Starting with a pair of white vans (That’s cocaine white, not canvas white). Went through a bottle of green RIT, but they came out more olive drab than phthalo green. Not satisfied, I returned to the vat — this time, mixing my own green. In regards to the fact that these shoes are made in China, I honestlyjust give up. Vans, please bring your manufacturing back to California!
Obsession for this particular shade of green is temporarily sated. Here’s hoping they don’t make my feet change color.
About a month ago I found this picture while browsing someone’s tumblr. You see, I started a tumblr after seeing and being entranced by the concept of the “inspiration board.” Some of my favorite blogs (I.E. creators of original content) have alternate blogs hosted through tumblr where they reblog things that parallel the thrust and aesthetic of their main blog. I feel like this is the ideal way to use the tumblr format — keeping the endless stream of contextless images separate from the real content is a brilliant idea. I can read new posts by authors/bloggers I like when I want to without having to sift through the chaff of a thousand breakfast pictures. If I want to peer into the world of that individual, perhaps to get some inspiration of my own, I can do that too.
I am reminded of a quote by Drake (he is a man who performs raps, Mom) when he said,
“…Instead of kids going out and making their own moments, they’re just taking these images and living vicariously through other people’s moments. It just kills me. Then you’ll meet them and they’re just the biggest turkey in the world. They don’t actually embody any of those things. They just emulate. It’s scary man, simulation life that we’re living. It scares me.”
I agree with this. I see a lot of people who blog picture after picture of things that embody the life they want or world they desire to live in. Thousands of pictures, endless shots of attractive people in nice clothes drinking frosty cocktails out on a polo pitch. This is great. Thinking about doing that while sitting in an office building is great. What I noticed very quickly is that these individuals were, essentially, glorifying Ralph Lauren advertisements day after day and it made me wonder if they were actually ever out on a polo pitch with a frosty cocktail.
Then again, I am always finding pictures that I like, or that align with the aesthetic of… whatever. And I like the idea of blogging them. So, in the spirit of doing something that I still kind of think is stupid, I have created a tumblr of my own. Relaxing Times: Counterpart / Counterpoint to CBBC. No artistic endeavor is interesting unless there are some limitations. That is this: Relaxing Times must maintain a healthy balance of original and reblogged content. Also, reblogged content is not allowed to spill over into CB/BC without context and must be within the scope and thrust and whathaveyou of the blog.
81 years ago today, William Andrew Tolson–my Dear Old Dad–was born in a clapboard shack in Columbus Georgia. My dad was the middle child of three. His father, William Taylor Tolson, drowned hisself one night out on a drunk in the middle of a lake when his boat tipped over. At the age of 4, Dad became the man of the house. Not really much a 4-year-old can do to provide for a mother, sister, and baby brother–other than to be the subject of his mother’s abuse. Docia Pearl Tolson née Bullard, he recalled on many occasions, constantly berated him. “Billy!” he’d quote, mocking her by slipping into a shrill version of the South Georgia accent he worked so hard to get rid of after he left the Army, “You’re dumb, you’re stupid, and you’re never gonna’mount to nothin’!” If you’re not familiar with the way this sounds, all you have to do is double all the syllables–tha-yut-sus preuh-t-ee dah-um ca-loh-su-uh.
He told me once that he used to lament losing his father before ever getting to know him. That is until one day he had an epiphany. He related this story to me one night by saying, in that South Georgia accent that always managed to find its way out come sundown, “I was sitting there, feeling sorry for myself until I heard, in my mind as clear as if it were spoken to my face, my father’s voice saying ‘Billy! What makes you think I would have even liked you very much if I was alive?’” Instead of a shrill mocking accent, this time he used a voice that I had heard on some occasions–the one he used when he was disappointed with me. When you double the vowels, it gives gravity to everything you say. Sweet words drip like molasses. Stern words, like rubbing alcohol. Dad worked hard in life, not to make his mother proud, but to prove her wrong.
The opposite was true, I suppose, with Dad and me. I feel like he went out of his way to do everything differently than his mom had done. He was my champion and counselor in all things. When he died, I felt like I had lost everything. I know I felt lost. I was lost for a long time. If you had told me ten years ago tonight where I’d be today, I wouldn’t have heard you. My life as I knew it was over–Silly really, but I disassociated. I didn’t look forward or back. I stopped looking. Of course, time has a way with things like that.
Ten years later and I’m married, adopting a beautiful little girl and have another baby (three months, one week) on the way.
Moreso, I’ve cultivated a relationship with my mother and her husband Ron, my step-dad. I treated them like enemies when Dad died. Pretty shortsighted, considering how they loved and helped me in the years after.
Here’s to all the memories that help me keep hold of my dad as the years go by. Here’s to all the good to come. Here’s to knowing that he would have liked the man I’ve become.
The lighter part will be dark blue in about 60 seconds.
Using our (relatively) small indigo vat was probably not the most efficient way of dying this much fabric. Ten yards of muslin, split down the middle (60/40). We’ll be using this to decorate the pasture outside of our house for the wedding.
