The Princeton professor's research follows elephants, wolves and urban lizards. He hosts the new PBS series, "Human Footprint."

The landmark 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has committed nearly $400 billion to mitigating climate change. Nine research teams across the U.S, including a Princeton team led by Jesse Jenkins, have now modeled the law's effect on U.S. carbon emissions.

While we primarily think of viruses as targeting their attacks against us, they are also in constant competition with each other.

Two NASA telescopes helped an international team of astrophysicists peer far enough back in time to gain new insight on how black holes form.

The scientific feat is also "a breakthrough for practical applications because entangled molecules can be the building blocks for many future applications.” says physicist Lawrence Cheuk.

Professor Wendy Laura Belcher and a primarily Ethiopian team of researchers and translators have brought new insight and access to Marian miracle stories — all now available on a website.

New paper from Princeton team challenges the conventional wisdom of superconducting quantum transitions.

In the field, digital technology saves immense amounts of time and limits fruitless digging. In the classroom, VR recreations help bring the past to life.

Two projects — one that maps the function of the brain’s neuronal network in unprecedented detail and another that combines robotics and light-based computer circuits to create safe self-driving vehicles — have been awarded funding through Princeton’s Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund.

Modern humans and Neanderthals interacted over a 200,000-year period, says geneticist Joshua Akey.

So this seemed like a good idea when I signed up.. or at least not a stupid idea. I was already booked to take part in the London Marathon, and then a half the weekend after. So the weekend after that I would either be as fit as I could ever be or injured and … Continue reading Maverick X Jurassic Coast Ultra 2022 →

Princeton's first alumni affinity conference since 2019 welcomed more than 600 alumni and guests to campus Sept. 19-21, for “Every Voice: Honoring and Celebrating Princeton’s LGBTQ+ Alumni.” 

A leader in her field with over 35 years of experience, Shroff has transformed Princeton’s audit and compliance functions during her more than 17 years at the University.

Craig B. Arnold has been named Princeton’s first University Innovation Officer and heads the new office.

Hopfield, the Howard A. Prior Professor in the Life Sciences, Emeritus, and professor of molecular biology, emeritus, shares the 2024 Nobel Prize with Toronto's Geoffrey E. Hinton.

Xie, a materials engineer, won a 2024 Packard Fellowship for creating atomically thin materials. “Thinking and inventing down to an atomic level like Saien is doing, most spectacularly I should add, is the future,” said James Sturm, ECE department chair.

Stone is a leading engineering scholar and pioneer in fluid dynamics research. University Professor is Princeton’s highest honor for faculty.

In the Class of 2028, 71.5% of students qualify for financial aid and 21.7% of the class are lower-income students eligible for federal Pell grants.

Physical chemist Giacinto Scoles, Princeton’s Donner Professor of Science, Emeritus, died in Sassenheim, the Netherlands, on Sept. 25 with his wife of nearly 60 years at his side. He was 89.

The award supports independent research in the arts and humanities at the American Academy in Rome. Both Princeton recipients are undergraduate alumni.

Princeton University will present the honors at Alumni Day, scheduled for Feb. 22, 2025.

Voting registration rates among Princeton undergraduate and graduate students have more than doubled largely thanks to the program.

Jordan will also receive the American Historical Society's Award for Scholarly Distinction in January.

The 9 a.m. service on Monday, Nov. 11, will also be livestreamed.

He reflected on literature, compassion, belonging, home and the "qualities which make us human."

Register here for the live cast I am not a Pagan teacher, Witchcraft influencer, or anything like that. Usually i see myself as the person approaching a panelist at an American Academy of Religion session, saying, “Would you consider turning … Continue reading →

Do you remember that one fanfic that kept you reading until dawn for the very first time? Or the fan art or video that led you to dig out all the works its creator shared? Have you ever tried to look into the stories of the authors who wrote fics before you were even born? You can find all this and more on Fanlore - the wiki for fanworks, fan creators, and fannish history!

Fanlore is a project run by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) with the goal of providing fans a place to record and share their histories, experiences and traditions. Fanlore records both the history and current state of our fan communities – fan works, fan activities, fan terminology, individual fans and fannish-related events. You can read about what fandoms were like in the olden days and document memorable events in your own fandoms, all on Fanlore! Check out the wiki’s New User Portal or join the Fanlore Discord server to connect with other editors and users.

We would not be able to preserve these cherished pieces of fandom history without the generous donations of our fellow fans and volunteers who work tirelessly behind the scenes to keep all our projects running. As always, we have some shiny new donation gifts!

You can choose to display your love for fandom with some of our new thank-you gifts. For a US$40 donation, we have a new sticker set featuring popular AO3 tags. You can show off a bumper sticker saying "my other car is a ship" for a donation of US$50. For a donation of US$75 or more, you could carry home your groceries with a white and red shopping bag or you can announce your love for AO3 with our rainbow kudos pin.

You can also set up a recurring donation and save towards the gift of your choice. Select the gift you want, and if the total for that donation doesn't reach the amount needed for the gift you selected, future donations will be applied to the gift you’re saving for. Those of you in the U.S. might also be able to double your contribution via employer matching: contact your HR department to find out if this is an option for you.

