Kahikatea Farm Soapwort Plant Order
Hello friends,
After failing once again to grow my own Soapwort plant from seed this year, it was time to source the plant from somewhere else.
I've been very keen for a while now to grow Soapwort so I can harvest the plant material to turn it into my own natural gentle soap solution for cleaning, and also for washing fabrics around the house. Soapwort solutions are used by museums and art galleries to clean works of art and fabrics, and a Soapwort washing solution has even been used to clean the Bayeux tapestry in the past.
After searching the internet, I found that Kahikatea Farm had Soapwort seedlings for sale, as well as some other natural dye plants on my wish list. Not wanting to waste empty space in the courier box, I put in an order for other natural dye plants including Woad, Dyer's Chamomile, White Yarrow, and Meadowsweet.
When the box arrived, and the plants were removed from their packaging safe and sound, it was time to label them with waterproof labels, and plant them out in the natural dye garden.
My Soapwort plant has lots of stems growing, so hopefully I can harvest some this growing season.
I bought a replacement Woad plant after losing the one I had growing in the garden, when I transplanted it into the new natural dyeing bed in winter this year.
I also invested in a Dyer's Chamomile plant, and I'm excited to harvest the flowers and then dye with them, so I can produce warm yellow natural dye tones this growing season.
I bought a white Yarrow plant for natural dyeing after watching Jente's YouTube Channel "Mijn Wolden". Jente is a spinner, natural dyer, and knitter from Belgium, and she is one of my favorite crafting YouTubers. If you want to have a good time watching a friendly neighbourhood chaos goblin and her fiber shenanigans (in her words), you need to follow Jente. In a recent episode on her vlog, Jente natural dyed yarn with Yarrow to produce yellow and dark green tones (using an iron bath).
And finally I bought a Meadowsweet seedling for the garden. Meadowsweet is a perennial herb that prefers to grow in damp conditions, and it has frothy clusters of cream-white flowers and a sweet scent. It has a number of natural medicinal uses, as it contains aspirin like compounds, but I really just like the plant in general, and wanted to add it to my garden.
With all these seedlings now planted into the garden, I look forward to seeing them grow, and harvest plant material from them over the summer.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.
Random Farm Silver's Fleece Project - Washing and Storing
Hello friends,
Over this past summer I processed a second raw sheep's fleece. I hadn't planned on buying another fleece, with one already waiting to be washed and processed in the garage, but when I saw a new trader called Random Farm selling raw fleeces on the Felt market place, I couldn't resist supporting a new fleece producer.
I bought a raw fleece from a Finn-Romney cross lamb ram called Silver. As a lamb he produced a beautiful silvery grey-and-white fleece, with the colour changes along the staple, with dark tips, and paler shades towards the cut end.
When it arrived it had a lovely soft handle, good lustre, and locks that separated easily. The locks had an average staple length of 7-8cm, and they suggested to spin it long draw for a soft woollen yarn. It was a very clean fleece with minimal vegetable matter.
Having recently scoured and washed my Gotland Fleece, I decided to use the same method of using Unicorn Scour Power, as the resulting clean fleece was in good condition.
It wasn't too long before I'd scoured all the batches of raw fleece on a sunny day. After they'd dried, I flick carded a lock to see the final product. The lock has a dark brown/grey tip, and a silvery grey shade at the cut end. It has a very beautiful fine crimp, and the lock is quite smooth and fluffy.
I'm very happy with the final result, and once I get my current spinning project completed, and spin up a 100 gram sliver of fiber for a friend, I think I'll get started spinning this yarn.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky
Cosmos Flowers for the 2024/2025 Summer Season
Hello friends,
Today I thought I'd share with you some of the cosmos varieties I grew in our flower garden over the summer.
First up we have the Xsenia variety, which I grew from seed I got from Emerden last winter. This cosmos variety is just stunning and really unique, and I love the dark band of pink on the edges of the petals. The shade of pink in the petals do change as the flowers get older, so by picking them at different times, you will get a range of colours from just one variety.
Next up we have the Apricotta cosmos variety, that I got from Kings Seeds. It has a similar apricot/pink colour to Xsenia, but the flower is much more open. It wasn't really my favorite, when compared to the Xsenia variety, so I won't be sowing any new seeds next spring.
