Carding Central

I've set myself a long term spinning/knitting project. It started a while back with my quest for a dark brown next to the skin soft fiber. I finally achieved it by carding together some Corriedale (which I thought would never get used since it was over processed), some black/brown domestic wool and some black and brown alpaca.

All these fibers were given to me in vastly different shapes and styles. The Corriedale was a raw fleece, the alpaca was in a very thin roving form and the domestic wool, from the sheep shed studio, was in a compacted top form.

I new that I wanted these fibers to be equally distributed throughout the batts that I was going to make, so I ran each of them separately through my carder. This is the stage that I'm at now:


There is approximately 2.4 pounds of fiber here, should be plenty for a sweater for me. Basically what I'm planning on doing is taking sections off of each of the different kinds of batts and blending them together to form new batts. This is the only way that I could come up with that was clean and uniform. I'll figure out the percentages of the mix of fibers later.

I'm going to be going for a DK weight yarn with this. I'd like this to be a three ply yarn and I know that I will need approximately 1400 yards for the sweater that I'm planning to make with this. We'll see what happens.

In other news, I have finnished approximately 8.5 repeats of the Clever Little Shawl. Only 5.5 repeats to go!


I'm off to clean the house so that I can mess it up again with kitchen renovation this weekend! Have a great weekend!

Chalk One Up For Me

It's difficult with a strong willed child to find the right threat to use in public that will be effective in controlling the child's behavior and that won't get you turned over to the police for child abuse. I think that I might have lucked onto one. It works too, at least for now.

A friend has always threatened to call the police on her kids. All she has to do is pick up the phone and pretend to dial and they straighten right up. I haven't been quite as lucky with child number 2 in this respect. Nothing much phases him. Until now, that is.

We took a trip to the local Sherwin Williams store today and even though he was told "The Rules" before we got out of the car, upon walking through the front door he immediately began acting like a wild heathen. There's a reason I don't take him out in public very often.

Now I can threaten to spank his little behind, but I don't want to use it as a threat on every occasion. Sometimes it's nice to have a backup threat. So here he was being the heathen and I simply leaned down to him and said, "If you don't behave I'm taking you to the zoo to live with the monkeys." The results were very satisfactory, I must say. His eyes got big, he stood very still and said, "But I don't want to live with the monkeys" to which I responded, "then you better behave, huh?". Not only did he quit being wild, but no one called the cops on me either. Chalk one up for the Mommy.

By the way, does anyone else's cat use their spinning wheel treadle for a pillow?

Rootbeer

Today, just for fun, the kids and I decided to make some root beer. Now, firmenting drinks is not my forte. As a matter of fact, there was that one time in college that I tried it, but I don't think I'll share the full results of what happened with you. Just suffice it to say that there were lots of dark stains on my walls.

So. We used this recipe and some Zatarin's Rootbeer extract and a gallon jug. I have since moved it to the ugliest room in the house. That way if it explodes, I won't care. It'll just be another excuse to redo that room. BTW, I was careful to make sure that I had the liters to gallons ratios correct before mixing it all up.

The Youngest has been bawling since then. He was under the impression that, like Kool-aid, as soon as you mix it, you can drink it. He was so disappointed! Now for the next four days or so, I get to try and explain to him why he can't drink it yet. Oh boy.


In the knitting world, I completed two more repeats of the shawl. I now have half of it completed. This is taking a while for me to finish. I have several things going on at once. Spinning - I had to finish making the yarn. Kitchen Renovation - Forever Ongoing since I'm mostly doing this myself. Knitting - when I can. Family - Trying to squeeze them in after all of the above (A knitter's gotta have her priorities after all.) :)

Whirlwind of Inactivity

This weekend was a whirlwind of inactivity.

I did spin up another 250 yds of yarn for my Clever Little Shawl project though. I now have 640 yds of yarn which should be plenty to finish the shawl. Here's how the shawl looks at this point:


I could have done more on it, but I just got lazy this weekend. I just didn't want to do much of anything. My house is now showing it too.

The kids and I also finished emptying out the Easter dye boxes - all fifty of them. I now have 75 boxes worth of dye tablets to use. Yeah! We put all of the other stuff in the boxes into ziploc bags and I'm offering them up on Craigslist to any preschool teacher that can use them. There are the metal dipping sticks, cardboard memorty game, stickers, etc. Too much to just throw away. Some clever teacher can use up every bit of this stuff with their kids next year.

Here's some of my help:



Also wanted to show you something else. My Azeleas, they asploded:

They were more than half as tall as the peach tree next to them before the storms this weekend. Now they look pitiful and sickly. They were just beaten to a pulp by the hard rains that we had. But boy were they beautiful on this day!

What's wrong with me?

