Autumn Leaves

I've been meaning to try dyeing with apple leaves for a while, but in the meantime autumn crept up on me.  I think the leaves are probably better in spring, but, nothing tried, nothing gained.  And they did have some lovely colours in there

which I thought might add a bit of depth to the dye.

The leaves were boiled up for an hour or so, left overnight, and then strained.  Jenny Dean's Wild Colour says that no mordant is needed for apple leaves (probably because of the tannin content) but I wasn't quite sure I'd get a good result that way.  In the end I split the fleece (merino) into two piles, mordanted one lot with alum, and left the other natural.

The natural (no mordant) was a bit disappointing.

Not even a nice beige!

The mordanted fleece was better, with a definite yellow tinge, but still a bit disappointing.

The fleece is still wet here, just out of the dye bath, so that's why it looks a bit felted.

I decided to give the two lots of fleece a quick after dip in ammonia, so poured a glug into a bowl of water, swished it round, and then added the wool.  This worked like a dream with the mordanted fleece - it turned into a rich, acidic yellow - but the beige was still beige afterwards, just a bit darker with a few highlights.

Here are the two results once they had dried :-

The ammonia did manage to turn the unmordanted fleece a nicer colour, but it's still beige.  Nothing wrong with beige if you like that colour, and I don't dislike it, but I've got lots of beige fleece from previous dye sessions that went wrong didn't quite reach expectations.  This one will probably be over-dyed with woad, which I have to pick very soon before we get any serious frosts.

Today I started to card the yellow, and it's really looking quite good :-

You can almost see the sunshine the leaves have absorbed all summer!

Autumn Army

Look what I found marching through the garden :-

I think autumn has arrived.

Autumn Break

After all the visitors had departed, mid-September, we decided we needed a little break and took ourselves off to the Costa Brava in northern Spain for 4 nights.  The weather was amazing and the countryside beautiful.  We'd taken our little motorbike on the back of the campervan so we could get around more easily and explore.

Sea and Rocks

We stayed in a really nice campsite within walking distance of the promenade at the seaside resort of Roses where we enjoyed some excellent meals out for very little money.

One of the places we visited was a lovely little town called Cadaques which was about half an hour's drive from where we were staying.  Salvador Dali's house is not far from here, but it wasn't possible to visit unless you'd phoned and pre-booked, so we'll have to save that one until next time.

A Cadaques cat :-

A lot of the houses and shops there were built into the rocks.  I was quite surprised when I went to the toilet in a cafe to find the back wall was a sheer piece of rock with water running down it.  They'd put in a gutter to take the water away.

Sangria was always on the menu!

Another day we visited Figueres mainly so we could go to the Dali Museum, especially as we hadn't been able to go to his house near Cadaques.

I didn't realise until we got home just how few photos I took here.  It was allowed to take photographs so long as you didn't use a flash.  This museum is well worth visiting if you're ever in the area.  It was on three floors and kept us occupied for about as many hours.

The ticket price included a visit to a separate building which contained Dali's Jewels, but unfortunately we ran out of time and didn't manage to go there.

So, if you were wondering where I'd got to for the last couple of weeks, this does explain a little bit.  However, I have been progressing with other projects and I'll show you some of those next time.

P.S.  The title "Autumn Break" is a bit misleading at the moment as we've been having summer weather ever since we got back.  The last two days have been 36 deg C in the shade - not bad for autumn!

Misty Autumn Morning

I love autumn, after the heat of the summer it's so nice to have a little bit of coolth(?) but nice blue sky days.  The other day we woke to thick mists all around us, but I could see blue sky overhead and, sure enough, once the sun had burned the mist away, we had a glorious day.  But the magic in walking around the garden early on has to be the feeling of being the only one on the planet - the village across the valley had disappeared and I could only see a few yards into the fields surrounding us.

The dead weeds were wearing their best lace shawls

Perfect cobwebs, normally invisible, were everywhere

but the spiders had legged it - they were nowhere in sight.

This looks as though I should be able to spin it . . . spider silk!  More than enough around the garden to make a pair of lace gloves.