A donation of US$10 or more will also allow you to become a member of the OTW. OTW members can vote for the Board of Directors – the OTW’s governing board. Donating now and checking the “I wish to be a member” box will make you eligible to vote in the 2025 OTW Board Election.

We hope that many of you will take this opportunity to donate and become a member to support projects like Fanlore, Open Doors, Legal Advocacy, Transformative Works and Cultures, and the Archive of Our Own. Your contributions help keep our projects successful for new and long-time fans alike!

The Organization for Transformative Works's October membership drive is over and we are delighted to say that we are finishing with a total of $214,698.86 raised. We are particularly pleased that 6020 donors chose to either take up or renew OTW membership with their donation, far exceeding our goal of 4,500 members.

These donations came from 6,955 people in 86 countries: thank you to every single one of you, as well as to all of you who posted and shared the news about the drive! The OTW would not exist without its users all around the world, and your continued support for us is our absolute pride and joy! We are so glad to know that our ongoing mission to support, protect, and provide access to the history of fanworks and fan culture continues to resonate with the people that matter most of all: the fans themselves.

If you were intending to donate or join and haven't yet done so, don't worry! The OTW accepts donations year-round, and you can always choose to become a member with a donation of US$10 or more. Memberships run for one calendar year from the date of your donation. If you donate now, you'll be able to vote in next year's OTW Board election, which will take place in August 2025. Our exclusive thank-you gifts are also available whenever you donate!

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The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

In order to make AO3's rules clearer to our users, we intend to update the AO3 Terms of Service (TOS) in mid-November 2024. Once this occurs, all users will need to agree to the updated TOS to continue using AO3. The full text has been posted for public review, as well as a detailed explanation of what has (and hasn't) changed:

• AO3 Terms of Service: 2024 Update Guide
• AO3 Terms of Service: 2024 Draft
• AO3 Terms of Service FAQ: 2024 Draft

Summary of changes

As part of reorganizing the TOS for better clarity, the new TOS is structured differently than the old one. A detailed explanation of what was changed and why is available in the update guide. These are the highlights:

• We've clarified the Content Policy, but we haven't changed what works are or are not allowed. If your fanwork was allowed on AO3 before, then it is still allowed.
• The TOS has been split into three pages (General Principles, Content Policy, and Privacy Policy). This should make it easier to find what you're looking for when you want to know about a specific part of the TOS.
• We've simplified the language throughout the TOS and removed redundant or overly specific phrases and passages. When longer explanations would help to provide clarity, we've added new questions to the TOS FAQ instead.
• We've updated the descriptions of how we and our subprocessors collect and process user information (including personal information) in the Privacy Policy.
• The Abuse Policy has been generalized to provide the AO3 Policy & Abuse committee with greater flexibility to determine how to address TOS violations, while still providing protections for fanworks in accordance with AO3's mission.
• The "Underage" Archive Warning, which is used for works that depict or describe underage sex, is being renamed to "Underage Sex". This does not change the meaning of this warning or how it is enforced. When the TOS update occurs, all works with the "Underage" Archive Warning will be recategorized automatically to display the new "Underage Sex" Archive Warning label instead. If you have a work that carries the "Underage" warning and you don't want it to display the "Underage Sex" label, you can replace it with the "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" label at any time.

You can read the proposed changes and comment here on this news post with any questions, suggestions, or feedback you might have about the new TOS or TOS FAQ. Comments will remain open until November 18th, 2024. After comments close, the Board of Directors for the OTW (the Organization for Transformative Works, which is AO3's parent organization) will vote on the proposed changes to the Terms of Service. If the Board votes in favor, the Terms of Service will be updated and all users will be required to agree to the new TOS to continue using AO3.

To make your opinion heard prior to the Board vote, make sure to submit your comments here before November 18th.

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ETA: We appreciate that all of you have many ideas, but please keep in mind that the Policy & Abuse committee handles AO3 rules, not AO3 features. If you have ideas for a feature (for example, improvements you want to see to Search and Filtering), please contact the Support committee about them instead. We won't be responding to feature requests on this news post.

I. AO3 TERMS OF SERVICE UPDATE

Policy & Abuse, Legal, and Accessibility, Design & Technology have been hard at work regarding an update to the AO3 Terms of Service. Among other things, this update involves clarifying wording in both the Content Policy and the "Underage" Archive Warning. This update will not affect what fanworks are allowed or not on AO3, nor will it affect how this Archive Warning is enforced.

In conjunction with Communications, a public call for feedback was posted and comments will be accepted until November 18. Please refer to the news post and Policy & Abuse's proposed changes for more detail.

II. OCTOBER MEMBERSHIP DRIVE

Development & Membership worked with Communications to announce the October membership drive! With the help of Translation, the news posts were translated into 28 languages. Finance also posted the 2024 Budget Update in anticipation of the membership drive.

The October membership drive raised almost $215,000 USD from 6,995 donors, 6,020 of whom chose to be members! Development & Membership is now verifying addresses, packaging premiums, and heading to local post offices with the help of their new regional shipping specialists.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE AO3

In September, Support and Systems were handling issues related to downtime and site slowness. Systems has posted a post-mortem of events and analysis on their official AO3 account, which details the causes and effects of some of the issues.

