A good day

Compared to rest of the weekend, today was a beautiful day. The sun came out and warmed everything up so nicely. I dyed some silk last night and was able to put them out to dry. Drying silk is very ugly. But once everything is dried and you snap them into shape, the silk is the most luxurious thing ever! So soft and shiny!

From left to right: Tussah silk roving, silk noil, and silk oblong. I wanted the uneven dyeing so I scrunched everything into mesh bags. I love the way it spins up with the colour variations.

I did get a bit of knitting done (in between spinning and eating and lounging) but not as much as I hoped. I got sidetracked by the merino/silk. It's 70% merino and 30% silk. Although the percentage of merino is higher, it spun up more like silk than wool. Silk is so light that for 30% silk, that's a LOT of silk fibres! It's spun fine with lots of twist. I'm knitting the sample skein into a swatch for my Orenburg lace shawl. Once again, I have to say how ugly lace looks before blocking.

Cherry Tomatoes

The little tomato seedlings are getting big. This variety are cherry tomatoes that you can grown in hanging baskets. We planted 8 pots and every one of them have sprouted. The first year, we planted the whole package of seeds (not sure how many would survive) and got over 30 pots of plants. We gave away so many plants that people ran screaming from us! We're getting much better at this now.