Pineapple Cream Cheese Pie

I'm going to share a tasty recipe with you today. I could tell you that I'm doing this out of the goodness of my own heart and because it's all about giving back and blogging about wonderful things, but it wouldn't be the complete truth. No, blogging about this is more of a way for me to excuse away the gluttony that is caused by a summer pie. So, go make this and I won't feel as guilty about scarfing this pie 'cause all you folks will be scarfing it too. Misery Gluttony loves company.

My sweet fang (way too big to be a tooth) kicked it into high gear today and I had to do something about it. A few weeks ago we had a millionaire/million dollar pie. It was wonderfully sinful. This time I wanted something similar, but without huge chunks of fruit in it. It had to be sweet and tart as well, perfect for spring/summer weather.


Here it is:

Shea's Pineapple Cream Cheese Pie

Ingredients: (makes two pies)

2 graham cracker pie crusts
1 8oz. pkg Philly 1/3 less fat cream cheese
1 small carton cool whip
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 twenty oz. can crushed pineapple
Sprig of mint for garnish (optional)

Cream together the cream cheese and sugar, then add in the lemon juice. Once well blended, add the pineapple. Fold in the cool whip and then pour the contents of the bowl evenly into the two graham cracker pie crusts.

Chill for a couple of hours before serving to allow it to set.

Variations:
1. You can use fat free or regular cream cheese, I just used what I had on hand.
2. Leave out the sugar and use a can of condensed sweet milk instead. I would have done this, but ran out of it. It's truly decadent when you use the condensed sweet milk.

So, now that I have my pie, I need to make the guys in the house a cake. From a cake mix of course, because that's what I have and I'm lazy. This will hopefully divert everyone's attention from the yummy pie that is in the fridge.

By the way and before you point it out, Yes, I know I said I need to lose weight, but I also know that I have zero willpower. So there.

Dye Day

Today was dye day at the House of Shea. Remember the 75 boxes of egg dye that I and my Mom purchased recently? I decided it was high time that we test these for color accuracy and saturation. This literally took half of my day and all of my kitchen to do.

I got out a bag of scrap fiber and the postal scale and measured out bumps that weighed .2 ounces each.


I got out all the glass jars I could find and mixed up my dyes with the vinegar. The directions suggest 1/2 cup water and three tablespoons vinegar per dye tablet. I did some playing around and found that for each .2 oz bump, I would need 1/4 cup of product to get the deep color that I was looking for. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

I set up my table with post it notes on two sides. Top down was yellow, orange, green, red, blue and purple. Left to right was blue, green, yellow, orange, red, purple. Once these were dyed in the microwave (2 min. on and 2 min. resting until dye exhausts) I put them on plates and on the table in their graph position so that I could keep up with what colors were mixed together.



These really don't make sense lined up as they are in this picture. Once they dry I'll be able to set up a color wheel to show you how they turned out.

The colors were not what I expected at all. Purple and Green dye tablets are not at all true. The purple likes to break and is more blue than true purple. The Green is a Teal green and has way too much blue in it. Red, Orange, Yellow and Blue were as expected.

I was looking for more muted colors in some areas and didn't get them at all. I will have to go back and add more complimentary colors into what I already have on the table.

It will be interesting to go back and overdye some of these with browns and grays. I'll either do this with Wilton's or I will break down and get some more Jacquard dyes to do this with.


EDITED TO ADD: There is both Red #40 and Red #3 dyes in these tablets. The box does not say which colors contain which reds. However, the purple kept breaking like crazy, so I guess it's safe to assume it has the red #3 in it. Red #3 can be persnickety at the best of times. It has a problem with acidity. It's not soluble below 6 ph so when the acid, in this case vinegar, is added, it separates and will eventually wash out. Next time I try this, I will add the acid very, very slowly and probably on the stove top over a long period of time and check the results then.

Stitches South Review

This weekend Stitches South hit the Atlanta Galleria. I showed up promptly at 10:00am on Saturday morning to give it the once over. My family and friends looked at me like I had grown two heads. Why in the world would someone give up a Saturday morning to look at yarn?

Well, it was yarn sensory overload, I'll tell ya that much. There was yarn everywhere. It was bright and beautiful. The folks there did a great job of putting everything together. There were giveaways and fashion shows and classes too. I didn't stay for any of those. I was there a total of two hours and one hour of that was spent going back through a second time.