Due to downtime and other factors, Support received 4,151 tickets in September, around double their usual monthly count. They ask for your patience as they work through the high volume of tickets.

Policy & Abuse received 2,264 tickets in September. They also have an incoming class of new volunteers and look forward to training them.

Also in September, Tag Wrangling volunteers wrangled over 430,000 tags, which amounts to over 1,000 tags per tag wrangler. They also finished their last recruitment round of the year and began inducting their latest batch of volunteers.

Open Doors announced the import of older works from due South Seekrit Santa, an exchange devoted to the Canadian television series due South. They also finished the last details from the West of the Moon archive import, an archive for hobbit-centric gen fanworks. They continue to work on other import projects and documentation for the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project.

IV. VARIOUS OTW ACTIVITY

Communications is happy to see their email delivery service has been steadily gaining followers since its launch. The service recently passed 1,000 subscribers and now has about 1,100 subscribers!

Fanlore ran a Video Game-themed month in October! You can check out featured articles on their Tumblr.

Development & Membership's convention outreach division organized a table for Confabulation Fan Convention at Chicago, USA. OTW volunteers had a blast talking about their experience volunteering, fan vidding, and exploring world landmarks!

Legal has responded to a number of user queries this month, including queries about YouTube counter-notices, shadowcasting, UK legislation, and academic research on fandom. They also dealt with some apps that are confusing users into believing they’re associated with the AO3.

TWC has been preparing two special issues: Centering Blackness in Fan Studies and Sports Fandoms to be released in the coming months.

V. GOVERNANCE

Board and the Board Assistants Team (BAT) organized Board's fourth quarter public meeting on September 29. They had 55 attendees and answered 9 questions. The official minutes for this meeting were voted on and published on the OTW website.

Official Board turnover happened on October 1, and incoming Board members are getting settled in.

Board and BAT have been participating in several projects and policies related to the OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap. BAT has also been working on procurement documentation, OTW website updates, and various cross-committee tasks. They’ve been assisting the Board on several ongoing projects, including Whistleblower Policy FAQ documentation and responding to external questions directed at the Board.

Strategic Planning is working on compiling internal sustainability plans from all committees as part of the plan’s internal sustainability goal. They're also reaching out to the committees responsible for the Paid Staff goal as those implementation goal dates approach.

VI. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEEPS

Volunteers & Recruiting has been hard at work training their new recruits and getting them settled in, saying farewell to one of their chairs, Cyn, and welcoming Eevee as the new co-chair. They also conducted recruitment for 3 committees in October: AO3 Documentation, Elections, and Fanlore.

From September 22 to October 22, Volunteers & Recruiting received 149 new requests and completed 135, leaving them with 62 open requests. As of October 22, 2024, the OTW has 924 volunteers. o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Committee Chairs: Eevee (Volunteers & Recruiting)
New Communications Volunteers: 1 TikTok Team Lead
New Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Shipping Specialist
New Fanlore Volunteers: 3 Discord Moderators
New Open Doors Volunteers: Brianna Dardin (Senior Technical Volunteer) and 1 Administrative Support Volunteer
New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: Emka, iwasnttrainedforthis, megidola, Trinity, and 3 other Volunteers
New Translation Volunteers: AnneHelena, Aquiles T. M., hans, Helpi K, Jaya, Luki, tritongue, and 2 other Translators
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: Alisande and 1 other Volunteer

Departing Directors: Kari Dayton and Michelle Schroeder
Departing Committee Chairs: Cyn (Volunteers & Recruiting)
Departing Board Assistant Team Volunteers: 1 Volunteer
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Policy & Admin Volunteer and 1 Graphics Designer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: SonoSvegliato (Import Assistant), Brianna Dardin and 2 other Technical Volunteers; 1 Administrative Volunteer
Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: Arly Guevara
Departing Tag Wrangler Volunteers: Eevee (Supervisor role only), Lysippe, and 7 other Tag Wranglers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Elintiriel (Volunteer Manager role only) and 1 other Volunteer Manager; Nachali, Parul Hunnargikar, Summerfanreader, and 4 other Translators

For more information about the purview of our committees, please access the committee listing on our website.

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The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

I started this project in October, 2014, so I would have a nice handwork project while traveling for a month in Europe. I love it!!!

A bunch of pre-cut threads and trims, a small package of mixed seed beads/buttons/sequins, a folded piece of felt with various sizes of needles, embroidery scissors, Sue Spargo's book, and 16 wool chicks already stitched to the background wool fit very nicely into a 12 x 9 inch zippered, mesh bag.... perfect to tuck into my backpack! I stitched on the airplanes, in people's homes, and with my beady/quilty friends! At the end of the month, 8 chicks were finished. You can see them here.


Since then, I've been busy making a Travel Diary quilt, and starting another very challenging "Shimmer" quilt, which will be the subject of the next post. However, once in a while, the Chicks are just the right break from machine sewing. Working on them makes me happy and peaceful.


The new ones are in this post... As you can see in the photo below, I still have 2 chicks to embellish, plus one that might need something more.


When all of them are finished, it will be time to decide what to do with them. My idea so far is to make them into a small wall quilt, hand quilting around the chicks, maybe adding a few flowers between some of the chicks.  I'll wait to decide, keeping all options open until the chicks are finished.


