The Last Iris

After boring you for the last few weeks with photos of alpacas, peacocks, dead flowers, cheese-making (well, OK, that may have been a bit more interesting) and old men in deck chairs, you're probably wondering when I'm going to get around to showing you something productive.  This is supposed to be a spinning, dyeing and knitting influenced blog after all.  Well, you'll have to wait another day at least I'm afraid.

Here's a little hint though,

a pan of baby alpaca (alpacas again! and no, not from mine) yarn that I've been spinning recently.  This is in a mordant bath (alum) and will stay there cooling until tomorrow when it'll be ready for the dyepot.

This is the last iris.  No, I'm not going to be using just one iris to dye 350 grams of wool - I've got a freezer-ful of the dead ones (oh no, not dead flowers again!).  Each day for the last couple of weeks I've been collecting the flowers as they started to wilt and saving them for dyeing.

So, what colour do you think I'll get from these?  Ha, well I do wonder myself.  We'll all find out tomorrow won't we?

A little eye-candy from Rob and Tammy's horse-chestnut tree, just because I can!

Speaking of Tammy, she's been very busy picking straw and seeds out of some fleece (dare I mention that it's alpaca) so she can felt it into a rug.

Got the patience of a saint that girl :-

This is more of the dreaded alpaca - it's actually all the short bits from shearing, which aren't long enough too to spin.  Nice colours, should make a lovely rug.

The cat found it all too stressful and went to sleep.

One final photo for today :-

. . . OK, I'll get my coat!!