I had only two issues with the whole thing. One, I was by myself which was totally my fault. If I had checked the Ravelry board in time, I might have had a buddy or two.

The second issue was that I expected there to be more vendors in general and at least a few more vendors that sold spinning stuff. This is in no way a criticism of Stitches, just a perception problem on my side. I think I spoiled myself by going to SAFF in October and that was freakin' huge. Fiber did well there, I saw a lot of ladies walking out with it, so maybe they will keep that in mind for the next event.

Some of the vendors at Stitches that I have to write about:

My LYS: The Whole Nine Yarns from Woodstock, GA. As always, a fabulous setup and the people, Karyn (not sure I spelled her name correctly) and Jenna, were super.

For Fiber: I met the KnitWitch finally and bought some fiber from her. If you need any good knitting videos, you can get them thru her site or just go to Youtube and type in Knitwitch. She's got some great ones that have been very useful to me in the past. She said that she's planning on doing a few more soon. I grabbed some 50/50 merino/alpaca fiber (4 oz.) from her.

I also met the owner of Creatively Dyed Yarn. She was just too cute for words and gave me a free Ravelry button to wear. From her, I bought 8oz. of Seawool fiber - 70%wool, 30% seacell. It's amazingly soft and I can't wait to spin this up.

Both of those gals have some wonderfully dyed yarn and fiber! Here's a pic of the fiber:


I didn't buy one skein of yarn. I figured that I spent way too much of my budget as it was. Not that I could resist, I mean, look just look at that gorgeous fiber! Now I just have to figure out a project to spin yarn for.

I've also started another project. This one is Carol's Clever Little Shawl. I've made it through two of the fourteen repeats so far:

This is from my handspun. I've already got 393 yards spun and some more to be spun for this project. I didn't want to wait until it was all spun before I started it on it. I have no relationship with the word patience!

I'm in love with this pattern. The lady who wrote it studied a shawl from the 1800's and figured out how to reverse engineer it. It's simple and lovely . I really wanted a rustic (and rusty) look to this shawl, so I made sure that my yarn was thick/thin and rusty in color.

All in all, it was a lovely weekend.

Today was mine for the victory, finally

There are some days that you can't win with children, but on other days, triumph worms it's way through.

Most days around here, if the kids are in another room together, all I hear are fights, screams, crying or all of the above. They don't get along most of the time. When the Youngest came about, the Eldest was uber-jealous and has continued his resentment to this day. He ignores the Youngest, which just makes the little guy turn to trying to get negative attention by hitting or throwing something at the elder sibling. I can't tell you how much fun this is to live with. Why did I want children? What was I thinking? I mean really now.

Today though. I got them both and it was quite satisfying. Did I yell? Knock some heads together? Swat them on the backside? Oh no.

They were supposed to be watching Transformers (cartoon, not movie) together. Both were on the couch. Eldest, determined to ignore Youngest. Youngest, determined to get attention from Eldest. Normal stuff. I heard yelling and complaining. Turns out the little guy decided to try and sit on the older, or push him off the couch, or something along those lines.

I jumped up, started yelling and then stopped abruptly. I had a much better idea. I sat/laid down on them both on the couch. You should have seen those two faces. It was absolutely priceless. Shock and delight at the same time! It turned into a giant tickle fest, with me as the tickler.

I haven't heard one fight since then.

Sometimes it's good to win one.

Newsday

Good news! The painting is no longer pink!

In other news, I finally got a pic of my Owls Sweater for you:


Best I could do without my 8 year old photographer.

Bad news: The Youngest got sent to the principal's office today. Granted, he's three years old. But you would think after a year of going to school he would know what's expected of him or at least to know not to slug the teacher again. Jeez, how embarrassing.

You're gonna love this one

You are not going to believe what happened to me today.

I started a kitchen renovation project last year. It is still happening, albeit slowly. I tore off two layers of wallpaper and have put primer over the third layer of wallpaper. I left that layer on because the idiots that built this house didn't put prime on the walls before applying the wallpaper. If I tried to take that layer off, it would make a huge mess of the sheetrock.

So I have one coat of primer on the walls. I decided that I would paint the ceiling before adding another coat of primer to the walls.

Here's where things began to go wrong. I made the major mistake of listening to the hubby. His father had given him some "so-called" ceiling paint. "Here, have some ceiling paint." The hubby didn't question any of this, just told me "Here, use this for the ceiling."

