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Woohoo! Susan and Bob are in town and when Susan is in town, I get to see Paula so double bonus. We all met up for lunch at Snappers on Sunday.

Then, yesterday I went to the much anticipated Fabric Painting Class with Debbie Jones. Thirteen of us spent the day at Mary Lou's house scrunching, sun printing, sponging, stamping, pleating, salting, splattering, twisting, tilting, shibori-ing and my favorite, ice dyeing. I've been wanting to learn this technique and it was a blast.

setting up in the driveway on a hot day

donning masks for ice dyeing

Teacher, Debbie Jones from New Mexico, demo-ing ice dyeing

For ice dyeing, you soak your fabric in soda ash for 30 minutes, wring it out and scrunch it up on a tray over a pan. Then, you cover the fabric with ice cubes. Then you apply powdered dye over the ice. Then the whole thing goes in to the sun. The dye filters through the fabric as the ice melts, making magical patterns and colors. 

the 3 in the foreground are mine, two ice dyeing trays and a sun printing with leaves

still looks like this today.

Now I have to wash and heat set my fabrics so I'll show you the results later on. It was a great class. And, btw, kudos to David for coming by to visit with the girls so I could be away all day.

I rushed home to meet Bob and Susan and Paula and Gloria and David for a stone crab feast and oh it was good. We had about 8 pounds of crab and Paula and Bob brought out the heavy artillery to crack them down on the dock.

And here is a picture of Bob looking just a bit like a creepy serial killer with our key lime pie. Just kidding, Bob, you are a doll. It was deelish!!

So, a busy day with lots of creativity and good friends. Ah, what a life!