Cotton Harvest 2020

Well. from that one boll I showed you 2 months ago, the plants did pretty well.  I still have a small number of bolls that haven't yet opened, but I brought them into the warmth of the house so I'm sure they'll open up soon.

In the meantime, I've been busy finishing last year's cotton.  I had a bit of a lapse whilst spinning this bobbin because of a problem with my neck (which turned out to date back to a car accident we had 27-28 years ago - the osteopath said my neck was out of position and probably had been for all that time!) but it finally got finished.  I'm not sure how much there is here but these bobbins normally hold about 135g of spun wool.  This cotton is wrapped pretty tightly on there and I suspect there may be more than that.

I'll be using this as one ply and this year's cotton will be the 2nd ply, so far from finished yet.

I don't have a photo of all this year's bolls but they must have made quite a pile.  From 10 plants I have 135 bolls already open, with between 12 and 15 still to go.  That makes about 14 bolls per plant, not bad really!

This is the fluff that I've picked out so far :-

It doesn't look much here, but actually weighs 440g.  OK, that still contains the seeds so I expect the weight will go down considerably.

I find this photo so cute.  In each boll there are between 3 and 5 segments normally (I've never seen a 6 segment, but maybe it's possible) all full of fluff and seeds.  In each segment there are usually about 5 or 6 seeds, each seed surrounded by its own fluff.  The little cutie above is one seed with its respective fluff fanned out around it.

The next step is to gin the cotton (i.e. remove the seeds), then card the cotton ready for spinning.

The final problem is - what do I do with all the "skeletons"?  I normally keep them for months and months wondering what I could use them for, then throw them away eventually!  This year I bought some silver spray paint and some glitter and have started to make Christmas decorations.  Actually, I think they'd make pretty little angels because they do look a bit like ballerinas, but I haven't finished playing yet.  This is as far as I've got:-

Waste not, want not!!

2018 Harvest

Don't you just love harvest time?  Especially when it's olive harvest time.  Every year we have to cover the tree with netting because otherwise the birds eat the lot in a very short time.  I've no problem with wildlife having its share, but when they eat my olives before they're ripe, and I don't get any, then it's war!!

We bought this tree as a little sapling 15 years ago when we first moved here.  I remember being told "you'll never get fruit on that!", but I'm pleased to say they were wrong.  Each year my harvest is getting bigger.

This year I picked just over 3 kg of olives, which filled 21 small jars!

The most I've ever had previously was 12 jars, last year.  They take about 10 or 11 days to "cure" in a salt water solution that has to be changed daily, but the final result is definitely worth it.

Can't wait to start eating them.  Oh, and I did manage to leave one on the tree for the birds :-

A couple of days ago our neighbours harvested their pomegranates.  They can't normally eat them because they live in the UK and only come over here 5 or 6 times a year, so guess what they do with them?

And there was a slightly smaller box of damaged ones, which will be used for dyeing.  Pomegranates are full of tannin so don't need a mordant.  These will just be chopped up, boiled, strained and the dye liquor is ready!  The perfect fruit (above) will be squeezed and added to my morning fruit and vegetable juice for extra vitamins and nutrients, and the shell which is left can be used as a mordant for other dyes.  I may just dry them and keep them until I need some.

Now, I just need to find something to dye!!!

2018 Flax Project 2

All my good intentions of updating this little project regularly, i.e. at least once a month, seem to have fallen by the wayside.  However, today I found the plants were covered in little blue flowers.

It's now 2 months since they germinated and they're just over two and a half feet high.  I think another month and they'll be ready to harvest.

It was a bit breezy this morning, so difficult to get clear pictures, but these might give you some idea of what the flowers look like.

Next stage : seed.

Apparently, the seeds will not be fully matured when the time comes to harvest, so I'm planning on leaving some of the plants in the ground so the seeds can ripen.  That way I'll have seed for planting next year.

I need to find a good, safe place to keep my seed this time around.  It's a number of years since I last tried saving seed from flax and I put them on a shelf in my craft cupboard, only to find a mouse had got in and eaten the lot!  We learn from our mistakes eh?

2018 Flax Project

Thought you might like to join me on my new flax project this year.  I've grown flax before, and it grew well, but my attempts at turning it into yarn weren't too successful (in fact, I failed miserably)!  This year is going to be different.  This year I plan on trying different techniques to harvest the fibres from the stems and hopefully succeed in producing some useable fibres to spin into linen yarn.  I hope to try retting some of them in water, grass retting (although at the time the plants are ready to harvest, our grass is usually non-existent because of drought) and I also may try harvesting the fibres from fresh plants.  I've tried it recently with nettles and it seems to work OK, so why not with flax?

