cold coffee?

I don't like cold coffee - it has to be pretty hot and freshly made! out of fresh coffee grounds! because I don't always manage to finish a 500 g bag (care parcel from germany:)) in proper time and coffee looses its aroma so quickly I started to collect the stuff in the freezer. yep, nothing can escape my dyeing obsession, so this time it was quite a pot full with leftovers. the smell in the kitchen was lovely, didn't matter that it wasn't the fresh stuff! because I wanted to dye fibres I strained the stuff through an old fabric nappy, doubled up. the nappy was a nice colour, but that washed out even with cold water! I then simmered silk and nz lamb top (ratio 2:1, coffee to dry fibre), mordanted with 12 % alum, in it for an hour, left it to cool over night - and this morning I had nice results after rinsing. not coffee brown - even though the dye liquid was very dark. but a nice caramel on the wool top and - as a surprise - a darker brown tone on the silk. this is unusual because most dyestuffs tend to give paler colours on silk than on wool. I am not sure though if I'll spin one singles each and ply - or maybe use both colours on different projects. we'll see....

right now it's back to the kitchen - for edible supplies though! I baked a nice focaccia bread yesterday with a lot of rosemary in it - but the whole thing has been finished last night and this morning! so another bread baking session is in order!

the weather turned to rain - again! I'll better check the forecast for tomorrow and the weekend as I had planned to pick the rest of the rhamnus berries, but not necessarily in pouring rain. good thing that the berries stay on the tree for some time even after they are fully ripe! I also saw that both luma myrtles have set a lot of berries! they didn't really taste exciting in the jam last year, but they did give a lot of colour, so I'll try them for dyeing this time around!