd made the previous year. Folks just weren't spending money like they had before. Maybe it's the rising cost of gas and food, maybe it was because graduation is near and there's other things to spend money on. By the end of the day, I'd covered my booth fee. So yay!

Here are some pics. The designs are by Deborah Brommer, except for the lotus, which is mine.

New Henna

This is the design I did on my hand last night. I'm not normally left-handed, so it took me a lil extra time. With the festival on Saturday, I want to have nice henna showing :) The style is called "gulf style" and these are elements based on an Asha Savla design. I just decided to be organic and let the elements flow. I didn't draw it out beforehand, just added as I went along. Overall, I'm pretty pleased.


Monday we had our last Henna Club meeting at school. The girls brought food, and I henna'd everyone. This is a photo of the henna I did on the mom that always attended. The gold is gilding paste.

I've started a new batik, one to use as a signage banner for my tent.


And to top it all off, yesterday morning I finished both my assignments due this week for my gifted certification class. YAY!

Busy Week

I have a full week. There are 2 assignments due Friday for my gifted online class. I haven't started my final project yet, to design a webquest, which is due the 23rd.

I'm busy Friday night with a henna party (yay!) so that means on Thursday I need to finish my books for the festival on Saturday. I'm making the paste today so it'll be fresh for both. I need to check all my festival supplies and get them ready to load into the car for early Saturday morning.

I had PTA last night at my school, and a dinner with B. Work is that hectic time of year where we're trying to get the final unit tests done, report cards done, and paperwork the administration needs as well.

I have a new friend coming to visit. He's Japanese. Should be interesting :)

Have a great day!

Henna Batik

(edit: Updated with final pics!)

I'm starting another batik project finally. Batik is a method of staining cloth using dye and wax-resist.

I use melted parafin wax, applied with old paintbrushes (the parafin ruins them for painting), and dye from a tie-dye kit at an art supply store. I prefer cold water dyes to hot.

I drew the outline of my project on fabric last summer. It's taken me this long to put parafin to cloth again. This is my initial waxing. I've painted areas I want to remain white:


Then I went in with a paintbrush and painted dye onto the fabric where I wanted it:


When it was dry, I covered these areas with wax. Then I painted the body with yellow dye. When that was dry, I applied wax over it. When the wax was cool I scrunched and dipped the whole thing into a pink dye-bath in my sink.

The pink doesn't show up well in this photo, but it's a light cotton candy type of pink. This is hanging to dry on the line outside.

When it was dry, I brought it inside and waxed in the designs I wanted pink:


Then I gave it a light blue dye bath, which rendered the unwaxed parts a light purple. This will be my last design element color, before turning the rest of the piece a dark blue/purple.


After it was dry, I applied the last elements, which were words. Then for the main color, instead of using a bath, I used 2 different things. One was the blue and purple dye colors straight out of the squirt bottles, the other was a bowl of these two mixed. I squirted dye and painted as I went, creating what I wanted- a universal celestial type feel, rather than a plain color field. I also rubbed some of the dye in on the existing wax cracks, to give it the same look it would have had if it'd been in a dye bath.

ta-dah:This is the un-ironed version of course. The final step is to gather a bunch of newspapers, and my old iron I keep for crafts. Then with paper on top and bottom, I "iron-out" the wax. I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

The Park

Friday all the kindergarten classes went to the park. It was cloudy at first, but the rain from the night before did not return. The temperature was a wonderful 76. The day went fast, as it usually does.

Full of playing:And bubbles:

And sidewalk chalk:



Ok, so the last pic is my drawing :P Can you blame me? I spent a wonderful morning watching students play. When it came time for lunch, I did bathroom duty, making sure the boys washed hands and got their paper towels where they were meant to be. We brought lunch sacks from the cafeteria, and some brought lunches from home.
This girl shows me how she can fit a whole hard boiled egg (peeled of course) into her mouth. Her mother must be so proud.

After lunch it was the water balloon games, but I was slicing watermelon and didn't take photos. After watermelon we cleaned up, played a lil bit, and was back at the school by 1. I was soooo tired hehe. The walk back is all uphill.

Garbage Island

This morning I read this article on the Suicide Girls site

It's about the rumored plastic garbage island that's growing in the Pacific, and speculated to be somewhere between the size of Texas, and the U.S.

They have a great link to the documentary, Garbage Island, and while it's not the most pleasant thing in the world to watch, I think it's important to realize what's going on out where no one sees, and how we're slowly killing ourselves without even realizing it.

The video can be seen at their website here.