Before: This is the pic from yesterday. The yarn is the DK weight of Knitpicks’ “Bare” 100% superwash merino wool, acid dyed in the crockpot, primary color blue plus a little violet. The dye uptake wasn’t as thorough as I’d like, perhaps due to late addition of the blue, but more likely due to inadequate pre-soaking of the yarn. I decided to overdye the skein in darker tones.


After: What in blue blazes? This is the same blue yarn overdyed in the crockpot with a mixture of purple, violet-blue, and black. Unfortunately, my black had been mixed long ago and the red/orange elements had begun to separate. I didn’t realize this until I had upended the remainder of the bottle into the crockpot and started it going. Rinsing the bottle out released a flood of orange precipitate. Too late now! I hadn’t mixed any vinegar into the dye, but I still let it sit a lot longer than it should have. Let this be a lesson not to be a miser by trying to store mixed dyes beyond their natural shelf life.

Well, I learned something and it’s an interesting effect I would not otherwise have gotten, sooo… success? Sure. Why not.

Today’s the first day of the new school year. Em was at the door and raring to go at 6:30 this morning, but I kind of stalled her until 7am (the earliest the school doors open). At that point, we were in the yard and she started to go around the house, saying she wanted to walk to school. Oops! If I’d known that in advance, I wouldn’t have stalled so much. We wound up driving, but we’ll walk together tomorrow if the weather permits. We did walk up to the school’s open house last week, so she knows what she’s getting into.

Coincidentally, I grew up in this house and went to Em’s same school, starting there at the same age she is now. I walked to school myself. I think it’ll be a great way to start the day.

Today I’ve run the greenway – I’m jumping on my first free morning – and come home and watered the plants and done a little wii fit stuff. My weight was up a little the last couple of days as I madly sucked down water bottles to free up enough for dyeing. Heh. It’s back down now.

Later I’ll be packing up more kits and hats, as well as a ball of stash yarn which someone bought. I need to post more for sale. Tonight, hopefully, I’ll be binding off socks from my last batch of handdyed sock yarn.

I hope your day is as great as mine has been so far!

Dye day went well yesterday. Songs were sung, pizzas were consumed, and much fiber was dyed. I’m lucky to have so many creative, fun people around me. Pictured: tangles and mud (who is extremely talented with color, by the way), turtlegirl76, and illiane of Emergency Knitting Bag fame.

Turtlegirl, by the way, is having a stash sale on Ravelry. I’ve seen her stash. It’s impressive on a “My God, it’s full of stars” level. When she lets stuff go, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Not pictured are several others, including Jetsyknits whose husband had us testing out his latest creations. When he’s ready to share those babies with the world, they’re going to rock the fiber world’s handspun socks.

I may have said too much. Hopefully he won’t have to kill me.


I don’t want to reveal what I’ve dyed yet, as it’s not all done. This one skein is going to get overdyed. I’m not quite satisfied with it. Back to the crock pot with you, blue poser!

It was fun, guys! Let’s do it again!

I was going to try to find hot pictures of Viggo Mortensen to share with you as a gift, but all I found was this horrible, horrible facial hair disaster. Seriously, Viggo. I know you’re artsy, but come on.

Then, knowing what a good spinner you are, I did a search for “luxury spinning wheel.” I didn’t get exactly what I was hoping for. However, if you can spin yarn on these babies, you’re really a good spinner

Then I thought maybe some nice chocolate. Everybody likes chocolate.

I give up.

Happy birthday, Jet!

I’m not thin enough to wear the Wonder Woman underoos without irony, but by gum, I can wear this Wonder Woman apron! Stand back, citizens! I’m making me some mighty muffins!

Christmas is coming up. I’m just sayin’.

Blackhawk Hardware at Park Road Shopping Center is running a special – a shotglass of winter crop seeds for 99 cents. We went there yesterday to get a few collard and spinach seeds, and now have far more than our garden can hold. We’re especially full up on collards, since those seeds are tiny and an amazing amount fits into a shotglass.

If you’re interested in seeds for spinach or collard greens, let me know.

Emily saw some of the women’s springboard diving in the Olympics tonight. Now she wants to go to the Olympics. Sport: diving. Her unwillingness to duck her head under water may prove to be a minor obstacle.

Her favorite diver was Guo Jingjing. She asked what her American name would be, since she knows that my Malaysian/ethnic Chinese friends have Chinese names and American names. She then extended that a bit further to all foreigners and wanted to know what the Russian’s American name would be, etc.

We askd what she thought the divers were going to do when they were standing at the edge of the diving board. She answered that they were getting ready to fly. Easy to see why she’d think that.

Sweet kid moment: she wanted all the competitors to get into the pool so they could all swim together. Aw.

It’s been raining since yesterday evening, and I’d been wanting to go run on the greenway. This morning on the way to the store, it was sprinkling, but I thought, “well, this isn’t so bad. I can still run.”

That marks the first time that I’ve actually wanted to go out and run in less than ideal conditions. So I’m going to go do it. And although it may be a spectacularly bad idea, I’m also going to try to move up to week 2 of the Couch to 5K program. If I have to drop back down again, no big deal, but I think I’d like to try to move up today.

I stayed up late last night and watched Dara Torres swim. If she can get out there and do her thang, so can I.

ETA: I just got back. I did week 2, and it went great. Clearly I’m ready for it. Go me!

This link’s for , , and my mom.

The rest of you are just caught in the backwash.

http://nofatclips.com/02007/11/02/chocolade/Chocolade%20Haas.mp4

For some reason, there’s been a sudden upswing in the number of Jayne inquiries. Some is probably back to school shopping, but I think it’s mainly that the weather’s cooling down.

Happy about this development: the guy to the right.