So I opened it. I told him over the phone, "It's pink. The same color ice pink that's on your mother's front bedroom walls."

What he said: "It's supposed to be colored like that. It's one of those that will fade to white as it dries so that you'll know if you've missed any spots on the ceiling."

Okay. Believed him. Very stupid mistake on my part. Spent about an hour painting the ceiling during the Youngest's naptime.

Guess what? It's dry now and my kitchen ceiling is now a very pretty ice pink. My Mom, Dad and best friend think this is, of course, hilarious. If I don't have a hubby and father in law by tomorrow, you'll know that I've killed them.

I've already told the hubby he will be painting the ceiling tonight. Know what I told him? "When the paint dries, if you see any pink, you'll know you've missed a spot."

Cable Technique

Process Knitter: This type of knitter is not worried about when or even if a project is ever completed, but simply enjoys the process of knitting.

Project Knitter: This type of knitter totally wants to wear that cute little chic sweater.

I believe that on most days I fall into the second category.

However, not on my current project.


I will almost always let a mistake slide or fudge the pattern in some way to fix it in order to get to the finished product so that I can wear it without a care that there may be a mistake hidden somewhere in the mix of things. I'm being a rebel to myself and not doing that this time around. I want this project to be right in order to publish it. I have ripped back this project so many times my yarn is becoming more and more frayed as time goes on.

I'm continuing to take my fingerless mitt project from design sketch to finished project. There have so far been eleventy bajillion steps in doing so.


The problems have been numerous.

One of the things that was really bugging me yesterday was the look of the cables. It had nothing to do with pattern and everything to do with technique. As the cables would cross and then attach themselves to the next stitch, the one that was attaching itself to the next stitch always seemed wonky and larger than it's peers. You may remember me complaining of this once before here.

The problem, it seems was not in tension, but in size. As in that, somehow, the way that I was creating the problem stitches made them use more yarn, thus creating larger loops. I thought that if I increased the tension, really tightened up the stitches, then the problem would go away, disappear forever. Not so. All I did was make the stitches on the next row nearly impossible to complete and still had huge stitches.

I now have the solution to that little problem (thanks to a wonderful person's advice on Ravelry) and a great need to share it with you!

To make neater, tighter, more professional looking cables: Whether going from a purl to a knit or a knit to a purl, it doesn't matter which direction,
Move the yarn to the direction of the stitch that must be made next before taking the stitch you have just made off the left needle.


For example:

You have the following cable stitch layout:

P P K K K K P P - where you are going to be doing a cable with the Ks (which direction they cross is unimportant in this instance.)

1. You would do one purl, move it off the left needle and onto the right. 2. Again, make the next purl, but before taking it off of the left needle, move the yarn to the back, then remove the loop from the left needle to the right.
3. Make your cable up until the last knit stitch.
4. Make the knit stitch, but before moving it off of the left needle, move your yarn forward, then move the loop from the left to the right needle and begin your last two purls.

It is amazing the difference that I've had in my cables since learning this! I'm just shocked and stupified over it. It's like (in my silly mind anyway) you are making a yarn sandwich. You make the stitch, move the yarn so that it sits between the two halves of the stitch (see? a sandwich!) and then move it. The yarn now holds down and shortens the stitch that was causing all the fuss!


Completely Off Topic:

Beware what beautiful trees you plant near your home and driveway. In this case a beautiful Gonzaga Cherry Tree. See the gorgeous carnation-like flowers?


It just might make it snow pink blossoms everywhere and make your home and automobiles look like they've been in a rose parade.

What Happens When...

This is what happens when you leave roving in the washing machine after you spend all that time dyeing it, spinning it and forgetting to take it out and then running a load of heavy bath mats:


It makes great dog dreads too:

Oopsy.

Dyeing and Spinning Day

Yesterday was chock full of dyeing and spinning. I got nothing else done except for making dinner and taking kids to and from school.

