Memorial Weekend

After our long cold winter and spring we were blessed to have a warm, sunny weekend. My husband and I spent it outdoors, putting in our gardens, grilling out and best of all I packed a picnic lunch and off we went in our boat to spend the day on the river. The water was very high (the result of all our snow), we were able to get into tributaries we've never been able to before in 25 years.

The Spring green color felt so good on my eyes. We spent hours slowly trolling the river.

We were rewarded with seeing many critters, including Sand Hill cranes.

Back off the river there was a large nesting colony.
Their call sounded like we were in prehistoric times listening to Pterodactyl's!

 

The turtle were on logs sunning themselves, look how far this turtle climbed up this tree, seems impossible.

All that work and when we went by he jumped off back into the river.

I needed this day.

Back home the plants were calling. I thought I'd try dyeing with this Lunaria Annua.

Generally called Money plant because their little seed pods get full and round and look like silver dollars. With the latin name Lunaria, (luna meaning moon), I call them Full moon plants, the seed pods look like full moons in the Autumn.

On to the wool they went, rolled it up, steamed them for an hour, now the fabric setting in a zip lock bag under a heavy pail of water. Next week we'll see the results.

I also had this pot of woad growing I didn't have much so instead of processing it as you do indigo, I picked the leaves and rolled them in wool and have them processing as we speak. I've read the leaves will have you a burgundy reddish color. We'll see.