I think Madness has overtaken me. This morning started off like any other day, get up, eat, get kids ready, take kid to school, etc. Normal, boring Mommy crap. Then something happened.

It started when I was looking on Ravelry at the natural dye plants that can be planted in a garden. I knew that I wouldn't do that, but then I remembered reading somewhere about plants that mosquitoes avoid.

Now my whole extended family may keel over on reading this, but guess what I did during naptime today? Planted a tiny flower garden. Not sure what came over me, I must be possessed or something. I am NOT the outdoorsy, garden-y type. That would be my In-Laws who not only possess green thumbs, but every other appendage on their bodies are green as well. They have fantastic gardens. Me? Nope. I hate being outside. So I'm really not sure why I was bitten by the gardening bug on this lovely.

Except for maybe experimentation. I really want to know if some of these plants will help chase away mosquitoes. We'll see, if I don't kill them with neglect from this point on.

The bad thing? They're guaranteed to attract a few bees and bugs and the Youngest is terrified of those. Oh well.

We have very nasty red, thick Georgia clay here. It just about killed me to dig it up and mix it with potting soil and then spread it back out. While doing that, I had to tear out all the nasty wild violets, wild strawberries and chickweed that had taken over the area. I wish I had taken a before pic of it to show you, but it was really nasty.

The only things worth saving were some Spiderwort and some other little herb-y thing my Mother in law gave us years ago. I tried seperating some of that out and replanting it, but I'm not sure if that will live. I'm an optomistic type though, so I'm going to will it to live. Think that'll work?

I planted lavendar, marigolds and some creeping verbain. I have no idea what creeping verbain is, but it said that butterflies like it, so I threw it into the garden as well. Told ya I don't have a clue what I'm doing.

When the Youngest and I went shopping this morning for all the stuffs, you should have heard the fit he pitched about the marigolds. He wanted only the Orangen (his word for orange) ones! He got really mad that I picked out several different types and colors. Usually he's up for variety, but not this time.

So here's the pics of the tiny little beds:

There was very little rhyme or reasoning involved on where I planted things. I just put them where I wanted to and we'll hope for the best.


The huge plant at the corner of the deck area is a Seloeum (sp?). I have no clue how to spell that one right. It's like a big elephant ear. It can't take the winters here, so we have to cart it and it's brother into the garage during that time. It absolutely loves it during the other three seasons though. You can see from the crack that it's busting out of it's pot and needs a new one.

And so now my little garden is planted and watered and I'm very tired, but I'm priding myself on finding yet another way to avoid cleaning the inside of my house. I'm going to go sit and knit now. I'm pooped.

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. :)

How do you pronounce her name?

I'll be back to knitting things next week, but for now:

The lecture given by Dr. Zahi Hawass last night was an absolute hoot. The man may be the most renowned archaeologist on the face of the planet, but he could easily ditch that job to become a traveling comedian. He kept us in stitches for the entire night.

There was only one problem. The man wouldn't frickin' keep still, so I got a lot of pics like this one:


I did get a less blurry (but not by much) pic of him standing at the podium:

This was the clearest of the night and it was a pic of the slide projection screen he used during the lecture:

I was kinda disappointed to see him in a suit. I wanted him in the blue shirt and fedora. oh well.

He is a fantastic public speaker and his job may be the most fascinating job ever. He was so cute, absolutely passionate about his career and the history that he is literally uncovering.

He seems very sweet as well. He had been corresponding with a 10 year old little girl and her parents and he called the girl up on stage with him. Then he astonished her and her folks by giving her an all expense paid 10 day trip to Egypt with him as their guide. It was all I could do not to stand up in my seat and scream "Me too! Take me too!" :)

We did not stay for the book signing. I wish we could have, but it was around 10pm when we left and there is no way we would have gotten home before 1am. The Fox theater was packed, and I do mean packed (between 1500 and 2000 people -way more than I expected would be there), and everyone of them grabbed the book they had either brought or purchased while there and ran to the room where the signing would be. Practically a stampede.

But wow, was this guy fun. I would like to have met him. Maybe one day.

He spoke on all the excavations he has going currently all over Egypt. He spoke only briefly about Tut, most of it was about other mummies and pyramids. So cool.

By the way, some geeky trivia for you via Dr. Hawass: If you ever need to remember how to pronounce Queen Hatshepsut's name, just think "HotChickenSoup" and you'll have it. Told ya it was geeky.

Productivity for a History Geek

Today is looking fairly productive, just not knitting and craft wise. I haven't had time to pick up the knitting in almost a week. I'm starting to get the shakes.

But despite the shakes, I managed to have a Venison stew in the crockpot by 9:30 this morning, the house picked up of toys and vacuumed by 10:00. Technically, the second part should have been quicker, but the Youngest was "helping". By 10:30 I had a batch of refrigerated bread dough put together from scratch and rising. Damn, that's not half bad is it? Especially from a lazy couch potato like me.