Most of the chicks are girls, but so far 3 of them seem to have a bit of testosterone...  can you tell which ones are the boys? You'll need to click on the above picture of all 16 to enlarge it enough to find the boys. If you feel like making a guess, let's give them numbers starting at the top left with 1 and going across row by row. As you can probably tell, the one below is definitely a girly girl!

By the way, the lace trim on the above chick is vintage lace from LaDonne Weinland, an Etsy vendor. It was white, which was too "strong" a color for this piece. So I painted dye on it!!! These are the pieces I painted. To give you an idea of scale, the lace is just under 1/4" wide. The chick, from the bottoms of her feet to the top of her crown, is exactly 3 inches tall.

Threads! 

People ask me where I got all the threads I use for these chicks. Here are some answers...

Variegated pearl cotton. I'd estimate that over half the stitches (all the beaks and feet, most of the edge stitches, tails, and top-knots) are pearl cotton, size 8 or 12. I like using threads that are subtly variegated. DMC and Valdani are two brands of pearl cotton that come in a ball for $5 to $7 per ball. I have purchased some Valdani balls from Sue Spargo and some from this site.

But most of my perle cotton comes from African Folklore Embroidery ... Leora Raikin, the owner, packages hand-dyed, variegated, pearl cotton on cards of three colors, each color about 10 yards in length, for $5.  She has a HUGE selection, from which you can have 24 colors for only $40!!! I love the colors, the subtle changes of colors in the variegation, and the quality of the thread. Here's a page that shows her colors in size 8 pearl cotton... mind boggling!

My photo does not show the full amount you get... only how it is packaged, 3 colors to a card!

Embroidery floss.  For finer stitches and details, I often switch to regular embroidery floss. Again I gravitate toward the variegated colors. DMC has put out a lot of new variegated skeins in recent years. If you have an older supply of solid colors, you might want to check out DMC's 24 new colors. Here's an Etsy seller that offers them. Or, if you are in the Seattle area, Nancy's Sewing Basket (on Queen Anne hill) stocks all of them. They are much more subtle than previous DMC variegated floss choices, more like hand-dyed. Anchor has also added nice options to their line.




I also buy hand-dyed embroidery floss when I see a skein that appeals to me. Again, I like the subtlety of it.

Other threads. Sue Spargo offers a line of variegated silk threads in beautiful colors, which she calls Silken Pearl. I bought some of them from her during the class, and have enjoyed using them. The sheen of the silk is a lovely contrast to the more matte quality of the pearl cotton.

In her book, Sue recommends using a wool thread to applique the wool chicks to the background wool. Since it is quite expensive, I used 60 weight cotton applique/sewing thread by Metler, which I already had in a range of colors. It works fine. If I didn't already have the Metler thread, I probably would have bought a set of Genziana wool threads on bobbins on Etsy, here. This wool thread is a bit too fine for embellishment work, but it's great for wool applique.

Novelty yarns, metallic threads, chenille, dazzle threads, etc. all have their occasional use as well. As I tend to like more matte and less bling, I don't often use these threads. But it's fun to experiment with them. I did use chenille on one of the above chicks... can you find it?

Last November an odd, rather hard, bump suddenly appeared in the palm of my right hand. A few weeks later, in a routine physical exam, I asked my Dr. what the lump might be. She thought it was a harmless, ganglion cyst. In January, suddenly two more lumps appeared in the same area of my palm, about 1.5 inches below my little and ring fingers. Feeling some concern about this, I made an appointment with a hand specialist, a surgeon, who told me with absolute certainty that I had Dupuytren’s Disease.

You can skip this paragraph if you are not so interested in the disease in general. In the following paragraphs, I’ll tell you about my personal experience with it so far... Some other names for Dupuytren’s Disease are: claw hand, Viking disease, palmar fascia contracture, and flexion contracture. Because it often causes one or more fingers to curl inward toward the palm, it is sometimes confused with trigger finger, an entirely different affliction. It is linked to heredity, Northern European descent, diabetes and other auto-immune diseases. Men are more likely to have it than women, and its incidence increases in older (over 50) folks for both men and women. Often it is dormant until there is injury or trauma to the hand(s). There are currently four categories of treatment: radiation therapy (successful only in the very early developmental stage of the disease), needle aponeurotomy (generally considered for stage 1 or 2 of the disease with 6 to 90 degrees of deformation), collagenase injection (also stage 1 or 2), and surgery (advanced stages).

This is a copy-machine scan of my right hand in August, 2012. At that time, I probably had the disease, but there were no obvious signs of it.

This is a piece I created using the above scan. It celebrates the many blessings of my hand. Who knew that 4 years later it would be in jeopardy.

If you know me at all, you know that I love to stitch! Give me a needle and thread, a few beads or layered fabric that needs hand-quilting, and I am in heaven. If I couldn’t stitch, I’d be miserable. Already, I noticed (in January) that my right (dominant) hand was losing flexibility and strength. I dropped things all of the time because my grip was not as strong. And I could not spread my fingers or flex them backwards. The progression was alarmingly fast at that time, and affected my ability to hold and control a needle, scissors, etc.

