Colour in the garden and dye pot!

 The weather prognosticators said today was the first day of autumn.  It's like Mother Nature flipped a switch.  Yesterday was warm and humid, 27C feeling like 32C with the humidex.   Today the high is 15C, feeling like 14C because of the stiff north wind.  Welcome to fall!   

Carrot Bouquet

My son pointed out that I'd canned about the same amount of tomatoes that came from our garden this year, as I've done in years when I had to purchase them.  I only ever processed one batch at a time, so it felt really easy, compared to two full days of canning.   Now that I've figured out where the tomatoes do best in the garden, I'm hoping I can repeat this.   I still have some herbs and celeriac in the garden, and kale I guess, but other than that, the garden is ready to put to rest for the winter. 

 I planted some carrots in a planter on a whim.  I've rarely ever had success with carrots, so I was thrilled a couple of days ago, when I pulled them up.  Not huge carrots, but they were planted late and the pot didn't quite get enough sun.  It was enough for a meal for the 3 of us though, which was pretty fabulous.  The purple ones are interesting, but just orange carrots inside, with a purple skin.   The yellow and white ones though are tasty.   I'd certainly purchase a packet of just those seeds, rather than the mix, if I could.

 

We had a dye day at our weavers guild.   It was a small group of us as 50% of our attendees had to cancel due to Covid or injuries.  However we had fun and it turned out to be an informative day.  I learned that 80% of white alpacas are born deaf, which I definitely didn't know.   We also found out that some people mis-represent their fibres for sale.  Another participant had a warp wound from what she was told was baby alpaca, and it was this crazy bright yellow with luster.    She painted a gorgeous warp - I wish I'd taken a photo of it, in amazing autumnal colours of various greens, oranges and burgundy.   However after she steamed it, virtually all the colour washed out.    So upsetting!   A later burn test of the fibres suggest that it is a man made fibre and wouldn't be able to be dyed with our dyes.

Painted wool with Procion MX dyes

Because there were so few of us, and we had lots of dye, we were using bright colours.    I had 2 50g skeins of sock yarn - 75 %wool/25% nylon which I wound into large skeins using the backs of chairs.   I wound them separately, but dyed them laying them side by side, to get mainly matching skeins.   

It won't be self striping as I didn't make a large enough skein and had too many colour changes.    But it's pretty.  The colours turned out beautifully.   I was a little worried about the purples because in the garage light where we were working, it looked more brown to me.   It's perfect though.  This will be fun to knit and fun to wear!

 

Here is a quick picture of cooking "muffins"  from an 18th c recipe at Westfield.  They weren't full of holes, more bread-like.  However they were tasty and light.   They were delicious with jam.  It's been a while since I've cooked at the historical village, as the summer was so hot and muggy.  It was fun to get a chance to do it again.    I'm currently researching recipes for the next time I'm there.