Well...quite a bit I think.
This is the first day's beginning. Since I rarely (almost never) buy store bought treats I always spend some of my time cooking. My hubby loves my poppyseed rolls which I prepare almost exclusively for him. This is what they look like.
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| 2 Poppyseed Rolls |
Then I felt like we should have some fresh bread. It looks like whole wheat, but for 6 c. of flour
, only 1 c. is whole wheat flour.
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| It's as good as it looks! |
Then I thought bran muffins with dates would be good for breakfast:
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| Bran Date Muffins |
Meanwhile by the time the bread had its first rising I was able to get the laundry finished washing & out on the line. How can you tell we live in a rural area? I like it that way!
When I was living the life, the sunflowers just kept growing & growing. I believe they are Russian Mammoth. They tower over my husband. We have groups of them planted all over the place.
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| Sunflowers 2011. The tallest one is 10' plus. |
This is tansy, aka Bitter Buttons. It is another very tall plant with lacey leaves & small velvety flowers. I dyed some British Milk Sheep fleece with it to see the yellow I would get.
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| Br. Milk Sheep Fleece in Tansy vat. |
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| Tansy |
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| Tansy yellow on BMS fleece |
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| Tansy yellow w. white fence for comparison |
I had to fit in a little knitting too. These heavy work socks are now done. Started last winter, then ran out of Briggs & Little wool. Soon to be on their way through our mail system to Nova Scotia.
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| Briggs & Little boot sock. Heavy, oh ya!! |
I kept the dye pot of tansy & added the woad leaves after I had removed the indigo from them & left it to simmer for an hour. Then I added alum mordanted Br. M. S. fleece and got an interesting result - it's on the right. The fleece on the left is a delicate aqua on Br. M. S. fleece. I made a mistake & added ammonia to the vat when I should have added the thiox. Oh well. This is all the woad from this year. I will have to try again next year.
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| Woad dye on left. Exhausted woad leaves in old tansy vat on right. |
This is the indigo dye result (powdered indigo) used in last year's woad vat I kept. The green is over dyed with indigo on Golden Marguerite.
I have some acid dye, red, yellow, turquoise on the stove right now that are ready to come off. I'm using fleece from Ille de France sheep.
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| Ciba Acid Turquoise |
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| Ciba Acid Yellow |
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| Ciba Acid Red (?) Looks like orange. |
There's more, but that's all I'm doing for now.
