What Can Be Done In One Day OFF Work?

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.

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.

It's as good as it looks!

Then I thought bran muffins with dates would be good for breakfast:

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.

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.

Br. Milk Sheep Fleece in Tansy vat.

Tansy

Tansy yellow on BMS fleece

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.

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.

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.

Ciba Acid Turquoise

Ciba Acid Yellow 

Ciba Acid Red (?)  Looks like orange.

There's more, but that's all I'm doing for now.