THE COLOURS OF AUTUMN - NATURAL AND WOMAN-MADE

Well the rain was short lived and there is none in sight at least for the next week.  However the temperature is just delightful - 10 degree mornings and mid twenties during the day.  About 4.00pm the chill returns and this afternoon I took the bike and trailer out to collect the paca poo and distribute it onto the trees in the olive grove.  Once the work was done, I wandered around the grove - just on sunset, cool air, birds settling for the night.  First I visited one of the cabernet vines and pulled off a small bunch of sweet small grapes.  Then I visited all of the trees to see how they were going, delighted to be eating my own produce and spitting out the seeds as I strode around.  The final four figs were ripe and one had to be consumed straight away.  One of the avocado trees has gone berserk and the walnut is ready to drop its leaves.  The macadamia is growing tall and strong and it will be interesting to see how many years we wait for flowers and nuts.  The two apples trees planted in the one hole are extending well outside the netting (which should have been removed when I finished picking the apples) and are waiting for the secateurs.  The 60 odd olive trees are also begging to be pruned and some of the little citrus are producing their first fruit with about 10 oranges, 10 tangellos and 14 grapefruit starting to ripen.  The establised lemon, lime and mandarin trees we planted have produced well with my picking over 3 kg of fruit this afternoon.  I have just finished eating one of the sweet mandarins as I type this.

The beauty of living here is that when it is dark, there is still plenty of activity.  Yesterday I tried to dye some of my alpaca fleece. I only used the neck as the saddle is the choice part of the fleece and as this was an experiment, I didn't want to risk wasting it.   I put the required amount of dye in the pot and boiled up pieces of two fleeces - Picasso and Alun  - for 30 minutes.  See the image of Picasso with mostly white and a little brown on his neck.  Picasso is a suri alpaca - grows his fleece in dreadlocks and so the dye found it hard to penetrate the dreadlocks.  The result was varying levels of colour from white in the middle of the curls through to very bright pink on the outside.  Alun, however is a huacaya and the dye penetrated his open fleece much more evenly.  He is also a rose grey, which means his fleece is naturally brown on the outside, but grey close to the skin.  The resulting colour was wonderful on both and the residual water still had a little colour, so I put in some more of Alun's fleece and some of Camilo's to see if any of the dye would take without adding any more to the water.  After another 30 minutes I took them out and these pieces of fleece just have a hint of colour and although more subtle, will be very interesting to spin or felt.

This is Camilo's fleece - natural colour on the right and slightly pink coloured on the left.  Camilo is also a suri, so the fleece has the lovely curls which create a wonderful effect when felted.