Saturday 6 August 2011

Summer

Summer means green for me, August is when the plants really seem to take off. We had a hot April, and a damp May and June, it's taken the plants a while to work out that this really is summer!
There's lots of inspiration for colour at this time of year. I love Sweet Peas, not just for their delicate colours but also for their beautiful scent.

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The colours in these beauties, inspired this roving, unfortunately while I can capture colour, I can't work the same magic on scent!
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For today, how about some Honeysuckle?

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Or some Nasturtiums (which also taste rather nice in salads)?

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Or a Sunflower?
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Of course all this growth also means plenty of dye material, there's a few fresh braids of fibre that just need to dry so I can upload them in to the shop.

Monday 1 August 2011

Bilberries

This spring the hillsides turned lime green, the leaves on bilberry bushes when they first come out are bright green, if you painted a picture of it you wouldn't think it was an accurate portrayal...
A few months down the line and all those leaves have photosynthesised lots, and the bushes are covered with berries. We've always called them bilberries, but I think over the border in Scotland they're called Blaeberries, and from what I can tell they're related to Blueberries. I ate wild Blueberries when I was in America last year and they tasted and looked identical to what I know of as a Bilberry.

One of our regular dog walks takes us right past a big patch of Bilberry bushes so last week we took some boxes with us picked away. Even though we ate quite a few, and the dog did as well (she likes berries...) we filled our boxes very quickly. The stains on our fingers were quite spectacular, and lasted for a couple of days.

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Well worth it though because the pie we made was rather yummy...
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