Palimpsests of Dreams, and Scrubbing.

I woke up this morning when the alarm went off.  I had been dreaming that I was having a long conversation with an old man somewhere.  I can't remember anything of the dream conversation with the old man, except the emotional feeling-tone I woke up with, which was peaceful and optimistic.  I had the feeling I had known the old man somewhere and somewhen, and that he had either been my teacher or a male relative.  I seem to recall that he had been encouraging me about something.  Not sure what, but I'll remember to feel optimistic, and encouraged!


Saturday afternoon while Carlos was at rehearsal, I dived back into my indigo work and did the next step, which was to scrub all last weekend's indigo work in a strong soap solution and rinse and rinse until the water ran perfectly clear.  It took nine hot rinses and one cold one to really rinse the very dark skein of silk, and the result is a deep, deep navy blue but not the oversaturated blue-black that was showing; I knew that the soap wash and rinses would lighten it.  So I think that after the fermentation vat is ready, I will keep building up the very darkest blue-black on two of the skeins of the 30/2 silk I have been dyeing until I get the fabulously oversaturated shade again.  That's the color I want; it's the hardest color to get with indigo, but I've got a good start from the thiox vat, and the weaker fermentation vat will help build up the layers to make the legendary color.


Carlos and I went yesterday afternoon to the Castro Street Fair for a while.  It's nothing like it used to be - at least in the crafts department - there used to be so many real craftspeople, but mostly it was people selling cheap imported tchotchkes in their booths - they don't even make them themselves.  Used to be a few knitters, spinners, handweavers, potters, stained glass artists, leatherworkers, woodcarvers, and silversmiths.  The only person I saw who wasn't selling cheap knock-off 'crafts' that they hadn't made, but who instead was selling her own handmade things, was the lady making leather bags.  Beautiful work, but it made me sad to see how slim the pickings have become.


I remember when I applied to sell my handmade pottery at the CSF, back in the mid-1990's, and when the cost of renting booth-space became ridiculously expensive - thousands of dollars - and suddenly there were no craftspeople there anymore.  Like me, most artisans who used to be at the fair could no longer afford a booth.  I wonder what bright bulb came up with the idea of raising the cost of the booths to a level at which basically no one would pay it.