(no subject)

[austin_tycho]

I almost forgot! After class Thursday, Bob invited me over to visit with his friend Rocky and do some tie-dye. I have met Rocky once or twice, and was happy to get out of the house, even though it was 10pm. Hub was not as socially inclined, so he went to bed. It was cool meeting Rocky formally (so to speak)- he is an old hippie in an old hippie house in Hyde Park, and has lived in Austin probably as long as I've been alive. He's definitely not on the same wavelength as the general populace, but is still very sharp and had a lot of interesting things to say. He said them very loudly and rapidly, but once you adjusted yourself to his rhythm he was quite the conversationalist. I dyed an old white t-shirt I had plus one of hub's gimme polo shirts from a defunct dot-com. I managed my first spiral pattern, too. The dye was not very good about staying in the clothes- one wash and it was pretty faded, but it's still better than before. Anyway, Bob and I went to Whataburger afterward- he needed to decompress. I understand; Rocky is in a different reality and if you're not used to it, it can be weird. It reminded me of when I used to live at the Ark- a student co-op when I first moved here to go to college. Rocky remembered the Ark too. He had a flier from Grok Books promoting a visit from Timothy Leary. I don't think Grok Books was even here by the time I arrived. The changes he's seen, sheesh. The mind reels.

The early sunrises are messing me up, I've decided. It gets light and birds start making a racket before my alarm goes off and for some reason I'm having a hard time adjusting to it. I'll probably get it figured out just in time for the accursed Daylight Savings Time adjustment. Why the hell do we still use that? I loathe it.

Comments

[austingoddess.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the spiral! It's a hard pattern to get right.

Fading: either you didn't allow enough time for the dye to process, the fabric wasn't the right type for the dye, or the material was not prepped well to take the dye. Fabric softeners bad. You want clean, pre-washed material, preferably using bleach to beat up the fibers a bit and make them more receptive to the dye. Deep colors usually take a while to stay that way...with Procion dyes, it's at least 12 hours before you wash the fabric. If it was Procion dyes (and it probably was), you need a 100% natural fabric...cotton, rayon, wool, etc. It doesn't dye plastic (polyester, etc).

[mielikki.livejournal.com]

The shirts were cotton, we prepped them in some solution, and I let them sit for 24 hours under a lamp. They looked faded even when I rinsed them out before I washed them, so it occurs to me that it might have been the dye. All the other things he showed me looked the same- very faded. But it was a spur of the moment thing; I enjoyed hanging out even if the dying didn't come out perfectly. :)

[austingoddess.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the other possibility - there wasn't enough dye. :) Oh well - that's why there's overdyeing!

[mielikki.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I soaked the stuff 'til it was almost black- maybe a mixing problem? Who knows.

[scorpionis.livejournal.com]

Heh, Rocky's last name isn't "Erikson", is it??

Technically, Grok Books is still around: it's now BookPeople (I forget when they changed their name). That's pretty cool Rocky has stuff from the original Grok.

I hate the morning birds (and DST), too.

[mielikki.livejournal.com]

Rocky is on the top of this page here: http://www.everybodylovesbob.com/friends.shtml

He also had a freebie calendar from Grok from 1974 (I think) that looked similar to the art on the covers of old Yes albums- beautiful artwork. His home was stuffed with hand-made pots shot full of holes with a shotgun before they were fired, dinosaur fossils, emu eggs, branches carved to look like dragons, Christmas lights, arrow heads, and a zillion other cool things.