This fabric is called Kékfestö in Hungarian, a word that roughly translates as blue-dyed or blue-dying. Producing these fabrics is a cottage industry in Hungary, which dates back several centuries. The dye is indigo; the cloth is cotton; and the long, arduous process results in a type of batik fabric. The photo above shows a small fold of each of the fabrics I bought at the blue-dyed studio shown below. (As always, please click on the photos if you'd like to see more detail.)

When in Hungary in October, 2016, my quilting/travel friend (Lunnette) and I, as guests of my Hungarian bead sister, Anna Fehér, had the very exciting experience of visiting the hand-dying studio of Miklós Kovács in the little village of Tiszakécske, SE of Budapest. The studio, located behind his home, includes two rooms, one for printing the raw cloth with a wax resist, and the second for dying the printed cloth with indigo. In front of the building, you can see rods above the deck, which are used for hanging the fabric to dry after it is dyed, and a wagon loaded with printed cloth ready to be dyed.

Meet Mr. Miklós Kovács, now in his 80s! Charming and animated, he is explaining his traditional, hand-dying process to Anna. Blue-dying has been the Kovács family's livelihood since 1878, each new generation being trained by the previous Master. It is strictly a family affair. Miklós, his wife, Margit, and their two daughters, Gabriella and Mária, currently produce about 10,000 meters of Kékfestö (blue-dyed) fabric every year. When Mr. and Mrs. Kovács retire, the business will pass to their daughters. This post shows how they turn plain white cloth into beautiful fabrics with white motifs on an indigo background.

First, they need thousands of meters of fine-quality, tightly-woven, raw cotton cloth, which is rinsed to remove impurities, then carefully ironed and rolled onto wooden rods which fit onto the printing machine. This pile of untreated cotton cloth, manufactured in Turkey, is the remainder of a big shipment purchased at the start of the year.

Next they need a print block or plate. These are made with wire pins of various diameters, which are pounded into blocks of dense wood. Here you see the many plate choices available in the Kovács studio, each yielding a different motif on the fabric. The length of each print block is the same as the width of the fabric; the width is the width of the pattern repeat, generally designed to be about 4.5 inches..

This is the end of one of the print blocks, showing how the design is formed by setting metal pins of different diameters into the wooden block.

And here is the fabric (after dying it with indigo, and removing the wax resist), which was printed with the block in the photo above it. Naturally, a half-meter of this one came home with me!

This is the machine which is used to print the motif on the raw cotton cloth with a wax resist. Mr. Kovács keeps his printing machine, built in Germany 120 years ago, in good running condition with machinist skills he learned alongside his father.

You can see the sprocket, lower right, which is adjusted to advance the fabric through the machine in increments exactly the length of the pattern repeat. For most motifs, the fabric advances 4 to 5 inches after each time the print block is applied to the fabric, thus revealing the next short stretch of un-printed cloth.

Here you can see many meters of raw cotton cloth, suspended on a metal rod at the back of the printing press. There is a leader of waste cloth stitched to the end of the roll which has been fed through the rollers of the machine to get the process started.

At the front of the printing machine, a worker swipes a tray with wax resist, which is tinted green so that it will be visible on the printed cloth. The printing block touches down on the waxed tray, picks up a coating of was, and then presses firmly against the fabric.

After being imprinted with wax resist, the fabric is wound up and down through a drying rack located behind the printing machine.

When it is dry, the printed fabric is folded and stacked until there is a sufficient quantity to begin the dying process. You can see that some of the raw cloth in this pile was pre-dyed pink, blue, or beige. After over-dying with indigo and removing the resist, the motif on these pieces will be pink, blue or beige with an indigo background, rather than the much more common white motif with an indigo background.

This close-up photo shows how the fabric looks after the wax resist (tinted green so that is shows on white cloth) is dry. This is the motif being printed while we were there. Liking the design a lot, I was very pleased to find finished fabric in this pattern available to purchase.

And this is how the cloth will look after it is dyed with indigo, the wax resist removed, and the fabric washed and ironed. As you might have already guessed, a half-meter of this one came home with me!

As we watch the cloth passing slowly through the rollers of the printing machine, Lunnette holds a scrap of dyed fabric which was tied to the machine, indicating the motif currently being printed.

At last, we get to the dye pot!  Here on the burner, a concentrated indigo dye formula is being readied to pour into the dye vat.

Don't forget to wear those heavy rubber gloves, or the skin on your hands will be tinged with blue for a long time.
Mr. Kovács gave a long, animated talk (all in Hungarian, which I only slightly comprehend) about the whole process of blue dying. You've already seen how the cloth is printed with wax resist. The next step is to dye the background.

The cloth is dyed in a vat with the indigo dye-bath at 85 degrees C., then washed to remove the wax and rinsed to remove the excess dye. After rinsing, the cloth is looped over racks to dry outdoors, which completes the dying process. Sadly, he did no dying while we were there, so I don't have pictures or first-hand experience with precisely how it is done to share with you.

However the fabric is not yet ready to use. It must be starched, dried, and then pressed using both steam and steel rollers with heavy pressure, in order to create the traditionally desirable shiny finish on the cloth. Finally, the fabric is folded onto bolts for distribution to shops and end-users.

