Working Hard on Dissertaion

I have not visited bloggerland for nearly a month because i have been thoroughly immersed in researching for a dissertation, the module i am doing this semester for the BA (Hons) programme I am enrolled in. Here is a picture of what my desk looks like. You can't see the piles of books i have on the floor either side of my chair. The focus of my dissertation is a collection of 5 of my mother's embroidered cloths she worked in her teens/early 20s. My mother came and stayed with us and in that time she wrote about her cloths and i was able to interview her. So i have lots of primary research material to work with.

The state of my latest stained cloth experiments tells me I have been very busy because I obviously left them too long and they have gone to the next stage of decay. Oh well, it was an experiment and I still got results. The cloth above was soaked in soy milk first. A textile artist who follows my blog from Australia recommended soy milk to me. Thank you very must for the good advice.

The second cloth was soaked in tannic acid first, before being covered by leaves under a big maple tree. As you can see the staining wasn't as marked. So soy milk is the winner. Now I am ready for the fall when I will put some cloths out under the maple tree just before it begins to drop its leaves. This is part of my on going dialogue with this tree.