The way we dyed it resulted in an interesting pattern. Some cloth goes in the vat then is pulled out as we feed more in. As a result, some areas get more time in the dye which results in the eye shaped pattern you see above.
Along with making sure the ph balance in the vat is correct, you have to make sure that the indigo stays within a certain temperature. Now that we’ve upgraded to a larger amount of dye, it has become impractical to bring the vat indoors every night.
I looked everywhere for a turkey fryer platform, which would have been perfect, but to no avail. Compromise was a shop light wired to a barbecue grate. Very good at keeping the vat happy and healthy. We had a rainstorm last week where I left the vat outside without the light. It got pretty sick and wasn’t dyeing anything at all. A little bit of soda ash, thiox, and indigo crystal, plus a few days on the lamp, and she’s back in action.
Getting down to the wire with the wedding. I do not recommend night dyeing, you know considering that color is a property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way it reflects or emits light. If you have to do it, use daylight bulbs.
I skein dyed 50 feet of cotton rope from the hardware store for another, non wedding-related, project. Took several dips in order to get the rope as dark as it is. Typically, after a single dip, something white will come out in the neighborhood of this:
After several dip/oxidation cycles, you can get something along these lines:
As you can see from my hand above, more dye means that extra indigo rubs off (crocks) very easily. There are some techniques that you can use to avoid this — paying careful attention to the PH of the vat seems to be the key. Probably doesn’t help that I’m using a do-it-yourself synthetic indigo kit — probably also doesn’t help that it has been cold and raining, so the vat temperature has been below the ideal temperature. Maybe over summer I’ll look into starting a natural indigo vat.
The rope is in a broth of vinegar and saltwater overnight to try and curb the crocking before the next step of the project.
Would you wear a shirt made from this fabric?
This one?
This?
This?
Certainly this.
But this?
No, of course not. Don’t be absurd. Such a shirt as this, no person would wear. It doesn’t have a breast pocket!
Now we’re talking. Chambray pocket from an old ill-fitting shirt. Sashiko hand stitch (My first attempt. Not bad, not great).
A friend asked me how exactly a person wears a patch madras button down shirt. I asked myself this same question about a year ago when Brooks Brothers was selling them. I was tempted at the time, but didn’t want to spend full price on something I’d wear so infrequently. One year and two markdowns later, it was mine.
The answer is this: everything else should be very simple, you should be near water, and you should be drunk. What to drink? Well, this shirt says Shameless Preppy W.A.S.P. Nightmare from the moment it leaves the hanger, so it’s not outrageous to go with traditional preppy vacation tipple: Gin and Tonic or Bloody Mary. That’s a fine choice, but if you’re wearing this shirt then the assumption is that you are clocked in for an 8 hour shift of boozing with a strong likelihood of going into overtime. That means (like anyone who has worked for minimum wage knows) you gotta spread the work out and exert as little effort as possible (And when was the last time you bought celery anyway?). You should be drinking shandy.
Shandy
Yes, you could use a seasonal craft beer for this. You could also make a carbonated lemonade with locally grown lemons. It would, arguably, make for a better drink in the long run. But that’s not really what we’re after — you want all store bought ingredients that you can pour into a large container without having to think about cost or proportion. And, keeping with the W.A.S.P. theme, you should probably get the ingredients from somewhere like Trader Joe’s.
You will need one vessel – minimum 24 ounces liquid capacity.
1. Pour 66 cents worth of beer into the vessel (5.5 cents an ounce!).
2. Pour the same amount (measured in volume, not in cents) of lemonade into the vessel.
3. Drink and repeat as necessary until mid-day naptime.
I’ve had this idea to take old photographs of my Grandad in the 30s and 40s, scan them at high reolution and do my very best to identify what clothes they’re wearing. I put this idea on the backburner because, after some short research, I realized that it would just be a big advertisement for Levi’s Vintage Clothing. Even worse, to look at the Google search results that most often lead to my blog, you’d think I was a Levi’s affiliate — or that I was writing a how-to on “how to dress like a country boy.” Well here it is, dammit. Levi’s pandering and how to dress like a country boy (if it were the late 1930s. Very different if it were today’s country boy. But that, among other things, is beyond the scope of this blog).
Levi’s 506xx jacket (AKA Type 1 jacket) ~1936. One front pocket, right breast. Cinch back. Pleated Front. Short and boxy. If you want one, you’ll have to search for it. I know that Mister Freedom in Los Angeles has one that he’ll sell you for $1,400. Find one in anything in the neighborhood of good condition and you’ll be spending, I estimate, 2-3 grand. Or you can buy the reproduction for about 300 bucks. Right now. And it won’t stink at all.
Pants were, no doubt Levi’s 501s. There’s a gap in the Levi’s Vintage Clothing line where the 1937 model should be. Closest without going over is the 1933 model with all the fixin’s you’d expect to find on a very old style of jean: suspender buttons, cinch back, belt loops, wide cut, high rise, free-sewn back arcuate, red tab (added in 1936), exposed back pocket rivets and a crotch rivet. I did a little homework and it seems that in 1937 Levi’s ditched the suspender buttons and started doing hidden rivets on the back pockets. It is likely that Grandad and Great Uncle Roy are wearing this particular model. Actual retail price for a vintage pair of these, around two grand depending on the condition. A nice specimen was recently auctioned at a vintage show here in LA (Some nice pictures of the jeans at Blue Gold Blues, a fine blog to be sure). Ersatz version, two hundred fifty bucks.