We learned how they hand-print motifs on cloth using a template, such that after dying, the fabric can be cut out and hemmed as a finished table cloth. You can see the templates hanging on the wall. The desired template is placed over the fabric, and a pencil used to mark the registration points for lining up the printing block. Fabrics which have already been printed are stacked in front of the templates. After being dyed, this fabric will be made into table cloths and runners of various sizes.

This is a section of cloth which as been marked with a template, and hand-stamped with wax resist. After dying with indigo and removing the wax, it will be made into a rectangular table cloth with a lovely double border all the way around.

Mrs. Kovács demonstrates for us how she lines up the print block with the penciled registration marks, and then lowers it onto the fabric. With the stamp resting on the cloth, she lightly pounds it with her fist to set the wax into the fabric. It was obvious to us that carefully making each wax impression all the way around the cloth takes a lot of time and concentration. As you an see below, the results of her hand-printing are stunning!.

Here is an example of a hand-stamped, indigo-dyed fabric made into a round table cloth. Obviously, it came home with me, and is perfect for my kitchen table!  This fabric is quite wide, and takes a great deal of space and time to print. Yet, the prices were very reasonable!

After spending several hours in the studio, we were invited to the house for a shopping bonanza! Fortunately, hoping ahead of time that we would be visiting a Kékfestö studio when we got to Hungary, we had saved our allowances for some months, and were prepared to shop for future quilting and sewing projects. The prices, ranging $10 to $15 per meter depending on the width, seemed very reasonable considering the quality of the fabric, and the extreme amount of work that goes into producing it.

In addition to yardage, both of us bought a table cloth and an apron. Mine is shown above.

What a totally delightful experience we had! Mr. and Mrs. Kovács are as friendly and nice as can be!  If you ever get to Hungary, you can find their fabrics and finished products in the picturesque town of Szentendre, just a short drive or train ride north of Budapest on the Danube River. Here is a website link.

To end our visit at the Kovács studio, here is a tribute photo of the elder Mr. Kovács, who during his boyhood in the 1920's was immersed in the world of his family's blue-dying business, and who continued producing Kékfestö indigo-dyed fabrics for his entire life, while training his own son to continue the trade.

Like his father, the younger Mr. Kovács has trained his daughters to continue when he retires, although I'm sure he has many more years to go, probably well into his 90s..

My last two photos in this post are a little surprise for you. Before falling in love with beading and quilting, my main passion was Hungarian folk dancing. I danced in a performance group for 10 years (and later became one of the group's choreographers), performing at many events in the Seattle area, including Bumbershoot and the Folklife Festival. We also performed at the World's Fair when it was in Vancouver, British Columbia. I and several of the other dancers in the group made most of our costumes using Hungarian fabrics and original costumes as patterns.

It was folk music and dance that first called my heart and soul into Hungary, where I have since spent a cumulative total of well over a year of my life, spaced over 14 different visits so far.

So, here you go. This is me, wearing a costume I made with Kékfestö fabric for performing the dances of the Szatmár region, located in northeastern Hungary. This photo was taken in September, 1986 at the World's Fair in Vancouver, Canada, where we performed on two separate occasions.

And this is me on stage at a festival in Redmond, WA, happy as can be, Hungarian folk music, song and dance, filling me with joy!  Michael Kappleman and I are the second couple from the left.

So you see...  Kékfestö and I go back a long way. Next, I'll be quilting with it!

*****
My apologies to Hungarians for not using the correct accent mark for the last letter of the Hungarian word Kékfestö. I spent 4 hours trying to do it, but could not get Blogger to accept anything I tried.

I learned to create decorative painted papers from Paulus Berensohn, Albie Smith, Lynne Perrella, Anne Bagby, and others by taking wonderful workshops from them in the 1990s, and soon adapted their techniques to making books with beadwork inserted into the covers, like the one below. I use my painted papers on the book covers and for signature covers, which look great with this type of binding.

But after moving to the island where I've lived for 20 years now, I gradually got into quilting and textile arts, kept the beadwork going, and cut way back on painting. Until now!

Inspired, cajoled, and arm-twisted by one of the Textile Guild members, who wants to learn how to paint papers and make books like mine, I agreed to teach a workshop (2 days of painting and 2 days of bookmaking) for the guild members. Of course, since I hadn't painted for many years, I first had to get back into practice. Yay! What fun I've been having, painting in my shed (thankfully heated). The paper below is my favorite of about 20 painted in the last two weeks. The size is 18 x 24 inches. (Please click to see the details!)

And below are two more to go with it.  The paper above will be used for a book cover, even though it will be hard for me to cut it up. The two papers below will be cut (horizontally) into thirds, and used as signature covers. For those unfamiliar with bookmaking, a signature is a section of papers within a book. Each of the six signatures in my book will be covered with this decorative paper.


It's a fun, playful, and experimental process to paint like this, easier for me than it would be to paint figuratively (landscape, still life, or people). With this type of painting, I just mix matte medium with a color or two of acrylic paint, and apply it by rolling, stamping, stenciling in layers. I keep adding layers until I like it, at which point it's a finished paper. There is always at least part of each paper that pleases me enough to use it for bookmaking and paper arts.

These are the basic supplies and tools I use to paint the papers:

1.) Although acrylic paints and this method can be used to paint on almost any surface or paper, I usually paint on 80-90# drawing paper to make decorative papers.

