Dyeing to tell the bride and groom

First, the technical stuff. After I dyed that Fino in amaryllises the other day, I threw in a 25 g ball of Elann’s Baby Silk, the last one from making the original Peace shawl. There was still some color left in the pot, and when I had a few more wilting red blossoms a few days later, I threw them in to boil too. I don’t know if it was the aging of part of the batch, but the pink was gone and what was left was a deep rust color. Not much of it, but enough to do something with. This time, using merino sock yarn, it took up very nearly every bit of color. Does this mean wool takes up amaryllis better than alpaca or silk do? Seems that way. Silk always takes up dye a bit slower anyway, which is one reason I love dyeing a silk/animal fiber blend: you often get a heathery effect with zero effort.

Meantime, I got permission to share this from Tunie, one of my readers, as my son’s wedding nears. This is the best piece of advice to a bridal couple I think I’ve ever heard; I really like it. She specified after sending this that no words need be spoken, the gesture is understood as is:

“We are celebrating our 40th anniversary in June and I think being good friends (we’ve been best friends since age 16) is one of the keys to a happy marriage.

Something a friend told me when we were engaged helped a lot when we were first married. If during an argument you want to say you are sorry, but are too stubborn, angry or are afraid it will continue the argument, give the other person a glass of water (we used a special silver goblet). It means I want this unhappiness to be over and we can resume discussion when we are calm at a later time. But let’s not continue holding the anger. If the other person drinks it, the anger is suspended. Believe it or not, it worked for us. It didn’t matter who was at “fault”, just that the feeling was not what we wanted to continue.”

Then she mentioned that they used the silver goblet just to make sure a crystal one wouldn’t get broken. We’re all human.