Grilled Peacock.... (with Pineapple Sauce?)

Giggle One of the Costuming Saga  (BTW these are not in chronological order)

Sometimes in costume making, you create items that will double as both part of a costume or an accessory. We did a few of these with silks over the past two weeks. The colors we got were both breath taking and fun. And when the color got all over us, that was fun too. I personally got to learn a little about the chemical reactions that make the dyeing process happen, (Zahira sneaks science lessons into Everything!) I was also trusted to squirt the dye out of the bottles onto the silk. Woo Hoo!

This time around the dye pot, I learned that dyeing silk is not an exact science and sometimes the silk or the dye is naughty. Color doesn't always take OR the color changes a bit. This makes every project a true science experiment. My definition of an experiment: A true scientific experiment comes about when you don't know what will actually happen. You can make a hypothesis and put your materials/data together but you have to Wait for the outcome.

One veil in particular did both of the above-mentioned naughty tricks to us when we were in the process of creating it. It didn't take color in some spots AND one of the colors came out differently than expected. After pulling said veil out of the processing container, I pointed these two bits of mischief out to Zahira. She leaned back a little and tapped her finger on her bottom lip in her patented "I'm creating" mode. After a few moments of thought her eyes began to sparkle and a dazzling grin appeared. Painting! That is how we change what we Got into something we Want. First came the pleating of the veil, then out came the paintbrush. Dipping into the dye pot and stroking color onto the fabric Zahira told me to just wait and see. I followed her directions and wrapped the silk, put it in to steam and when we pulled it out I was amazed.

The veil had lovely graduated sections of the "Peacock" coloring we were striving for, but with painting the pleats we got this striped effect as well. Our troupe colors were dubbed a few weeks ago as Peacock Camo, because of the colors and how the dye soaked into the fabric. This veil had none of the camouflage type spotting, it only had the colors we have been using for our Peacock Camo. Since there was this purple striping across most of this "peacock" veil, the imagination could only conclude that it had been on the grill. Thus this veil is now dubbed - Grilled Peacock.

I, of course, began laughing at the thought of the face most people would make if offered grilled peacock. Then, I began to wonder what it would taste like and furthermore what kind of sauce could you serve with it. (Strange? Yes! But it gets better.) Pondering the sauce, my mind wandered back into costume land and I tried picturing what color would be peacock'ish and compliment the costume well. Gold came to mind almost immediately and on the heels of that thought came the thought that pineapples were "gold". The only conclusion that I then came to was that if you are going to have Grilled Peacock, you MUST serve it with Pineapple Sauce!

The Grilled Peacock veil I took as my decorative "butt cover" and wore it with pride. I made sure that I had gold jewelry to compliment the whole Peacock ensemble. That way when I walked around and while I was on stage I could imagine myself as Grilled Peacock with Pineapple Sauce!