Dung B. Daily

Dung B. Daily Series - Diminishing Returns

This is my first comic strip.  I am weaving together my love of beetles with my love of fiber.   The series is called Dung B. Daily. This first installment is woven with linen and called Dimishing Returns.  Future ones may also be woven, but I think for awhile I will stick to pen and paper.

The key to understanding the piece is to know that dung beetles push their dung balls with their back feet ... hence the yarn ball is unravelling... hence the title.  Nothing better than a comic strip to teach the basics of dung beetles!

From a weaving standpoint, this is the first time I have woven with linen.  Since the linen is not uniform in size the warps did not remain parallel for long; making for odd edges, turns and bumpy spots.   But it does give that hand drawn look to the piece.

I am happy I thought of wet testing the colored yarn.  When I did this with the red and black linen I discovered it ran... which is a good thing to know prior to weaving.  I can imagine that sick feeling I would have had when steaming the woven tapestry and watching the white linen pick up blotches of red and black.   I quickly switched to some color-fast cotton that was in my stash for the black and red and continued weaving.    As a last touch I wanted the red yarn ball to have a 3D effect so I stuffed it a bit with red mohair which peaks out in places giving the ball a reddish tint in places.

This piece makes me smile.