Here's what I got busy with:

1. Easter Egg Dye: I had three goals with this project.

a) I wanted to play around with mixing some colors. There's a green that I would really like to have a on a sweater, so I got out the Yellow, Blue and Orange dyes and mixed them up. I put a tablespoon of citric acid and one cup of water in glass containers with the dye tablets.

b) Then, I took out some scraps of roving and made crochet chains with them. I wanted to do a different dye technique where I colored the bumps of the chains. I was going for a mottled effect where I would still have some of the white in the roving showing. In the first chain, I combined one part yellow, one part blue and two parts orange. This ended up giving me a lovely olive color, but not what I wanted. The second chain had one part yellow, one part blue and half a part of orange. Got the perfect green in that one. The last chain had all three colors randomly placed all over it, just for fun.

c) Microwave setting the dye (Mini Tutorial). I put the chains, one at a time in a glass dish that was lined with plastic wrap. I then colored them with the dye and then covered the whole dish with more plastic wrap. Next, I turned the microwave on for two minutes. Let it rest for two minutes. Then repeated until the dye was exhausted. Really simple, but you want to be careful not to cook it for longer than two minutes at a time. You could felt your roving/yarn if you cook it longer. Slower is good and it's always better to be safe than sorry!

The Results (re-chained - they were unchained so that they would dry better):

Moss green on top, Mix in the Middle, Olive on the Bottom

I'm thinking I might mix all of these in one tiny spinning project, just for fun.


2. Second dye Project of the day: Dyeing with Dandelions. I made the kids go out with me and pick a big pile of dandelions. It was great fun until we realized there were tiny little bugs on them. Now, I'm a self confessed hypochondriac. It's not good for us to see tiny bugs that might possibly crawl from our hands to the top of our heads. I'm positive no bugs made it into my hair, but now the top of my head has been itching like crazy for two days! I'll tell you about this project more tomorrow, it's still in process.

3. Spinning Project of the day: Actually, this would be a Plying project. I had two bobbins that needed to be plied and this was not how it turned out, at first.:

This was the second time around. The first time was way over-plied, crunchy hard and mega twisty. I ran it back through the wheel and untwisted quite a bit of it. This is approx. 216 yards, give or take. This is a two ply yarn and was intentionally made thick and then. I want this yarn to be more rustic looking.

I have a bobbin of more plied yarn that needs to be skeined and I've got about 4 more ounces to spin and ply of this stuff. I have a project in mind, but there's no guarantee I'll get enough yardage for it. So, I'm keeping the project under my hat until it's determined whether I'll have enough yarn or not.

Whew! That's it. Now can you see why I didn't get anything else accomplished yesterday?

How I Spent My Morning

I haven't knit anything in, like, four days. I'm starting to get the shakes. My hands have been all twitchy and stuff.

I finished a big project and want to start another. The problem, is that I used up my spare change to buy fiber to spin, so there's no money for yarn. So last night and tonight I will be spinning like crazy to get enough yarn for a medium sized project at least.

Meanwhile, this morning I started opening boxes of Easter Egg dye (25 of them to be exact) and breaking everything down into it's component parts:


I now have 25 of each of the 6 colors that came in the box in separate bags. I also clipped the directions and put one in each of the bags. The directions were interesting because they gave instructions on using different kinds of acids to get different shades of each color. I probably won't pay much attention to these, but it will be nice to have them if I get curious. I ended up with one mixed colors bag. I had one box of PAAS dye that came with 12 different colors in it. Nothing labeled, so telling one from the other was just too much to take. I'll play with those later and figure out what they are the hard way.

Unfortunately, I now have 25 sheets of stickers, 25 sheets of an Easter memory game, 25 sheets of cardboard circle creator thingies and 25 egg dipping tools. There has to be some use for these, doesn't there? I hate throwing these kind of things away. Feels wasteful. The stickers won't be a problem, The Youngest will take care of those, but the rest? If anyone has any crafty ideas on what to do with those, I'm all ears! My Sister In Law is a teacher. Maybe she could use some of those for something.

This afternoon's project will be to dye some wool top in the microwave. I haven't done that before. I'm also going to experiment with mixing some of the egg dye and hand painting it onto the wool. I'm really looking forward to making a big mess in the kitchen. I might, maybe, eventually cook dinner for the family too.

Something Useful for Bloggers

I found a useful site that I thought that I would share with the other bloggers out there. It's called Tracer and it helps protect the content of your site. If anyone copies the content of your site, it basically forces them to give you credit for your work. No more of this copy/paste/change a few words and take credit nonsense! Yeah!

It's free and quick to add this to your blog as well. You register on their site, insert a simple line of script into your html on your blog and you're good to go! Love this.

