mustard pickles

I dyed some of the mountain of superwash merino I have hiding in my closet. I actually dyed this about a year ago with PAAS Easter egg dye tablets and it was gross. The pinks and blues ran together and made a muddy lavender--and I mean MUDDY. I decided to overdye it with a huge dose of yellow. The yellow turned out--as perhaps you can tell--not ochre, not sunshine, but rather PEE yellow. The splotches of green might save it, though. The color name for it shall be Mustard Pickles--either that or Poopy Diaper. Well, at least I had fun with the dyeing process.

I sent some to a friend and I'm going to spin the remainder soon (after spinning the Toxic for the Snaky Blanky, of course!) and see what happens. This could be very exciting. In my world, yes, this is big excitement. Shut up.

My mother made the best mustard pickles when I was young. I need to find her recipe and make some this year. Did I mention the ravenous bunnies in my back yard? I have no more carrots. The beans are gone. They don't seem to care for the zucchini, onions, or tomatoes. My kids have named the rabbits. So much for the tragic and horrible fate that I had planned for them to meet (the rabbits, not my children). There's one named Mr. Cinnamon Boots. See my problem?

and one month later...

It's March. The snow is melting, crocus are popping, the days are lengthening--I love spring. What else do I love? I love books. I love new books. I love this book. And I'm in it: my Meathead hats, my brown slipper socks, and an afghan square.[excited giggle] It's a beautiful book with sweet patterns, and lovely discourses on knitting communities. Writing and most of the patterns are from Larissa "Stitch Marker" Brown and Martin Brown, two very nice, deep-thinking people. Knitting + Philosophy = Love. (And did I mention the Entomology Mittens and Hat (scroll down a little) in there by Adrian" Hello Yarn" Bazilia? Aaaaaaaadriaaaaan... I think I love you...)

I also love spinning. My back is doing better, so what do I do? Do I sit at the computer and get my taxes ready for the accountant? No. Do I go for invigorating walks in the fresh spring air? No. Do I sit and spin? Yes.

I've had this Falkland wool in the colorway "Ravelry" from Spunky Eclectic on my Schacht wheel since Halloween. I was finally able to finish up enough this past weekend to merit plying. This is just under 2 ounces of fingering weight 2-ply. I have about 2 ounces left, but my SpinnerADD got the best of me and I started on something else...

In the second picture, we again have Falkland wool, also from Spunky, called "Pie for Everyone" divided in half and plyed with two different singles that I had languishing in my Great Pot o' Fiber. (I have a very big ceramic pot in which my fiber stash resides. I cannot show it to you at this time because I let Bob take my camera on a field trip today. The Great Pot o' Fiber started out as a covert hiding place for fiber, but about 5 Spunky Club shipments ago, I gave up on the "covert" part.) I plyed the darker skein with a wool-silk-soysilk-mohair batt from Splitrock Ranch. It was such a lovely batt, but once I spun it, it kind of murked out. Plying it with the brighter Pie for Everyone brought out all the fun colors of the batt again. I quite like this tweedy skein--plus it's soft and silky. Ooooh, shiny...

The lighter skein is plyed with a batt that I carded at Yarn School from random floor fiber. It was a rusty-orangey-red color and though I love the resulting color of the skein, it is rough stuff. I spun the second half of the Pie while talking with my kids about book orders (very exciting stuff at chez Wallis) and it is SO overspun. This is a prime example of how spinning tightly will cut your yardage. The two skeins are the same weight, but the light one has about 1/3 less yardage.

Lastly, we have some yarn that I dyed for the Holiday KAL-CAL as a prize. I had so much fun dyeing this yarn. I have over-dyed things in the past simply because I didn't like the first go-round of dye. This batch, however, I overdyed on purpose. First I did a cool version of rainbow colors on the yarn, then I overdyed it with blue and I really liked the watercolor effect of it. I hope the prize recipient liked it too! (The bauble is a little bracelet that I made to match the yarn. And I printed up those yarn labels and everything. Woo. :)

seven things (a meme)

I did it! I started a Flickr group called "Presto Chango baby sweater". If any of you are knitting the sweater, you can post your pictures for us all to see. Yay! And if any of you gentle readers have followed the link over from Jimmy Beans and would like to read the design story of the Presto pattern, it's in the post right before this one--Thanks for stopping by!

