Riiiight, so earlier this summer I played with indigo, dyed some napkins, dyed a bench, had a good time, made a big mess, and just sort of left everything set up in the garden and would give things another dip every time I wandered out there.

And then events, as they so often do, occurred. And I got distracted. And so this was no longer the uppermost thing in my mind. And I completely and totally forgot it the bench, the napkins, and the dye existed. For a solid six weeks. While they sat out in the sun and the rain and the wind and did what indigo does, which is gently fade and look super cool.

Then last Friday, I wandered out to the garden to tidy things up before the storm we were supposed to get aaaaaaaaand remembered it was there. So I lifted up the napkins and looked underneath and, as expected, the spots under the napkins were super dark and the rest super light and the whole thing rather Dramatically Uneven.

So I did the only reasonable thing in the circumstances. I threw the napkins back in the dye for one more dip, used them to blot another coat (layer? application? dose?) of color on the bench, brought the napkins in to wash, then tucked the bench up somewhere it would not blow away but would get rained on, and let the rain rinse it.

Look, we are using a fairly permissive definition of ‘reasonable’ here. We are grading on a curve. We are judging reasonable against the larger context of outside events, and absolutely nothing I do in the privacy of my own yard can come close to the scope of the unreasonable things happening in the world right now, so whatever I’m doing is automatically reasonable, mkay?

And now? Well now it’s Monday afternoon, it’s still drizzly and gray out there, the bench has not blown away. Once it’s dry, I’ll give it a few days in the sun and we’ll see what happens.

Or I’ll forget about it until we’re about to get the first snow and bring it in then.

Either way I’ll show it to you…eventually…probably…assuming nothing unreasonable happens to me in the meantime.