Wee Dye Test Update

A month ago, I showed you the results I achieved dyeing a little knitted sample of handspun Cotswold with the leftover water after cooking globe artichokes.  I was really pleased with the grey it gave.  I realised however, that I had no clue whether it would fade away to nothing within a few days or weeks.  Well, since then, it's been sitting on a table in the window with half of it covered up to keep part of it in the dark.

After a month of, not exactly sunshine, but light it doesn't seem to have changed at all. The top half of this sample was kept in the dark and, although it looks a little different on this photo, the bottom half in real life hasn't altered at all from the top half.

I'm going to put it back in the window for another month because, as I hinted, we haven't had a great deal of strong sunshine in the last month.  We now seem to have hit a really hot spell with wall-to-wall sunshine, so I think the true test will be still to come.

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?