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Friday 1 May 2009

Show your colours - white

I have to admit that I took the pix yesterday - during late afternoon the weather was so nice, that I first picked a jug of gorze flowers (for dyeing of course) and then took the digi cam for a stroll around the garden. the problem now - as anticipated - how to choose one photograph. well, I can't, because there were plenty of white flowers around, so here come a few:
first of all, one of my favourites at this time of the year: the apple blossom, those are from a "John Downie". only white, when they open, as buds they have a very slight rosy tinge. we have a lot of different apple trees and they pretty much all have slightly different colours, when they blossom.
the second one is the epitome of modesty - some even classify this little daisy as a weed! not so in our garden, they grow all over the place and if we don't like them, where they grow - they get eaten:))

which is something not to be done with the following "white": the plant is called baneberry or Actaea spicata. the flowers are white, but not a flat mass of white, because the single blossoms are so frilly and fine. I like the look of the plant, I use the black berries for dyeing (though they don't produce all that many) - but I don't like the smell, because it has a slight "animalistic" odour to it! which is not really a problem, as the plant stays quite low - and I don't usually crawl through my garden on all fours:)

the last one is another "not pure white" - it's not called "Freckles" without reason. the white flowers have more or less pronounced violet freckles - but some are pure white. it's a very small viola, not rampant, that's why I grow it in one of my stone troughs (well, selfbuilt "stone" troughs...). my finger in the pic couldn't be avoided, because otherwise I'd have to crawl in between the dog roses to take it!

but I am not a textile nutter for nothing! I do like plants and my garden - but I also like my fibres/stash! another example for the fact that white is not always "white". this is a collection of white, i.e. undyed fibres, but there is a lot of difference between them.

there are white wools, silks, linen and cotton - off-white would match better? there are also man-made fibres, which look whiter: viscose, also banana silk (the fluffy mass in the foreground) and ingeo (made from corn) - but the purest white of all comes from the skein of polyester thread (front right)! which doesn't feel nice to the touch and won't dye easily - but is very useful for fixing antennae and stuff around the house (and no, it's not handspun - I like fibres and spinning, but not that much:)) the hanks of handspun cotton/wool and pure ramie look positively dirty against it.
if I remember correctly yellow will be the next colour - tomorrow!

3 comments:

Juliana said...

Hallo Bettina,
oh, Gänseblümchen mag ich auch und bei uns blühen die auch kräftig auf dem, was eigentlich ein Rasen sein sollte. Zuvor waren noch Löwenzahn. Der hatte es aber dieses Jahr sehr eilig - ist schon verblüht.
Bananenfasern - wo hast du diese her? Die sehen irgendwie anders aus als die, die ich mal kaufte.
Gruß Juliana

KayB said...

Yeah... it's always the same...choosing only 1 picture is really, really hard, especially when spoiled with choice... sind aber dafuer richtig schoen geworden. :-)

Woolly Bits said...

well, I just keep adding - it's the same for yellow:)) there's plenty of space, so what the heck...