Tonight, my inner history geek will be in fine form. I'm going to see Dr. Zahi Hawass speak at the Fox Theater in downtown Atlanta. If you aren't familiar with him, he's the top dude in Egypt dealing with antiquities. He has a prettier title than that, but you get the point. Nothing, but nothing, happens within Egypt's tombs/pyramids/museums that isn't approved by his say so. He also wears a cool hat. If you have ever watched an archeology program on Discovery or the History Channel, you have seen him. He manages to make it into just about all of them. He will speaking on Tutankhamun and other subjects. This is all due to the King Tut museum being here in the ATL right now. I've already seen it and it's awesome. I'm very much looking forward to it.

Dress complete!

Okay, I know that I've teased you for two days about my new little black dress, but now, now you get to see it in all it's little glory. I'm so tickled with how this little number turned out. I've been prancing around in it for the last fifteen minutes or so, squealing (quietly - the kid's down for his nap) for joy.

Lookee:


It fits me better than Endora here. Evidently Endora is well endowed with broad shoulders. In this shot, I couldn't get the dress zipped up all the way, but you can't tell it from the photo.

I had a devil of a time trying to get a photo of it to show you, which is why I put it on Endora. My official photographer is not home from school yet, but I did get a shot of it on me. Behold the ubiquitous bathroom shot. Notice my fingers balancing me on the countertop as I stand on tip toes in order to show the flowers at the bottom of the dress:



We're doing a sixties number for the upcoming show that I'm in and I'll be wearing this and a pair of white go-go boots for it. Otherwise, I'll be wearing it every chance I get this summer and I've got several sets of sandals that will go with it nicely.

I love the A-line dresses! They are incredible flattering on us pear shapes - smaller on top than on bottom. ahem. When the pattern was cut I opted for one size larger on bottom and the dress absolutely could not fit me better.

I think without the flowers, this would be the perfect little black dress for going out in.

Finances and The Hobbies

I've mentioned that I'm saving up to get a Fancy Kitten Drum Carder. The one that I want is the Fine cloth 90/120 carder without the brush attachment. I just can't see paying $50 extra dollars for the brush attachment when I can run to Home Depot and get a wallpaper brush for way less. And just maybe, I can figure out a hack that will hold it in place for a couple of bucks too.

I really want this now! I could run out and put it on the ol' credit card, but in the long run I would pay a lot more for it due to interest since right now, we can't pay the cards off in full.

Money has been pretty tight around here for the past several years. I could put the blame all on my husband (left a big buck job to work as a mortgage broker at the dumbest time ever resulting in $0 income for 2 years. He's since gotten a new job, but it still pays a lot less than in the big buck days.), but morally I can't do that. I know that my spending has contributed to the problem. While I cut back my spending in some areas, in others I was still living like he was still pulling in the big bucks. Very dumb. We plowed through all of our savings (which was fairly good sized) in no time flat and now have nothing to show for all the work that we put in before having kids.

In the past two months I've been on a saving money and budgeting kick. I'm trying to get us out of debt by using the Dave Ramsey Snowball Method.

I've also been tackling my grocery and Walmart spending. Do you know that we were spending between $600 - $800 a month in groceries? Mostly processed junk. The family had a conniption when I cut those out. At Walmart alone I was spending about $400 a month on crap I didn't need. We were also eating out at McDonald's once a week and that was costing us about $800 a year.

So. Out went the McDonald's and Walmart spending. That's $5600 a year saved right there. Ouch. In one month I've already gotten the grocery budget down to $300 a month for a family of four and I know I can do better there, but it's a good start. So that makes for $9200.00 saved a year so far. I've been tired of living with little to no money but, Wow. What were we thinking by spending so much on junk? Maybe there's a reason we're poor. What else are we doing that's dumb?

Now, back to the frugal drum carding point. My hobbies are fairly expensive. Knitting and Spinning and the required equipment and supplies for those ain't cheap. When I decided to buy my drum carder, I started selling stuff on Craigslist and EBay to finance it. It's going well. I only need $30.00 more in sales to get my new toy.

If I can ever get my act together (which is difficult to do with a precoscious three year old running around the house "helping" me), once I get the carder I would like to begin selling some of the bats that I card. I won't get rich doing this, but maybe I can finance some of my hobbies in a way that won't take a big chunk out of the family budget. I have an Etsy shop, but I've never stocked and used it. Why? I don't know. Maybe I haven't had the confidence in my abilities to make and sell things.

I'm sure I'm not the only person out there to realize this stuff, even if it did take me so long. I've put together some more links for those in my situation that are financially challenged and I've done it by category:

Personal finances (general) - these blogs offer some sound financial advice:

Get Rich Slowly
Bargaineering
The Simple Dollar

Sites that help stretch a dollar:

LifeHacker
The Dollar Stretcher - I get a real kick out of digging around in the archives of this site. Some people take frugality to an artform, but I'm not planning on going to that extreme.

