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This is me and Simmy in a fast photo while she and her family stopped by to talk dyeing and say hello. Simmy is a blogger and she arranged for her family to come to America for the first time and stay with other bloggers, none of whom they had actually met! Fascinating and clever! We were all in the kitchen at one point and I asked if anyone would like a cold drink (it was 90 degrees!) and no one stepped up to the sink, so Simmy chimed up and said, “Oh stop being so English, have some water!” (referring to their British politeness!). And so they did. It was a brief visit but a fun one, perhaps another year we will connect again. You can visit Simmy’s blog at
www.simmy.typepad.com/echoesofadreamUncategorized
Here are the knitted swatches for the skeins I painted in Seattle. I thought it would be helpful to see that even though the skein may look okay before knitting, it may not be what you want when you knit your project.
Pictured below are skeins 1 & 2; #2 is a duplicate of 1 with an indigo overdye.
Below are skeins 3 and 4: I omitted a “hit” color on these so #3 is rather drab, #4 is a duplicate of #3 with an indigo overdye and seems a bit more interesting. Skeins#1-4 are all painted with the same pallete and are a cotton/rayon blend.
Skein 5 below is a silk skein. I used the same pallete again but painted the strands more individually and also pulled a number of strands first and dyed with indigo, then painted oved those strands to create the purple, a “hit” color to be sure, but too splotchy.
Skein 6 below is wool, the colors are punchy individually but when blended there is too much contrast. I am not fond of this skein at all!
Last, Skein 7 below is also wool and here I changed my pallete and my technique. I only used 4 dyes and they were very complimentary. The resulting knitted swatch shows an evenness throughout. This type of painting would be great for a sweater where an overall variegation was desired.
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The moon is rising over the farm tonight, the sheep are up in the back fields, the day was hot but tonight there is a slight breeze and a complete calmness over all. It’s still warm; 70 degrees at 9PM but it’s mighty hard to find a reason not to be thankful.
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After we finished haying Sunday, Jack and I took Sidney for a swim. This is Jack’s pickup, therefore it’s Sidney’s pickup and no one takes his front seat! Westmoreland is still quite agricultural, and the views are gorgeous all four seasons. When I am driving to and fro I am always amazed at just how beautiful it is here. The second and third pictures are of the county farm which has a milking herd of holsteins and some priceless land along the Connecticut River. You can see the corn, which is now over my head high and also an eagle/osprey perch just on the rivers’s edge. The 4th pic is Sidney getting that swim. The 5th pic is of Windyhurst Farm, another dairy farm in town, exemplary in every way, from the herd stats to the farm cleanliness to the setting. Windyhurst, is run by the Adams’, for many generations now. They also have a maple sugar business and you can come to Stuart and John’s Pancake House
http://www.stuartandjohnssugarhouse.com/ adjacent to the farm for some fantastic cooking! Stuart Adams and John Matthews are childhood friends who started the pancake house years ago like kids run lemonade stands, and over the years they improved it and it grew and now is an established destination.
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80 more bales of hay in the barn,
80 more bales of hay,
We picked them up and tossed them in,
80 more bales of hay in the barn!
