We were invited to an impromptu hay making party this evening. This is Rohan in his pink T-shirt watching the tractor make the hay bales. Some of you may know that we are in the middle of a heatwave in England and the temperature has been 37C (95F) around here. It's going to break though and a thunderstorm has been predicted for tonight so our friends were keen to get the hay in.
I, who still live in the world of Enid Blyton children's books had imagined that we would actually be doing it ourselves. The children thought this was rather sweet as I gawped open mouthed at the tractor zooming around the field. The adults did get to help pile up the bales on the other tractors though and the children managed to procure a few to make a den. Otherwise they had lots of tractor rides and we all ate a lot of food. Amber made a gooey chocolate pudding from Nigella to take up and we dug into the salads, the felafels, the burgers etc. On the way home we stopped off at our other neighbour's who was also getting her hay in and having a party. She had musicians though. The food looked even nicer here but I was completely stuffed sadly.
So on this mad hot day the only thing I managed to do this afternoon is mordant my wool and some blankets ready to dye tomorrow. Here is a really exciting pic of the blankets in the sink!
I put them in a large pan with 500g of blanket and 40g of alum and 35g of cream of tartar and water to cover. Brought the whole lot up to simmering point and let simmer for about an hour. Then I tipped it, or rather placed the whole lot carefully, in the sink and poured the mordant liquid over. I'll let it sit overnight. I have to soak the madder and the weld overnight and as it's 10.30pm I'd better go and do it or else I'm stuffed. I'll keep you posted on the results.
By the way I had to borrow a camera from our babysitter. How else was I going to dye and post up about it without photographs? In the days before blogging it didn't matter if your computer went down for a few days or if your camera conked out but these days it's life threatening.
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Can you believe how mad I am - at 11pm I was out in the garden with a torch hunting for buckets and pots in which to soak the dyes. Offcourse they were all over the place and when I did eventually find them they needed washing. The kitchen sink is full of blankets so I'm out in the garden washing (and cursing) the buckets. Now it's 11.15pm and I'm tired but I need to read up about which dyes to soak and how. Then I'm confused about whether to use the whole hundred grams or not and whether I need to fill the buckets halfway or full (bloody book doesn't tell me). Can't phone my friend because sane people are in bed at this time especially if they have a busy day tomorrow. Decide to just go for it and then realise that I need to soak three dyes and that I need to boil the kettle (slowly on the Aga) six times to fill the buckets. And I'm asking myself - as I look at the clock - why the hell didn't I prepare all this before I went out this evening????
What a wonderful day!!
Posted by: weirdbunny | August 02, 2006 at 01:20 PM