Believe it or not, I got more than enough time to knit this past weekend. I actually finished the Owls Sweater. It's not blocked yet and I don't have a modeled photo of it yet (fits great, but snug - note to self: block it bigger, lose weight or get another pair of Spanx), but I do have this:

I used glass beads for the eyes. They are not gold in real life. They are red with swirls of gold, green and blue and are stunning to look at. This pic does not do them justice. I tried and tried to get a good one for you today, but the stars were just not aligned right.

This morning I took a trip to Walmart for some 50% off Easter goodies and boy, did I find them. Check it out:
Normally 88 cents a piece - Got 'em for 40 cents a piece. I bought 20 of them. Gotta love a good sale. Have I told you that Sale is one of my favorite words? It ranks right behind the word Free. :) These should color a heck of a lot of roving/yarn. Not pictured: I grabbed some dessert paper plates and napkins for 50 cents a piece, 1 yellow and 1 green. Also, some cute brightly striped kitchen towels for a buck a piece.

Somebody got some fake teeth in his Easter Basket this year:

A face only a mother could love?

Notice the chocolate on his face as well. Boy devoured his chocolate bunny in about three seconds flat.

The Owls are Emerging

It's been deathly quiet here in my abode. My Mom came and got the kids yesterday and they couldn't wait to be away from Mommy and off with their Nanny and PawPaw.

Whoopee! I've managed to pick up the house a tiny bit, go out to dinner, relax, pack, knit, card, and sleep in. Who could ask for more?

The owls are emerging on the sweater.



Since this pic, I've gotten the beginnings of their wee little heads started. My hands are aching a bit. The combination of cables and two yarns held together are really tight and my hands have been working overtime to get the cables completed.

Well, I'm off to the folks to face the little heathens again. Wish me luck. :)

Have a Wonderful Easter Holiday!

A Solution!

A while back a very nice lady that I met through Ravelry gave me some lovely Corriedale fleece. I cleaned it carefully and then dyed it with some Lanaset dyes aiming for a deep brown (came close, but was more a deep plum instead.) Unfortunately, things didn't work out quite well and I despaired of ever getting the chance to have usable fleece. The d*mn fleece had been overprocessed and when I tried hand carding and spinning it, it felt like dry rope in the hand. I tried hand carding some bombyx silk in with it, but it didn't help. So I set it aside a while in disgust until I could decide what to do with it.

After I received my drum carder, I ordered some fiber from Sheep Shed Studio. I got some top that was a deep black and dark brown with a touch of mohair mixed in with it. I picked out as much of the mohair as possible, but it was impossible to remove it all.

I was then hit by an idea. I have some dark brown and some black alpaca in storage. What if I mix it all up? What if I mix the brown/black, the corriedale and the alpaca? I'd then have a sweater's worth of the dark brown that I was looking for.

I wanted to make sure that I have the same amount of all the fibers in each of the batts that I would make. I've been going all scientific-y lately and so, to make life more interesting, I decided to card together the fibers that I have seperately first. Then, it would be easier to divide by weight and would be smoother when fed through the carder with the other fibers.

I spent all of last night carding up the black and brown domestic wool from SSS. Then tackled the dreaded Corriedale. I got three lovely batts of the Corriedale before I quit.

I couldn't wait to see what it would all feel like together and went ahead (before tackling the alpaca batts) and carded up a batt. I really wanted to see if the Corriedale was going to hurt the mix. I had so little faith in that Corriedale, but wow, was the completed batt gorgeous:

Left: black/brown batt, Middle: Corriedale, Right: Both combined w/ alpaca

It feels so soft and silky and is the perfect chestnut brown that has just a touch of sheen thanks to the tiny percentage of mohair. Lovely stuff and it's going to be so drapey.

I still need to finish carding the Corriedale and then start on the alpaca. It won't be finished in the next couple of days due to me going out of town on Thursday evening, but I'll get this at least partially finished next week.

I found time today to attach the sleeves to the Owls sweater and begin on the yoke:


I'm taking this with me this weekend and I'm hoping I'll have time to work on it then.

I can see to blog now!

I had an interesting new experience yesterday. My monitor decided to bug out on me. It would stay on for about 10 minutes and then turn off. Then, when turned back on, would stay on for a total of 1 second (literally) and turn back off again. Repeat the 1 second thing ad nauseaum. Do you know how incredibly difficult it is to write in your blog with this happening?

Today, The whole mess has been rendered moot with a new monitor. Yay! Much less frustrating. Cool thing? Cost me about $30 bucks for an 18.5" widescreen lcd thanks to a nice $75 gift certificate the hubby has been squirreling away from Fry's. Cool huh?

