This morning Cat1 had no intention of letting me get up. After I had been away for the weekend she was very offended with me and was insistent that I stay in bed all day to cuddle her. She didn’t get her way, although there was a compromise and I had a later start to the day than intended.

A quick wander around the garden, some photos and a scrunch of Cat2, who doesnt live with us but likes to think he does and it was back inside to start dyeing.

Todays dye was black walnuts, foraged (with kind permission) from the Gladstone estate in Hawarden.

I chopped up the whole walnuts which are still fairly unformed at this stage in the year, and threw them in the slow cooker overnight last night.

Sometimes I wait a few days before I put the yarn in, but I haven’t done much dyeing recently so I was feeling impatient.

The mordanted yarn and beads were soaked and then carefully placed into the slow cooker and they will stay there for a few days. I put in some extra beads for necklace making. I don’t do this with all dyes because they don’t all dye wood well, but bark/cone/nut-based dyes with tannins are usually a good bet.

I had to resist the urge to get out all of my dyeing equipment and have a whole dyeing afternoon as there is so much going on in the garden at the moment which might yield colour (maybe even non-beige colour!). After a long weekend away though most of my clothes smell of woodsmoke, which I appreciate but it tends to not go down quite so well in an office!

The sunshine was glorious after a cold and wet few days so there was some evening weekend from the Gardener and more photos of the sky (my current favourite thing to photograph) from me, and a romp through the long grass under the apple tree for Cat1.

The evening was spent finishing off a pair of socks knit mostly in undyed yarn with a cuff and top section of naturally dyed yarn. Not mine for once. At the weekend event, I ran out of wool and another natural dyer gave me some of hers because I was getting twitchy with nothing to knit. It is a beautiful olive green colour dyed with fig. Definitely one to experiment with at some point.