They looked better than this when he gave them to me

The amaryllis dyebath having been great fun, I went searching to see if I could do much with my fading Mother’s Day roses, too. Hey, what say we make a whole wardrobe of shawls out of flowers.

The site I found advocated doubling the water to the amount of rose petals and adding mint and lemon juice; it promised me I could enjoy it as pink lemonade when I was done!

Oh joy.

Trader Joe’s had large basil plants yesterday for about a dollar and a half more than buying the same amount of basil leaves picked and dead; was this a trick question? So let’s see, basil is a member of the mint family, right? Nah, we’ll just skip that part… I squeezed a lemon into the pot after stripping the bouquet, which was well past its prime.

Bright pink. I wanted to ask whoever wrote that, wait a minute! Roses come in all kinds of colors! These were deep red almost to black, with small, vivid gold stripes, very striking, very regal looking; who knows what I’d get?

Next time I do this, I want to buy some cheesecloth first, definitely: the amaryllis flowers mostly stayed intact, but those roses had far more pieces and petals and even seeds to deal with. The bath they created was deeply golden at first, not pink at all, and I had visions of Jason and the Golden Fleece. Gradually, though, as I kept the roses boiling away for an hour, the reddishness came out. It looked like it would produce pink or maybe burgundy after all once I added the wool.

My daughter came by the kitchen and when she saw what I was doing, groaned, “You are SO weird!” just like she did when she was a teenager. I laughed and told her she was right. (So there.)

Notice that the last bit of stuff that I couldn’t quite seem to get out floated nicely to the top as soon as I got the pot back up to a boil, making it easy to skim off right after this pot shot was taken.

But you know? I do draw the line somewhere. I don’t care what that site said. I refuse to drink my sheep.