This is our second snowfall of the season. The first was brief and barely covered the ground for a day before it was rained away. But yesterday afternoon the snow started again and overnight we got a decent accumulation.
I took these pictures as we will likely lose the snow again with more rain in the forecast and temperatures rising to above freezing.
Some of the sheep preferred to hang back at the hay feeder this morning, while others knew there was still lots of grass beneath the snow in the paddock.
I love it when the snow clings to the trees. And when I don't have 20 lbs of sheep poop stuck to my boots after morning chores in the muck.
Wise sheep...either way they enjoy a meal. Yes, the snow on trees so beautiful. We had a terrible ice storm over 25 years ago and the ice surrounding the branches was mesmerizing. Haha!...you had me visualizing you walking with 20 lbs of sheep poop stuck to your boots! Lol
Here are results of my first Indigo dye, using scoured but un-mordanted fibre samples.
The horizontal rows are (cellulose) cotton, linen and (protein) silk and wool. 6 pieces of each.
Each fibre group was separately dipped once, rinsed, and rested for about half an hour.
Two samples of each were set aside to dry (top row) and the remain 4 pieces of each were separately dipped, rinsed and rested for about half an hour.
Two samples of each were set aside to dry (middle row) and the remaining 2 pieces of each fibre were given a 3rd dip cycle.
When all done I gave each sample a final rinse in citric acid, a wash with a pH neutral soap and final cold rinse.
You are so thorough, Doug! I am that way with hand knitting...but that kind of dying hurts my little gray cells. ☺️
I love this Doug! I have been interested in an indigo vat as the indigo dye color is one that I use frequently Love this experiment!
I 'built' my first Indigo vat today, as I resume the Natural Dye Course. I had put this lesson off due to craziness on the farm, in part, but also its a little more complex than the earlier lessons and I wanted to wait until I could focus some solid time on it.
Using the ingredients in my first pic, I mixed up the vat in a big plasitc pail, and then balanced the pH. Now it will sit overnight and I will dye fibre samples tomorrow.
I've got scoured but not mordanted or dyed samples of cotton, linen, silk and wool ready to go. As well, I will over dye some of the samples I dyed with madder in a previous lesson.
The left column of samples are Cellulose - cotton and linen, and the right column are the Protein samples - silk and wool. The three rows are the 3 different strengths of dye:fibre ratio I used - 25%, 50% and 100%.
2020 just keeps on being 2020.
Out for a hike and I see ferns newly sprouted through the carpet of autumn leaves. And some other plant I can't identify - the leaves are thorny and a very thick waxy green - sort of like holly but wrong shape of leaves.
And then there were the mosquitos.
But that was all two days ago, and right now we're having a blizzard (which at least is more 'normal').
At the dye pot, replenishing Apple Harvest colourway.
Nice fall colorway.