More Harvest

My lavender and coreopsis are doing well this year, so my harvest-fest continues. I already picked one bouquet of lavender which dried nicely and is now in a little sachet in my sock drawer. Today I snipped another bunch. I love the smell of lavender and unlike most other scents I’m not sensitive to it. I also like a little in my tea and in chocolate. Yum.

The annual coreopsis has nicely become a weed in my garden after a few years of planting it from seeds that I started under my basement lights. I even have a variety called “Seashells” because the petals are tubular. They pop up amid the others and are probably madly hybridizing with them. The flowers are quite variable anyway and some have a large deep burgundy centre and some are completely yellow. I’m trying to save up enough dried flowers for a reasonably-sized dyebath, but so far I haven’t even filled a sandwich-sized Ziploc baggie. T-Man was a bit annoyed with me for denuding this entire patch but there were lots of buds so in a few days it will look this nice again. And then I’ll pick them again! Heh. What does he think gardens are for anyhow? Just looking at?

We’re in a mini-heat-wave at the moment and I need to spend a lot of time watering everything by hand. Talk about teeee-deeeee-ous! I gave my poor woad some fish fertilizer and a good soaking to get it going again. I’m too busy until next week so I hope the rest holds until I have time to try another batch of dye from the rest of it the patch. That was big fun yesterday and I’d hate to waste the remaining dye potential in the plants.

Tomorrow is Spectrum Study Group and we’re doing Shiva Paint Sticks on fabric. I need to hunt down some dark-coloured fabrics and some “textures” to rub over, plus a few more supplies. Hopefully I’ll have something to show afterwards. We’ve only played with these oil-paints-in-a-crayon once before and the possibilities are endless.

In knitting knews, I’m slowly plugging away on the Purple Passion Socks. Unfortunately I’ll be seeing my sis-in-law, La Violette, on Sunday when we have another work party at Auntie90’s house, but her birthday socks won’t be ready yet unless I get more time to work on them than I can foresee. Her birthday is past already so I’m running a bit late. That’s normal. I have to tear myself away from the Bronze Ribbon Scarf, which is about 40 cm (nearly 16”) long and I’m enjoying the knitting even with linen yarn. The pointy Addi Lace needles make the decreases comfortable to do. I have lots of this Euroflax yarn (2 skeins) so I’m going to make this scarf as long as I can. I love to wrap scarves several times around my neck.

Off to water before it gets too hot. I need a shower but I’ll wait and get it after my feet and legs get all muddy from the hose!