Flowers in July

I was just admiring the garden this morning as the sun was just starting to come through the haar. It was quite cold here yesterday but today it looks like the sun will burn off the haar. The garden is starting to bloom and I thought I would share it with you.

The apples on the tree are just starting to grow and the strawberry plant I am growing for Norman, I am allergic to them, have started to flower. I shall water and feed them regularly and hopefully we will have a good crop.

I played around with one of the fonts Norman gave me from his Apple Mac and have created a pleasing design which I have transferred to my first screen. I put the filler on the screen late last night hoping it would be dry for me this morning. Well it was dry but I laid the screen against my box of paints and a bit of the screen was against it with the result the filler came off onto the box!!!!! I should have known better - anyway I put some more filler on this morning. I will get my first screen print done today it will just be a little later than I hoped. We live and learn.

When we visited York for the day the other week we stopped for a coffee in Starbucks and I had one of their Frappicinos. I don't much like cream but it was nice on this. I have everything here at home and hope to try it later today - I hope I can remember what was in it. Otherwise I will be inventing something new!!!!

I mentioned the other day about the dye I had lying around for a few weeks. Well the day before yesterday I found a piece of hand dyed fabric I did some time ago. It was very pale - not sure what happened that day - anyway I decided to over dye it since I enjoyed doing that.

I had some purple dye left - the last of the old stuff - following on from the success of the others I popped the fabric in a ziploc bag, poured in the dye and left it for 20 minutes before adding the soda ash. I think I added the soda ash anyway. I went to rinse it yesterday and usually after it lies overnight the dye is exhausted - good for me and good for the emvironment - well there I was after the 10th rinse and there was still purple coming out. I starting wondering if I had indeed put in the soda ash. Oh! well maybe I forgot, I thought, and so I put the fabric back in another ziploc and added the soda ash.

I left it overnight and went to rinse it this morning - 7 rinses later and the water finally ran clear. It's on the clothes line drying at the moment. I am surprised the fabric hasn't fallen apart. It's been through a dye process (rinsed and machine washed) - wrapped around a pole and had discharge paste painted on it, steamed with the iron to activate the discharge paste, overdyed, rinsed 10 times, soaked in soda ash, rinsed a further 7 times - it's still in one piece!

I think I might discharge it again as you can hardly see where I discharged it before. I will post a piccy tomorrow! It might end up being like the kitchen roll which was lying at the bottom of the stairs when I got up this morning. DH left it there on it's way to his workshop - Sirikit, my cat got to it first though and there is little left of it! She loves "killing" these rolls of paper towel. That's the second one this week, the last one I found in my studio!