I have been knitting, some. I am almost finished with the second sleeve on the Owls sweater. I fully expected to be finished with this thing weeks ago, but life loves to interrupt our best laid plans. From here, I've got another inch or two on the sleeve and can then begin work on the cool Owl cable on the yoke of the sweater. We'll be heading to the folks again on Thursday evening and I'll take it, but probably won't get much done on it. For some reason, I have the hardest time getting a lot of knitting accomplished there. Of course, I'm taking my carder with me and all my beads, so the knit may get put on the back burner. We'll see.

Why should the kid always get the comfy seat?

Dyeing versus Dying

Children should come with signs from the womb that say: Warning! This cute tiny little apple of your eye will grow to be a not quite as cute, but still cute apple of your eye that carries infectious diseases. You do not even want to know how sick I became on Thursday night. The sick continued up until yesterday evening. It was not fun. It should have come with a warning.

Very late yesterday, I was bit with another bug. While I had gotten past the point of wanting to die, I suddenly wanted to dye. So I did.

I was using Kool-aid and a tiny bit of Wilton's paste for the dyeing and I wanted to try and do things a bit differently than last time.

1. I wanted to be a little more scientific so that I could re-produce the colors later instead of the fly by the seat of my pants method that I usually employ.
2. I also wanted colors that weren't quite so in-your-face clown barfy. I didn't want all neon primary colors, so that took a little thought.



Here's what I did:

I have a whole bag of lumps and bumps of fiber. I got out my digital postal scale and started weighing. Most of the lumps were .2 ounces in weight. One of the lumps was .8 oz and another was 2oz.

I ignored the total amount of water used. I went with the fiber weight versus ounce of dye route.

I heated water in pots on the stove to boiling. If you are using just the kool-aid, you do not need to add citric acid or vinegar to make it color fast. However, if you are using just food coloring, you're going to want to add them. I do not measure this out usually, and I probably use way too much of either because of it. I did put 1 tablespoon in the pot that was going to be used with the Wiltons.

I used Mason jars and glasses for the smaller lumps and the pots for the bigger ones.
Once the water was boiling, I turned if off, filled up my containers about half way, added the dye and walked away until the dye exhausted (the water was clear, the fiber colored.) Then rinsed and dried the fiber. Easy peasy.


I actually took notes! Can't believe it. It's just not like me.

I'm going to show you a pic and then give you my mix of kool-aid and Wilton's so that if you want to produce some of these you can. You'll have to do your own maths to get the ratios correct for the weight of your fiber.



Starting from the right and going clockwise:

Rust - For two ounces of fiber: 2 packetss yellow KoolAid, 1 packet BerryBlue Twist KA, 1.5 tsp Cherry KA, 1/4 tsp Orange Wilton's Food Coloring (paste)

Melon Orange - For .2 oz fiber: 1 tsp Orange Koolaid, 1 3/4 tsp Yellow Koolaid, 1/4 tsp Cherry Koolaid

Mossy Green - For .2 oz fiber: 1 tsp Orange Koolaid, 1/2 tsp Berry Blue Twist Koolaid

Purple - For .8 oz fiber: 1 packet Grape Koolaid

Red: For 1 oz. fiber: 1 packet Fruit Punch Koolaid

Dark Mossy Green: For .2 oz. fiber: 1.5 tsp Orange Koolaid, 1 tsp Berry Blue Twist, 1 tsp Lemonaid Koolaid

(I'm skipping to the almost black here, so bear with me.)

Black: For .2oz fiber: 1/4 tsp. Wilton's Black Paste Food Coloring. let fiber sit in glass jar for 1/2 hour. Put in microwave and cook for 30 sec. Repeat the microwaving every half hour for about 4 times. Then let it sit over night to let it fully exhaust.

Warning: The Black does not give consistent results. It "Breaks". Usually the fiber absorbs the reds first, then the blue. If I had let it sit all night, it would have probably made a truer black. But I couldn't leave well enough alone and added another small bump (about .1 oz) of fiber to it and left it all over night. That small bump ended up being that beautiful blue.