The seeds went in on April 20th, and took less than a week to germinate.  I'd pre-prepared the soil by digging in some well-rotted compost from my heap in the garden and then sprinkled the seeds in rows in a block of about 1.5 x 1 metre.  I kept the cat out of the patch by positioning glass cloches on end all over the site.  The birds didn't seem interested, so I have a good crop of seedlings.  Three weeks after sowing the seed, this is what they look like :-

You can see the cloches at the outside of the patch - I'd removed the ones from the middle to take the photo.

Plus a little close-up of the plantlets :-

I think I read somewhere that it's best to grow them in a block, rather than a long row - they do seem to hold each other up anyway!

So, I'll keep you posted on how they're growing and hope you'll stay with me until I get to the end - the spinning of the fibres!

(Almost) Free Food

About three weeks ago I bought a bunch of watercress for making soup.  I cut off the stems (some of which had roots growing) and pushed them into some compost in a tub in the greenhouse.  Yesterday I was able to harvest enough for another batch of soup.

The nice thing is, the plants should produce at least another batch as they're still growing quite strongly.  The soup was delicious and had far more flavour than the original watercress I'd bought, probably because there was only about 15 minutes from plant to pan.

Anyway, thought you might like the recipe; it's very easy and doesn't take long to make.

Watercress Soup

This amount serves four generous helpings.  I only did half of this as I didn't have enough watercress to do the complete recipe.

9 oz watercress, chopped
4 oz butter
Approx 14 oz leeks, chopped
4 potatoes, peeled and chopped
3 pts hot stock
4 heaped tablespoons creme fraiche
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Melt butter in a large pan, then add chopped leeks, potatoes and watercress and stir so they are well coated in butter.  Sprinkle in some salt, then cover and sweat over a very gentle heat for about 20 minutes, giving mixture a good stir halfway through.

Add stock, bringing everything to a simmering point, and simmer, covered, for 10-15 minutes.

Remove from heat, cool slightly and blend in a food processor until smooth.  Return to pan and add 3 tablespoons of creme fraiche, season to taste with salt and pepper, then reheat gently without letting it boil.

Serve with an extra swirl of creme fraiche or cool and serve chilled in the same way.

I topped ours with a parasol mushroom (flash fried in butter until slightly crispy on the outside, but tender in the middle) that we found, and an extra sprig of watercress. Delicious!

In the Greenhouse

Lots of green stuff to feed us over the winter :-

Lettuce, watercress, rocket, salad leaves, pak choi, oregano,

More lettuce, round carrots, baby leeks,

Yet more lettuce and pak choi,

and look who's taking care of things for me while I'm not there :-

Hope he manages to find plenty of bugs!

Another Day Another Dye

Sunday - day off in France.  A time to do whatever we want to do . . . except work!

First of all, the final photos of my woad dyeing session the other day :-

I'd put some merino fleece and a skein of wool/silk in the dyepot overnight, and they came out as deep a blue as the previous two skeins.  I'm pretty sure I could have dyed more with this dyepot, but I didn't have any more yarn to put in there.  I'll try and be more organised with the next lot.

In the meantime, I decided to harvest my madder bed.  I recently dug up some roots for replanting, and then let the rest of the bed dry out, so this morning I dug the remaining roots.  These have to be washed quite well because any soil left on there can make the dye brown.

The red colour is quite visible on this photo.  There were some quite thick roots in there, but lots of thin ones as well, so I chopped the whole lot and put them to soak in cold water.  I reckoned the thin ones probably contained some colour, however little, which would add to the overall dye.  The roots started seeping colour almost as soon as I put them in the water.

This will sit overnight and I'll dye with it tomorrow.

I also harvested all the dried out plant tops to use as a separate dye.  I broke these up into pieces and heated them in water for about an hour.  The colour at that point was quite deep, so I dunked my two skeins from Thursday in there and got quite a pale dirty pinkish colour.

The skeins are still wet in this photo, so I think it'll probably be even paler when it's dry.  I might just re-dip this briefly in the madder root dye tomorrow to make it a better pink. Then the plan is to dye the remaining white stripes in the main madder dyebath.  I'll let you know how it turns out tomorrow.

This is the latest cotton boll which is just starting to open.  The centre has turned brown and is drying out and just beginning to split.  The white cotton should be visible tomorrow I think.  This is one of the bigger bolls, so it'll be interesting to see how it develops.

