Um..Hi

Dec 11, 2011 18:15

So apparently I haven't been submerged under the depths of the Earth, and no I don't plan to. In a few words, I've been busy. You know, college stuff.

For almost 2 weeks alone I've been making my own batik; a total of 5 meters. To break it down, it's 2 meters of stamp-batik, 2 meters of mixed (stamp and written) batik, and 1 meter of written batik. If it sounds weird that it's called "written" batik instead of "hand-drawn", it's because here it's called "writing" instead of "drawing" when you make a hand-drawn batik motif on a piece of cloth. And dammit, it really tests your patience.

I spent nearly a whole week writing on the mixed 2m since apparently I'm also a masochist and made several motifs a bit too tiny to make this assignment move any faster. Thanks to that, I only began dyeing last Thursday, when the deadline was last Friday (*sings* I'm screeeewed~). Then I saw some of my other classmates' work that were pretty much finished and started to headdesk. I don't mean to brag, but I really think the reason their work is finished much quicker was because they hardly wrote any "filling" motif. In other words, it was more or less too "empty". No, I'm not trying to insult their work. On the contrary, I'm cursing myself for being the zealot that I am. Maybe 'zealot' was an overstatement. "I'm too ambitious." There, that probably fits it better.

As of now I'm 2/3 done, with my mixed and stamp ones only needing to have the wax rinsed off of it. The Indonesian, or rather in its original language Javanese, term for it is "nglorod" (try pronouncing that if you're not Indonesian yourself). Basically it's dipping the finished dyed batik cloth into boiling water over and over again to rinse the wax off the cloth. My written one, however is delayed due to rain. I'm using a traditional kerosene stove to melt the hot wax. To say the least, it's not really safe to use it when it's raining.

On second thought, I really appreciate it raining now. I need a break from dyeing, stretching cloths, writing, and having hot wax drip onto my hand. And a break I will have, starting with a hot cup of coffee. I'll post up some pictures when I'm done.

college, ramblings

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