2.) I prefer using a roller to apply background colors or glazes, rather than a brush. My favorite, purchased online from Dick Blick Art Supplies, is a 2.2"  dense foam roller.

3.) Assorted stamps and stencils. I carve a lot of my own stamps, as you will see below, but sometimes also use commercial stamps. Note that commercial rubber stamps with fine detail for stamping with inks do not work well with acrylics, as the paint clogs the fine lines, ruining the stamp.

4.) Assorted materials, such as a notched adhesive-spreader, coarse sea-sponge, webbed food packaging materials, and bubble wrap are useful to print, texture, and stencil.

5.) Acrylic paints. I use heavy-body paint (rather than fluid acrylics) of student-grade or better quality.

6.) Matte medium and glazing medium (slow drying) are added to extend the paint.

I know, maybe you're thinking I should do a video tutorial. OK. You set it up, and I'll do it. In the meantime, I'd rather be painting...  Here are three more recently painted papers for your viewing pleasure (I hope).



The one directly above is my attempt to emulate batik fabric from India. I had a bedspread back in the hippy 60s with a burgundy design on a mustard yellow background, the memory of which was the inspiration for this paper. I carved all of the stamps used to make it.

I love to carve my own stamps, and sometimes cut my own stencils as well. Let's take a look at that process. It's quite easy really, requiring only a block of Speedy-Carve (or other high-density rubber carving block), and a Speed-Ball Carving tool. Designs can be free cut, drawn right on the carving block, or transferred from a tracing. Here's a fairly decent tutorial on the stamp carving process.

Designs? Well, everywhere I look I see possibilities for carving more stamps! Recently, visiting a fabric store with my quilting buddies, I spied a fat quarter of batik fabric with a luscious design. Here is the fabric:

And here is the stamp I carved from a tracing I made of the central flower. The stamp is the same size as on the fabric, about 3" in diameter.

I also cut a stencil, which you can see below. A friend had a commercial stencil of these three leaves, which I really liked. After borrowing her stencil to use on one of my papers, I traced the painted image, and cut out my own stencil. The tool in this image is a Speed-Ball cutter, which I use to carve the rubber to make stamps.

You've already seen (way above) the whole sheet of paper I painted using just this stamp and stencil, but here's a detail. If you click to enlarge, you can see more about how I paint in layers, first the background colors, next the leaves, then a different color over-stencil on the leaves, and last the flowers.

If you like to play with paint, you might want to give it a try! Here are just a few more of my recently painted papers to tempt you...





I'll be teaching a 2-day bookmaking workshop in mid-May using papers like these to create three different books. There may still be a spot or two available in the class. If you are interested, you can contact me for more information.

You may want to visit my website to see more about my handmade books and painted papers. And there are several earlier posts here on Beadlust with pictures of books made with painted decorative papers and beading by my students, as well as other related topics. Here are a few of them:

1. Wedding book
2. Lisa's book (from a workshop I taught in Wisconsin); her fabulous website is here.
3. Susan's book (from a workshop I taught in Wisconsin)
4. painting papers for making Christmas cards
5. Using symbols in our art and symbols in acrylic painting  
6. Using these techniques to paint with dyes on fabric and more fabric paint/dye examples

Susan Anderson took my bookmaking/painting/beading workshop twice at the Coupeville Art Center. These are the papers for her first book, and if you click to enlarge, you can also see her finished book.

And, to close this post, here is a photo of some of the handmade books I've created over the years... most of them utilize decorative painted papers and bead embroidery.

Thanks for sticking with me to the end of this long post :)!

When my brother, Thom Atkins, visited last fall, he showed me (and a few quilting buddies) his new method for designing and constructing "scrappy improv wall quilts," a technique that turned out to be a lot of fun for me, especially given my long history with an improvisational, intuitive approach to bead embroidery.

Basically, what we did was to empty our bags or boxes of scraps onto a large table and start pawing through them, pulling out ones that appealed to us at that moment. For me it was all about color - red, magenta, fuchsia, with hints of pink, golden-yellow, orange, lavender, and dark green. All of the fabrics were in my scrap box. We had two days of Thom's demonstrations and guidance. During that time, each of us in our small group produced a unique and very pleasing "piece" or "block," measuring roughly 18 x 21 inches, the size of a fat quarter.

One of my red scraps, cut in a nice arc at one end, was the start of it all because I liked the shape and the color. Next I picked up a small strip of yellow, and held it behind the arc of red. Ooooh! Nice enough to repeat. The scrap of orange/red batik was large enough to cut a similar arc, and the strip of yellow was long enough to go behind that one too. These two arcs formed the basis of my piece.

You can see the two arcs above; the lower right was the first. The yellow strip was only about 3" wide, not enough to go all the way around the arcs, but I cut two shapes that would echo the top of each of the arcs. I layered the remaining scraps from that on top of the arcs along the vertical edges of the design. Then I put a dark green scrap behind the arcs and the yellow, which set them off nicely. The rest was just filling to the edges of the quilt with more scraps, including fussy-cut leaves and flowers.