So there ya go. Your mileage may very. For me this was very scientific. For any real scientific and anal-retentive folks, my method may very well send you to the crazy house. :)

Moving on

Okay, I managed not to kill The Youngest yesterday, but it was a close call. As Marie pointed out in the comments yesterday, yes, things went overboard and I stooped down to his level. But in my defense, the child pushed very hard with both me and his teachers yesterday and not all over food. Basically, if something could be argued about, he did. It was a long damn day and I'm thrilled that it's over. My mom actually called today to find out if the child survived. I was more worried about me surviving yesterday to tell the truth.

Today was much better. Except for taking the Eldest to the doctor, that wasn't fun either.

Moving on.

This is what I meant to show you and discuss yesterday before a certain three year old got me sidetracked:


I finished this batch of batts. The camera washed it out a bit, The batts are a lovely burgundy and black color in real life. This is 8.8 ounces of domestic wool and mohair that was purchased from the Sheep Shed Studio. It was originally black and white and was dyed with koolaid. It will probably take forever to get it all spun up, but it'll be a fun forever. :)

Pssst. Don't tell Widget the cat, but Roxie the puppy is almost touching her (it won't be pretty once she realizes it):

Child Rant

My day has totally sucked. The Youngest chose today to push every button on every adult that he could find. He told his teachers to "Shut-Up" and then refused to do anything that they told him to do. Can you guess how incredibly embarrassing it is that you can't control your child when you're not around him? I can. not. control. him. I have no idea how to get it through his little stubborn rock-hard head that he needs to learn to mind the grown ups.

As soon as he got home he was disciplined. Then he refused to eat lunch. Fine. I put him down for his nap without it. He refused it when he got up too and told me no in no uncertain terms to my face. Fine. Discipline ensued. I put dinner and his lunch down in front of him tonight at supper and told him I didn't care which he ate as long as he ate. Temper tantrum ensued. More no's. He was disciplined again. An hour later he is still staring at his food.

Now it's basically his will versus mine. I'll be damned if he wins this one. He may still be sitting at the dinner table til morning at this rate. I can totally see why parents go off the deep end with their children and make the five o'clock news, I really can.

It's Here!

The Fancy Kitty Kitten Drumcarder finally showed up on my doorstep this afternoon at around 4pm. I spent most of my day sitting right in front of the window looking for that big brown truck to show up. How pitiful is that? Then, to top it off, dinner will now be late because I had to break out my new toy and play with it.

I heart this so much! Here it is straight out of the box:


And here is my first lumpy bumpy beginner's batt (run through 3 times):


I used some roving that I had dyed a very long time ago and never really liked. I like it much better in the batt and can't wait to see it spun up. Once I finish carding up the rest, I'll get out the wheel and see what it looks like.


On a side note, this past summer my Mom shelled a bunch of purple hull peas. She and I "cooked" up the hulls and I stored the juice for later use. Last night was the later use. I heated it up, added vinegar and put some white roving in and let it sit all night. I was really surprised. It came out a pretty tan, but not at all what I expected. I still have some of the juice left and I'm going to play around with it some more and see what I get. Here's the result:


I have to go cook now before the family shoots me and then have to go play with the carder some more. Bye!

Jam Packed Weekend

On Friday I ordered my drum carder! Woohoo! It should get here sometime tomorrow. In honor of it's showing up on my doorstep, I ordered a couple of pounds of fiber from Sheep Shed Studio to dye and play with, so you should see some fresh dyepot pics soon (especially with all the Easter egg dye going on sale in a week or two). It's absolutely killing me. I want it, and I want it now! I'm taking temper tantrum lessons from the three year old, is it working or should I put a little more whine in there? :)

Here's the latest pic of the Owl Sweater:


I've finished about 4 more inches since I reported to you. Last week was so busy with getting ready for yesterday's performance that the knitting got back-burnered.


The performance went great. I didn't blow my solos, so I consider that a plus. My go-go girl outfit got rave reviews. Here I am in all my stage makeup after the show:

Here's a shot of the group on stage - that's me in the blue in the center. Different costume. I wore about five of them last night.

I did get to mix two of my passions (theater and spinning). We did a Les Miserables medley and I had a ton of time to sit on stage so I took a basket of wool and a spindle up there. It actually looked authentic. What else would a poor woman of that time have done but make her own yarn for her family's clothing? Of course, the hubby didn't get a pic of that one. He was at a really bad angle for it and was wrestling the Youngest to keep him from running up onto the stage with mommy. It was the first time he had seen me do anything like this.

Anyway, it's been a busy weekend and I'm glad it's over. It's time to get back to dull routine around here so I have time to play with my new toy. :)