You'll see I have added a new blog off to the right. It is someone on downsizer forum who clearly is rather more advanced than me. She does have some good patterns, as well as suggestions on dying with natural plant dyes which is something I have on the list for some future happy time when I don't have work to do on the house.

My current attempts at dying are commercial dyes - Landscape is the brand.

I played with it (with a fine disregard for the instructions) yesterday. It comes in powder form, so I took pinches of the powder and sprinkled them lightly on the latest batch of merino I have been washing according to Fran's instruction. I used five colours - lucerne, wheat, mountain mist, heather and something else that I have forgotten. The green happily distributed itself through the fibres but the rest was more reluctant, so I out with a squirrel hair brush dipped in hot water and spread it around a bit. That did not work terribly well so in desperation I sploshed a bit of the water on the various staples and that seems to have achieved a happy result. Once they are flicked and spun it will look quite different of course, but it's a group of colours I am happy with. Not sure at what point I should try to exhaust the dye and cook it, but think I will do it once it is spun and skeined and still wet from the 'finishing' process.

Today, as I was at the History Room once more I did another batch of the bought coloured tops from Ashford. This is called Rowan, and combines that lovely orangey colour with white, beige, green and plum which gives a nice tweedy result.

Here it is plyed. It combines baby alpaca with merino and once plyed is a glorious soft cloud of yarn. I have a pack of their green (moss) fibre also which, in combination with my merino (white and coloured) will go well with the vortex beanie pattern from the new blog methinks (and since I have tail ends of various brownish grey yarn from beany knitting I will probably throw that into the mix also),

My days at the History Room are enlivened by the company of geese. Council  has recently sown seed to create a lawn (they of course waited till after our steady rain was finished and no more was in sight, so it is a bit patchy). The geese are doing a fine job of keeping it mown which is a good thing as by now it would be well overlength due to the weather we are having still.

The last two days have been chilly enough to warrant a fire at night, but today was shirtsleeves weather and no need to even contemplate a fire. Christmas Day is apparently going to be a scorcher, so my dreams of a white Christmas are shot down in flames.