Hobby Related (spinning/knitting): I'm planning on using the two spinning links extensively soon, or at least $30 dollars from now.

R.H. Lindsay - wool wholeseller that sells to anyone at wholesale prices. Great prices!
Sheep Shed Studio - Mom and Pop style business with Wonderful service and quality fiber. I'm planning on using them quite a bit when I get my carder. The grab bags and big bags are particular fun and cool. Especially if you enjoy dyeing fiber and carding it all together. Can't say enough about this wonderful company!
KnitPicks - for yarn and their fantastic Options needles. Good quality, inexpensive yarns.

Anyone have any links similar to these, but for jewelry making supplies? I'd like to get some jewelry made and start selling it as well, but I desperately need cheaper supplies than what Hobby Lobby and Michael's charge in order to be more profitable.


I'm sure there's tons of other wonderful links out there. These are just a few to get you started.

I know, I promised pics of the dress that I'm sewing, but this article was just begging to be written today. I still have to hem it and add appliques. I'll have something for you in tomorrow's episode.

New Jewelry!

Blogger and I don't seem to be on good terms today. For some reason, it kept not taking my email and password and I spent about twenty minutes just trying to log in so that I could post. Jeez.

I went out of town this weekend and did a tiny bit of knitting, but not enough to show off. I did, however, make some more jewelry while I was there.

The necklace that I've worn all day:



And two others:





I also made a dragon necklace for the Eldest, but he won't take it off long enough for me to get a good pic of it.

I would like to begin selling some jewelry as a side business, but the only problem is that I keep becoming quite attached to what I've made. The teardrop shaped pendant necklace will probably go in the sell box, but I really like the other two. How do people that sell their wares detach themselves from their products enough to sell them?

I've also not finished my dress. I completed most of it and the lining. Now I just have to get these two to a bar for a nightcap so that they can hookup. Once the kids get to bed and the margaritas do their magic, hopefully things will start to happen and I'll have some progress to show you tomorrow.

Sewing Fear

I wish I wasn't feeling about twelve kinds of stoopid right now. I wish I were a brave and fearless seamstress. Alas, I'm not.

Thank God for the endless source of sewing knowledge that is my Mom. I just avoided a horrible mistake by second guessing myself and calling her up and begging for correct answers.

This is where I was an hour ago in the process:


Not very damned far, I admit. I'm trying to double check everything and it's slowing me up terribly. I now have everything cut out and will begin pinning and sewing. Endora the dress dummy will finally be used as her maker originally intended. I'm going to pin and check the fit before sewing.

I seriously need some "sewing for dummies" lessons, or I at least need to sew more often to get my confidence up. It scares the wits out of me.


With knitting or crochet, if you screw up, you rip and begin again. No harm done, just wasting lots of time, and I'm okay with that. If you screw up in sewing clothing (especially the cutting part) you might as well dump everything in the trash. There's not much room for fudging and no room really for going back. In my past experiences anyway. Now when I've quilted or made bags, yes, I could go back and fudge the heck out of it and make it work. But in sewing clothes, if you want the garment to fit, no fudging.

What is it about this whole sewing thing that makes a college grad gibber in fear?

Sewing!

Once again I have wrecked my dining room/office/craft room. This time, with sewing crap. I have yet to have more than two days of this room being clean. There's always some project scattered everywhere and then the kids come barreling through leaving destruction (toys/shoes/socks/etc) in their wake. Never a dull moment around here, or a clean one for that matter.

I'm performing in a show in two weeks time and it's a medley of different era songs. We're responsible for getting our own costumes. I've got a poodle skirt lined up for one, and I'm making a cute little A-line dress for the sixties one. I'm totally getting some go-go boots too, I've always wanted a pair of those. My mom should be shot for getting rid of hers. I mean, come on now, didn't she think her daughter would want those? :) I don't have a clue what to do for clothing from the 1700s (Les Miserables). Any ideas?

This is what I'm putting together for the 60s costume:

(the one with the flowers)

The dress will be black, but the flowers will be done in the fabrics in the photo.
I'm hoping that this will all work out. A fabulous seamstress, I am not. My mom? yes. Me? Not so much.

Meanwhile, I've wrecked the room again. Everything is spread out all over the place. Fabric, ironing board, flowers, toys, basically everywhere.

Does anybody even use a formal dining room nowadays? We might use this room once a year for dining. Mostly it's my office/crafting area and I swear that this one little room is used more than 90% of the rest of our house. We might as well live in a two room hut. Cause, where Mommy is, that's where two boys, two cats and three dogs all want to be at the same time.