Oh Woad Is Me!!

Yeah, Ok, you've heard that one before.

Today I harvested my woad - all 3.25 pounds of it.  I've never had this amount before, so was hopeful of getting some nice blues.  Tammy came up for the day and we had a dye session.

It started quite early this morning with me picking leaves in the rain - first rain in a while. Then we washed and chopped the leaves

and poured boiling water over them.  They then had to sit for an hour before the next step.

Missed a few opportunities for photos here.  Lunch happened instead.  But the next step was straining and squeezing the leaves to get as much colour from them as possible. Then we heated the dye liquid to 50 deg C, added washing soda until it turned a greeny shade, and whisked it with an electric whisk to incorporate air into the mix.  Amazingly, the froth on top started to turn blue almost immediately, so I whisked for about 5 minutes just to make sure.

After that we re-heated to 50 deg C and sprinkled Spectralite (sodium hydrosulphite) over the top to remove the oxygen.  After sitting for 45 minutes, it was then ready to use.

First dip looks promising :-

Second dip :-

Eric thinks they look like Blackburn Rovers scarves!  I've left them with white stripes because I want to  dye them a different colour.  I've left some merino fleece and another skein of yarn soaking in the dye bath overnight but that'll probably be all I'll get from this batch.  Hoping to have another harvest in a month or so if the weather holds.

Oh, and two more cotton bolls have started to open, small ones again, but bigger than the first.

Three down, 30 or 40 to go!

From here to infinity . . .

. . . Tomatoes, that is :-

That's approx. 15 litres of chopped tomatoes on the right, and 10 litres of tomato pulp.

And they're still coming!

Pic(k) of the Day!

Now off to the kitchen!

Catching Up

Posts have been a bit sparse on here of late, not because I've not been doing anything worth writing about, more because there's just been too much going on.  So, here's what's been happening lately to keep us so busy.

There were gigs to be played :-

Sud Rock Festival

Look at the size of that stage!

Jeff, the bass player was to the right, Steve in the centre, Eric left, and Geoff the drummer is just visible in the background!  It's got to be the largest stage Eric's ever played on.  They had sound engineers too:-

and their own air-conditioned porta-cabin kitted out with settees, cool drinks etc.


The next day we went to visit Sarah and Paul of La Maison des Chameaux, to (finally!!!!) deliver her sweater.  I was a bit worried whether it would still fit her, as she's lost weight since we last saw her.  Luckily, she likes them "sloppy"!

We had a fabulous lunch with them outside in the shade (ankles got bitten to death though!), and ogled their kittens,

Basket of Fun!

My favourite

Their mother was killed on the road last week, so Hershey the dog has adopted them and regularly gives them a good clean and keeps them in order.

She's very protective of them, and sees off any other inquisitive cats.

As usual, it's impossible to visit Sarah and not come away with something.  Like half a ton of camel, llama, alpaca and sheep's wool!

I don't have enough lifetime left to spin all of this!


The cotton bolls are growing like mad - can't be too long now before they start to open.

They're still flowering too

These are such pretty plants, even if you're not interested in spinning the cotton.


This was a little dyeing project I did a while ago.  I found lots of these red dock seeds in and around the garden, and thought there must be some potential for colour.  So I collected them, just put the seeds in a pan of water, and soaked them for a day or two.

The dye was quite a deep colour and I was hopeful it may give a reddish orange.  I mordanted some fleece with alum and cream of tartar and heated it up slowly in the dye bath.  The results weren't quite what I'd expected, but it's still a nice colour.  That's it on the right below, next to a second-dip in the madder dye bath.

2nd dip madder on left, red dock seed on right

My current knitting project, the Buds of May shawl, has reached a standstill - I'm stuck! I'm about 60% through, and the pattern has become quite ambiguous and confusing.  So it's sitting in a bag, abandoned, until I manage to find some time to sit and work it out. This pattern would definitely not suit a beginner.  No photo, because I'm pretty disgusted with it at the moment.


Finally, the garden is producing lots at the moment.  I harvested this lot yesterday.

Yes, there are 26 cucumbers there!  Some of these will be pickled in jars, hopefully today, and I think some chilled cucumber soup is in order.

A few days ago I bottled 15 jars of tomatoes, and the next lot are ready for processing. Then yesterday I was given a large bucket of yellow plums, so they need bottling today too.  Maybe it would be a good idea to get out of bed and get on with it!!