Red fingers and my Azalia

I don't have green fingers and usually plants take one look at me and die. As I took the wrapper off this one two buds dropped off and my heart sank. You see, this was a gift from my grand-son and he chose it so it is very special.

Two weeks later and here it is. Not only still alive but blooming and delightful. Perhaps my red fingers are slowly turning brown?

dyeing disapointments

I am a bit disapointed with my dyed cloth. The blue looked so promising in the tray. I don't know whether it came out so insipid because I used soda soaked cotton, or was it my old dyes?

This orange piece was the cotton poked through the holes in the plastic sink mat. It took ages to do the poking and the results don't justify the effort. Again I used soda soaked fabric and old dye so will have another go soon.

I expected the colours to migrate more, next time I will add the soda after the dye rather than soaking the fabric to see if this makes a difference.

dyeing is fun - oh yes it is

On my trip to Ikea last week I picked up some shallow plastic drawers for less than £1, and a heavy rubber cd drawer liner for a bit more. Of course the rubber liner didn't fit the tray so I had to cut it down, which involved a couple of trips to the diy store first for a stanley knife, then again for a different stanley knife because the first all singing all dancing easy to use one wasn't. Then Kizzie tried to help which didn't. However I did manage to trim the liner so that it fit the tray.

I had some soda soaked cotton which I pushed into the groves of the rubber liner, then poured procion cobalt blue dye over. The hardest part is waiting until tomorrow before I rinse.