Colour shocks and spring

Quintessential Essex, water, mill and a beautiful red chestnut tree!
Coggeshall Abbey Mill

The weather is glorious, a time for sowing seeds and gardening, pots to be filled, tomato plants to be brought.  Saw the first swift fly overhead yesterday(think it was a swift it was longtailed) which was a great thrill they are always somewhat later on the Lansdown. Birds bicker and sing their songs loudly in the garden, the doves chasing the thieving magpies.  The cherry blossom is at its most beautiful with large bumble bees bumbling around  and the Bowles Purple wallflower is full of the little pulmonaria bees with their long probiscis's.

So apart from gardening yesterday also dyed wool, which I have been spinning the last few weeks.  I used my acid dyes, with cream of tartar and white vinegar to set the colour, and produced some rather vivid colours, the chartreuse hits you in the eye every time.  Different colours are useful for fair isle work.

The dollhouse is also undergoing renovation after 30 years, yesterday I made a small photo album of its restoration for my youngest granddaughter who is full of chicken-pox at the moment, poor little mite and very miserable. Its a sort of joke in the family that there are three houses being renovated - the dollshouse being the simplest.