Hello, world! I still exist. 
Last month was absolutely nuts with traveling, housesitting, visitors, and a cold, so I’m just now getting my feet back under me. But before I went off to Colorado for a writers’ conference I got to do another indigo vat!
And if there’s anything scarier than doing a natural dyeing pot, it’s doing it for the second time. Because things can go differently. And this second pot of indigo decided to change whatever could be changed. The indigo didn’t dissolve as nicely, the bloom took longer in forming, and the actual vat decided to get oxygen in it a couple times. I tell you. It was crazy.
Well, it still behaved fairly well. Although it seemed a lot stronger than I’d planned. I wound up with a nice medium chunk of fleece.
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At the end of the forty-five minute simmering of my natural dye experiments, the red was gorgeous and the goldenrod was a beautiful, glistening honey color. The hydrangea leaves, on the other hand, had tanked. It was kind of a pale gray with a tinge of yellow green. Not very exciting.
In the pot:
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As I walked out on the back porch to drain yet another pot of wool I noticed these flowers. 
Not the “Oh, that’s pretty” sort of notice, nor the “I need to water or deadhead those” kind. It was the “Red = Color = Dye!” kind of notice. Eaten up by curiosity I ran back inside and grabbed a paper towel. Come to find out, rubbing the flower with the towel produces a shade of delightful pinky-red! Vivid and intense enough to make dyeing with it seem possible.
Needless to say I promptly forgot about wool washing (although I did get the next batch in the degreaser) and switched to natural dyeing. You can imagine my excitement. A whole new world of discovery opened up! In two minutes flat I was picturing myself discovering an as yet untried dye stuff and bursting on the natural dyeing scene on Ravelry with an amazing revelation. My blog stats would soar, I’d walk on air for days . . . and I was getting carried away. I reeled myself back in and did the obvious. I picked the flowers.
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Saturday afternoon my sister and I went to a handspinning guild and had one of the funnest times of my spinning life. There were quite a few ladies (and gentlemen!), and there must have been at least ten wheels. For the first part of the meeting we all just hung out and spun! I’m so glad I brought one of my drop spindles, otherwise it would have been rather boring. No, I take that back. I would probably have been able to step outside my comfort zone and go ask the ladies to show me how to do stuff.
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And if there’s anything scarier than doing a natural dyeing pot, it’s doing it for the second time. Because things can go differently. And this second pot of indigo decided to change whatever could be changed. The indigo didn’t dissolve as nicely, the bloom took longer in forming, and the actual vat decided to get oxygen in it a couple times. I tell you. It was crazy.