WOOL DYING & GARDEN PIX ~ ~ ~

Three days this week, I managed to get some dying time in ~ dying takes me a long time ~ don't know why ~ it seems when I read Gene Shepherd's blog that he gets 10 yards dyed before his breakfast!!! Me, it's an all day process but of course, I'm doing office work, laundry, reading email, etc. Here are the fruits of my fragmented labors!!
If you remember from an earlier post, I was washing fleece for a sheep class. Well, I decided that I should try dying the fleece as well ~ I'm thinking it turned out pretty swell!! The colors are beautiful and can be used for flowers, landscaping, crazy hair colors ~ all kinds of things!! I'm pretty happy with the results!!

On the sidebar to the left, I have posted two shows that I'm doing in September ~ Quailcrest Herb Fair and In the Spirit of Friends. Since those shows are back to back, I decided I better hop on the dying bandwagon and get started so I have some nice things to sell. When we were in England, I purchased dyed fleece from Heather Ritchie and have used it sparingly ~ now, I will have it to offer my customers ~ just something a little different!! I spread out these two pieces of blue so you could see the variation of color that came out during the dying process ~ I love a marbled look and these are two good examples!

Fortunately, we have had some nice rains this week ~ the gardens are looking pretty good! Black-eyed susans are everywhere ~ I'm sure you all know how they spread ~ and the Rose of Sharon bush is in full bloom! There's a bit of white obedient plant showing at the left.

With almost everything I've planted in past years being pretty aggressive ~ this garden is looking pretty wild! The stone paths that Sonny worked so hard to install can almost be seen in all this profusion of plant life ~ he would love an orderly garden but this gardener just can't quite get a handle on that!! So what we have is a cottage garden ~ wild and spontaneous ~ maybe a reflection of it's designer!!!!!

This little bouquet greets guests on the garden gate ~ I hope it says 'welcome' to all who enter! One of Sonny's customers says it reminded her of going to her grandmothers house ~ since she was 40ish and I'm not, I tried to take that as a compliment! On Monday, there will be fresh flowers in the little pottery pocket as I am having a group for lunch and a house tour. Some have been here before but others are new ~ mostly hookers, I think ~ so that will be fun! I have to get groceries yet this morning and then we'll come home Sunday afternoon from the lake so I can start preparing the food ~ and now I have to go down and try to make some sense out of the wool room ~ when I'm in dying mode, there is wool and dyes and stuff everywhere!! You wouldn't even believe it!!!

The rain is going to let up soon so it should be a nice weekend! My son and family live in Seattle and when I talked to him on Wednesday, he said at that precise moment, his car thermometer said 111 degrees!!!! They were really suffering as no one has air conditioning out there since they don't usually need it! He said you couldn't buy a fan or a window AC anywhere ~ they were living in their basement family room and opening the door to the wine cellar to get some cooler air!!!! Today it looks like it will be around 85 there ~ they should be a lot happier with that!

Have a good weekend ~ see you next week!!