The next step was to glue it all together along the 1/4" seam overlap, working in layers from bottom to top, and cutting away the excess fabric from the underside after each piece is glued. Cutting away the excess fabric leaves a double layer of fabric only at the seams; the rest is a single layer. The glue is Elmer's School Glue, Disappearing Purple, as shown below. It is an organic stick glue, relatively easy to sew through, repositionable, (in case you change your mind), and purple when first applied, drying to transparent (so you can see where exactly you are putting it).

Thom's method is a type of raw edge applique, typically accomplished with heat-fusible web, such as "wonder under." The typical method, given a complex, layered design such as mine, would have resulted in a thick, stiff, multi-layer surface, which would be difficult to quilt, even with a machine. In Thom's method, there is no web, and in most places only one or two layers of fabric. Like all raw edge techniques, the raw edges must be sewn down, and the resulting quilts are not very suitable for bed quilts unless there is heavy stitching over the raw edges (for example, dense, zig-zag, machine stitching).

After gluing my original (shown above) quilt top, I assembled the quilt, using a spray glue to layer the backing, batting and top. The next step was to stitch along the "seams," the overlapping, glued edge of each piece. From there, it was up to each of us as to how to finish the quilt, perhaps with machine quilting, such as stippling or contour stitches, or perhaps with beading, all of which Thom does on his quilts.

A couple of months went by after getting to the unfinished stage shown above. I liked it, but didn't know what to do with it, until one day when I was at our Senior Center, getting foot care from a trained nurse who comes a couple times a week to help those who need it. Her treatment room, about the size of a walk-in closet, has no windows. Her client faces the door to the room, a plain, wooden door.  "That door needs a quilt," I told her. The rest is history; my scrappy improv quilt, Eclipse,  hangs there now.

Only first I had to finish it. Above is the finished quilt, Eclipse. Below I'll tell you some of the finishing steps and about how I transformed it from looking flat and ordinary to sharp and textured using embroidery embellishments. Please click on the photo so you can see the details!

You might have noticed that the finished quilt is longer (better suited for hanging on a door) than the original piece. That was a challenge, although less than you might expect, because Thom had demonstrated for us how he sometimes extends the size of his quilts. In short, I roughly planned out the addition, the mock-up shown below, then created it using the same process and scraps as the original piece.


I used fusible "tape" made for butt-joining pieces of batting, to add a new piece of batting to the bottom edge of batting on the original (upper) part of the quilt. The horizontal strip of striped fabric overlaps the two parts of the quilt and the joined batting underneath. As you can see below, I added a fussy-cut flower over the striped fabric to break up the horizontal strip and visually join the two parts.


Confession time... I'm not good at machine quilting, and don't even have a proper quilting foot for my old machine (1972 Pfaff). I tried stitching around the fussy cut flowers to secure the glued edges, but failed miserably. What to do? Ah, hand-sew with embroidery stitches and floss? Yes! It took a few tries, but eventually I found stitch and thread combinations that worked.

It looked so good that I decided to add stitching and knots to the yellow arcs next. Wow! That popped the eclipse look! In the photo below, you can see bits of all the embroidery stitches I added. Not only does the embroidery provide embellishment and emphasis, it also further quilts the piece. Click the photo to see the detail and better read the stitch identification.


Here are two more detail photos of the finished quilt (without the text boxes).



Lots of fun, and I like the results! Will I do another one? Well, right now I've finally returned to my hexie project, where I'm likely to remain for many months, but after that, scrappy improv may be just what I need!

Kenneth Strother Jr., director of operations in Princeton University's Department of Public Safety (DPS), has been named assistant vice president for public safety, effective June 1.

Charles (Charlie) Tennyson has been appointed Princeton’s new director of Transportation and Parking Services following a national search to fill the position. He previously served for five years as deputy director of the department.

Gilbert Harman, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, died at his home in Princeton on Nov. 13 after a long illness with Alzheimer’s. He was 83.

The new producing artistic director of the theater and music theater season at the arts center sat for an interview for our ‘What I think’ series.

The Princeton microbiologist has also created a non-infectious version of the COVID-19 virus that researchers can study safely.

Ronald Surtz, professor of Spanish and Portuguese languages and literatures, emeritus, died peacefully at home in Cranbury, New Jersey, on Nov. 14. He was 75.

Daniel Osherson, Princeton’s Henry R. Luce Professor in Information Technology, Consciousness, and Culture, Emeritus, known for his  creative scientific explorations with collaborators in many disciplines, died at home on Sept. 4. 

As the James Webb Space Telescope delights stargazers with breathtaking images and groundbreaking discoveries, we connected with Princeton astrophysics luminaries Gillian “Jill” Knapp and Neta Bahcall, both contributors to a new book by women astronomers.

Simon Morrison, author of the new musical biography "Mirror in the Sky,” is a professor of music and Slavic languages and literatures, and a sought-after lecturer in the humanities.

“His mathematical legacy is enormous,” said John D’Angelo *76. “Joe was among the most friendly, popular and influential mathematicians of his generation.”

Laurie joined the Princeton faculty in 1966 and transferred to emeritus status in 2000.

Hubbard, the top-ranking information technology administrator at the Georgia Institute of Technology, will join the University in January.

Two full professors and four assistant professors have been newly appointed to the Princeton University faculty.