Fine weather, garden, hens and blue yarn

Warm - hot even- weather for the last 3 weeks and practically no rain- has plants flowering and reaching out to grow but getting very thirsty so a lot of watering had to be done. The bit of rain promised did not really hit us at all while near by areas got a fair share of moisture.



Glad to say the red hen has healed up after her assault bu Atilla the hen and grown a new comb. They are now buddies and seem inseparable. Atilla laid down some rules on the last introduction - she immediately went into the red's house and laid her white egg in the hay there - couldn't be a clearer signal than that :). Red hen continues to be submissive but there have been no attacks in the past 2 weeks - just a brown and a white egg side by side in the nest. Huddie ASBO dog has taken to sleeping in the garden all night so hopefully the fox won't remove my now harmonious pair.


Seeds for woad, madder and Japanese Indigo grew to a greater or lesser extent. Might get some of the woad for dying in mid July.
WOAD

JAPANESE INDIGO

THERE'S MADDER IN THERE SOMEWHERE




After the constraints of spinning even stable singles, it was nice to do some blue woolen and even nicer to spin up some colored noiley stuff for a textured yarn - all fuzzy lumps and bumps. This little lot will probably be woven together - plans are made - maths is done, balls are wound - warp tomorrow - then I'll find out what went wrong with the maths.

Singles warp and more bread - and zeitgeist

The singles warp experiment went ahead with mixed results and much learning:

I made a big boo-boo!! I beat way too hard on the woolie singles warp but this only dawned on me after I'd already broken several warps! I was inclined to label it a total failure by then - but for how nice the weft felt - just like I'd planned it! So I forged on with the help of patches and pins and finally got there - or therabouts. I actually love the thing despite all it's obvious flaws. I'd decided to go right ahead and warp another one - this time being very careful about the beating and having a better knowledge of how it's supposed to look and what the pattern stick does etc.
Then the zeitgeist thing happened - my copy of Sin.Off 2010 arrived this morning and here it has an article on singles used as warp entitles "Singles as warp? Yes, you can" by Linda Ligon. Well thanks for telling me :). But seriously, the tips she gives very much correlate with my just-past experience. Didn't think of using sizing - 'though perhaps that's only necessary for fairly fuzzy stiff.
So, with the approval of the universe, I'll warp another one soon.


More sourdough bread - I love this stuff:




Must go water the poor thirsty plants.

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