Then we have the variety, Cosmos Cupcakes White, which I bought as seed from Susie Ripley Gardening. And wow, this cosmos variety really stands out in the garden. I love the cupped flowers, that really do look like the bottoms of cupcakes. These flowers blow daintily in the breeze, making a lot of movement in the garden on windy days. I'm definitely growing these again next year.
I also bought Cosmos Cupcakes Blush seeds from Susie Ripley. They're the same as Cosmos Cupcakes White, but they're a light pink in colour. They weren't as nice as the white variety, with the pink colouring not being even on the petals, so I don't think I'll buy them again.
And finally, we have my new favorite cosmos variety, Cosmos Fizzy White, which I also bought as seed from Susie Ripley Gardening. These white cosmos flowers come in all sorts of variations of fizzy white flowers, and they're just so beautiful in the garden. Of the ten or so plants around my garden, each flower type was slightly different, but each one was just stunning. I'm definitely going to grow a lot more of these in the garden next spring. And as a bonus they were complete bee and butterfly magnets all summer long.
I hope you've enjoyed taking a look at all the cosmos varieties I grew this last summer. I can't wait to begin growing them again next spring.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Gotland Fleece Project - Scouring, Washing, and Storing
Hello friends,
Back in April 2023 my husband and I went on a road trip to the Mackenzie country to celebrate our wedding anniversary. On the way home we stopped off at The Oamaru Textile Emporium (TOTE) to do a little crafting shopping. I'd been eyeing up their raw fleeces online, and spent some time in the store when I got there, going through all the raw fleeces they had available until I found the one I'd been looking for.
I've wanted to process and spin a Gotland sheep fleece for a while, and they had this beautiful chocolate grey fleece in the store. It came home with us, making the whole car smell quite sheepy as we traveled back to Dunedin...
When we got it home, I took the fleece out of it's plastic bag, and laid it out to see exactly what I had bought.
Back when I lived in Wellington I belonged to Creative Fibre New Zealand, and was an active member of the Tawa Fibrecrafts group. One of the many benefits of belonging to Creative Fibre NZ is taking part in one of their many courses, including one I attended on choosing raw fleeces, sorting them, and processing them.
I was very happy with the fleece when I laid it out, there were no second cuts, the fleece was in great condition, and all the unspinnable parts of the fleece had already been removed for me.
I invested in two books, The Spinner's Book of Fleece by Beth Smith, and Camaj Fibre Art's The Art of Washing Wool, Mohair, and Alpaca by Mary Egbert. These two books told me everything I needed to know about scouring and washing gotland fleece. Recently, now in 2025, I decided to scour and wash the Gotland fleece using Unicorn Fiber Power Scour, which is a wonderful detergent for scouring and washing unwashed fleeces. It's very gentle, but also removes all the dirt and lanolin from a fleece.
Filling a 6L tub with 60˚C water from out of our laundry room tap, I mixed in the calculated amount of Unicorn Scour Power mentioned on the bottle, and added the Gotland fleece which I'd put into laundry bags, and left each bag one at a time to gently soak in the scouring mix for 15 minutes.
As you can see from the photos, the scouring water turned a very muddy brown during the process, as the dirt and lanolin was removed from the fleece.
At the end of 15 minutes I lifted the laundry bag full of fleece out of the dirty water, and very gently squeezed out all the excess liquid. I then rinsed out the plastic tub to remove all the dirt and liquid, and then filled the tub back up with clean, hot water. I put the laundry bag back into the tub to rinse out the fleece for a minute with gentle swishing, to help remove even more dirt and lanolin from the fleece. At the end of this, I lifted out the laundry bag, removed the clean fleece, and then spun it in a hand-cranked salad spinner until it was as dry as it could be. From there, the fleece was placed in plastic containers which had good ventilation holes, they were laid out in the sun over the next couple of days until the fleece was dry.
Once dried, I placed most of the Gotland fleece into a brown paper shopping bag, and put it away in storage.
I flick carded a small sample of Gotland fleece remaining, so I could check the quality, and as you can see, the resulting clean fleece has a beautiful crimp, and the colour is a dark smoky grey/brown colour.
The handle is very soft, and over the coming months, I'll slowly flick card and then spin up some Gotland fleece singles. From the resulting yarn, I think I'll make a cozy winter jersey.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Social Media
Archives