Now, since you're all a little tired of me talking about Me and My Pattern, I'll talk about just plain Me! Marly tagged me for the 7 Things Meme, plus I've been pondering my summer knitting list for Ali. Let us begin with 7 random things about me that happen to be on my mind right now. And to liven up all this talk about Me, I'll plug in some pictures of my recent mad dyentist experiments in my kitchen (using Paas Easter egg dye).

1) When my husband is out of town, I usually stay up all night. There's no romantic reason for it, like not being able to sleep without my love by my side--I'm just irresponsible.

2) Sometimes I buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia and I save it in the back of the freezer for when Eric is out of town. I eat it all by myself and watch Silverado.

3) I once counted up all the instruments that I've played in a band, orchestra, or ensemble and it was 18--but it's only 11 if we don't count the percussion instruments seperately. (My favorite was the marimba.) I used to spend a lot of time on music; I've let it slide for the past 12 years, though, and it is a regular souce of guilt.

4) While rehearsing the clarinet solo in the 3rd movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony, I figured out how to speed up and slow down my heart rate by thinking about it (13 largo measures without a breath can do that to a person).

5) I'm trying to learn Italian by listening to Italian language CDs in my car. My kids speak it better than I do. They all know how to ask if you're thirsty and if you would like to have a beer.

6) When I was little, my dad would rock me in his La-Z-Boy and sing me tender songs from the 30's and 40's. My kids are perhaps the only ones of their generation who can sing "Mairzy Doats" and "Comin' in on a Wing and a Prayer". And has anyone else out there ever heard the "Breathless" song? (If I had a dictionary/ I would read the customary/ complementary phrases/ When I want to sing your praises/ But I'm up to here in trouble/ My adversity is double/ And to make the matter worse/ I'm breathless!) Anyone? Didn't think so. I can't find anything when I google it, either.

7) My best friend when I was a child had a fantastic 14-letter-long Greek last name. I'm still proud of how fast I can spell it. When she got married, she took her husband's last name; it's Jones. She has an older sister--and she's now Smith. Couldn't they at least have hypenated? Then they could have 19-letter last names! The two were often polar opposites in many ways and now as adults, one lives in Alaska and the other in Arizona. Yeah.

This fiber turned out much more pinky-purple than I thought it would; I was aiming for purpley-brown with a lot more bluish-gray. I like it though. I'm dying (har har) to get it spun up and see what happens to the colors. I think I'll probably need real fiber dyes if I expect to have predictable results.

Ali, I'm going to save my summer knitting goals for the next post, but I promise I'll get them listed!

way too many pictures of spinning

PeeWee is playing at her little friend's house and Leela (That's not her real name--that's what PeeWee calls her. I'm torn about the whole "using my kids' real names" issue. I think I'm going to go the Precious Nickname route. In fact, I think I'll make sure there are double E's in eeach namee. So we'll have Bebee, Joee, Tedee, Leela, and PeeWee. End of aside.) is off to kindergarten. My plans? I'm going to practice my mad housekeeping skills...in a minute. Firstly, though, Way Too Many Pictures of My Spinning:

We started with 4 ounces of 21 micron merino top called Darling, dyed by the fabulous Adrian of Hello Yarn. I was in a bit of a hurry spinning it, because I'm an eager, impatient beginner, AND I was trying to get it done in time to knit a birthday scarf for my mother. She bought a new red coat this winter, and I know it's spring, but her birthday is in 1 week and I really want to make something for her. Back to Darling... So I didn't spin it as fine as it could, or possibly should be spun, but it is luscious, bouncy, and soooooft. I tended to err on the side of looseness in spinning it and so it's very fluffy. It's probably a heavy worsted weight. I think my mommy will like it.

Must go scrub toilets. Then I'll get started on the scarf. Any suggestions for pattern? I considering linen stitch--I'll have to swatch and see. (Swatchency, isn't that just north of Trenton?)