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Simmering in Summer Aussie Style

There's something wonderful about getting up early, harvesting flowers and leaves from the garden and heading into the dye house while the air is still cool. Summer is wonderful for drying fibre and fleece. It also helps with quick drying flower and leaf dye ingredients. The added bonus is that our Australian high UV levels help me to assess the light fastness of the natural dye; not good for unprotected skin, but great for hanging out skeins in full sun for a few days and muttering 'bring it on, Sun!'
My work pattern in Summer tends to be a little more rigid. Dyes that require heat extraction and processing are done early morning and late evening. Standing over simmering pots in 30C+ heat on a high fire danger day is not recommended. Spinning, skeining and winding yarn into balls tends to be done indoors when the heat is at its peak. Ditto wrangling dirty fleeces into a bathtub of hot water and doing the washerwoman 'stomp'.
It occurs to me that while winter sends people hibernating indoors in the Northern hemisphere, summer is the time for many fibre artists to hibernate Down Under.
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Simmering in Summer Aussie Style