Dyeing and digging

I did a few more dyebaths yesterday.  Here is what I’ve done:

From top to bottom, they are:

• tram silk, 70% Polar Red and 30% Golden Yellow WashFast acid dyes, immersion dyebath with acid
• tram silk, Cibacron F Scarlet, fiber-reactive process with soda ash
• tram silk, Cibacron F Orange, fiber-reactive process with soda ash
• 140/2 silk, Lanaset Sun Yellow, immersion dyebath with acid

The two skeins in the photo are not dry yet, so they will be several shades lighter once dry.

(I spent four hours winding the orange pirn.  Pretty pathetic output for four hours of labor, isn’t it?  Especially considering the number of knots in it!)

Meanwhile, a good chunk of time has been spent on the house.  We have now laid down sheets of thick paper followed by four inches of compost on the mostly-dead weeds in the front lawn.  The theory, at least, is that the paper will smother the weeds and the compost will act as mulch and as a soil (of sorts) for the lawn we’re about to plant, a mix of clover and grass.  (B. is very big on including the clover, both because he likes it and because the nitrogen-fixing clover will help feed the grass.)  Neither of us is wild on lawns, seeing them as a waste of space and water, but we need something to replace the weeds and we don’t have time to plan anything more extensive right now.  The hardwood floor is going in this week, and we move in four weeks, so our focus is packing and getting done the things that absolutely must be done before we move in.