So, the point I’m trying to make is that if you want to dress like a country boy, you’re going to need to spend anywhere from six hundred to six thousand dollars — excluding the cowboy boots (which are gonna cost you) and, of course, the white t-shirt and skivvies (Don’t do vintage on the skivvies).
Not really. The point is that if you googled “how to dress like a country boy” and got here, you’re in the wrong place. All I ever do is talk about jeans.
Being on the west coast, it’s rare to find critter anything in a thrift store. Elephants seem to be the exception. These two ties were catch and release.
After the first two rounds of dyeing, we let the vat rest for a while in the house. A little more time elapsed than I had expected, so we had to recharge the vat for the third round.
We are getting our indigo from a tie-die kit made by Jacuqard. You can get these for around 12 dollars at a dedicated art supply store (Blick was the only store in our area that had it. Michaels and the like all had Jacquard kits, but none had the indigo variety).
The kit includes:
20 grams of indigo crystals
Thiox and Soda ash to deoxygenate the water and reduce the indigo.
Good quality rubber gloves
Small primer on shibori dye and dye patterns.
Rubber bands, blocks of wood & popsicle sticks for experimenting with shibori techniques.
It would be nice if the kit included information on ordering more indigo crystals, thiox, and soda ash (although I’m sure the last two ingredients aren’t that difficult to find). There is also no information on how to recharge a vat once it has exhausted its dyeing power. With a new kit, and a little help from science, I set to figure it out.
The vat had lots of indigo left in it, but wasn’t giving us the same color as before. This must (or may) mean that most of what was inside had oxidized. I started by adding The instructions with the pack are a little vague about which to put in next, crystals or reducing agent. My thoughts are that the indigo should go directly into a deoxygenated vat so I add the thiox and soda ash first. Stir, then indigo crystals. Cover and set for an hour and you’re ready to go.
(P.S. If anyone wants to chime in with their own experience using indigo dye, please feel free.)
Allisun and I are getting married! This isn’t exactly breaking news, but it deserves to be said. You’ll see, in the picture above, our daughter holding the bouquet of flowers. Her name is Indigo and she is the inspiration for using indigo dye in making our wedding invitations. There are a number of resources online for dyeing with indigo, but none that are specifically about dyeing paper. CBBC is here to solve that.
Let’s start with some relevant information about indigo dyeing.
1. An indigo vat is temperamental. It takes time to get it started and keep it going.
2. Indigo dye turns things yellow/green. When this yellow/green dye comes in contact with oxygen, it turnes blue.
3. It is important to keep air out of the dye vat as oxidized indigo cannot impart color.
4. Indigo pigment molecules are larger than most dye molecules. Because of this the molecules have difficulty penetrating fabrics; indigo molecules will typically adhere to the surface of fabrics and can be worn away with use (this is why your jeans look cool).
5. Indigo will only work well on natural fabrics. Microscopically, synthetic fabrics are too uniform for the pigment molecules to stick to. Because natural fabrics are not uniform in shape, there are more places for the pigment to stick.
6. Vats need to be kept a little warm in order to work properly.
After previous dyeing experiments with coffee, tea, and red wine, we learned that we’d need a heavy weight paper in order to make this work. Above is a very lightweight printer paper dyed with a mixture of leftover red wine and black tea reduced on the stove. We ended up with a 140 lb watercolor paper that we bought from a big box craft store for our invitations (the cheapest paper available within this weight category and it came out fine).
Setup
Follow the instructions that come with your kit. I know this because I did not. I basically combined everything at once and had to deal with excessive oxidization on the surface and lots of particulate matter floating in the vat. More about this in an upcoming post but, for now, just take everything very slowly.
Hue
When dyeing, you’re going to want to consider how dark you want the final product to be. Keeping the item submerged for a long period will allow more penetration of the dyestuff, but you’ll need to go through several cycles of dipping and oxidization to get a very dark color.
When we started, we alternated between using dry paper and wet paper. In the end, wet paper was more effective. If you think about it scientifically, it makes sense. Dry paper is, essentially, full of air. When dry paper enters the vat, oxidation takes place all over the surface and prevents additional indigo from penetrating the fibers. The result is a very light color and, more often than not, a more mottled texture.
Texture
Depending on what you want to do with the paper, you may want the color to be more or less uniform. It is possible to achieve a mottled or marbled look on the paper by allowing some of the oxidized indigo at the surface of the vat to stick to the paper as you dip. I strongly recommend that when you’ve got the color you desire, you make sure to wash (in the vat) any oxidized gunk off of the surface of the paper. The gunky can turn very dark, but some of the gunk is actually preventing oxidization on the surface of the paper. Once dry, you will see that you can brush off the dark areas to reveal very light patches. This can be a feature or a flaw, depending on what you want to do with the paper.
Before brushing / After Brushing
We ended up using all of these for invitations and they ended up looking great.
