It's good to be home for a little while

Dan and I returned late this afternoon from our whirlwind holiday tour: 3 days with family and 2 days in Philadelphia for Dan's birthday. The family visits were all great. For the first time in close to 20 years Dan's mom had all of her children and grandchildren under the same roof at the same time. There's a good bit of family history behind that, and it appears that's where it's going to stay--behind. So, it was a good and meaningful Christmas.

Yesterday we celebrated Dan's birthday with a trip to the Barnes Foundation just outside Philadelphia, then had his-and-his mani-pedi's before heading off to dinner at Alma de Cuba. It was a lovely indulgent day. The Barnes has a great collections of Mattise and Cezanne, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I can't say that I share Dr. Barnes' obsession with Renoir. In fact, I could probably live entirely without Renoir, but it's all just a matter of taste.

As promised, here are pictures of the two pieces that I was screening on Christmas Eve. I wished that the colors had remained so wonderfully saturated after steaming. I'm hoping for a some time to work on them tomorrow and I hope to post in-process and after pics. I think my loss of color occurred because I screened insufficiently strong dye paste over areas where I had deconstructed dry screens with clear release paste, which acted as a resist. I've done this with more success before, but in those cases I must have used much more concentrated dye paste. Live and learn.

Both of these pictures were shot on the print table, before the pieces were dried, steamed, and washed, The piece on the left lost the most color. Many of the circles remain, but the colors are very muted. The piece on the right retained most of its color because I was screening over wax resist, but nothing else was on the fabric.