What I've Been Dying

I've been dying wool, one yard pieces on request. I've been pretty much given free reign as to what color and values but they are for a customer that prefers their colors to have a tinge of gray whereas the colors I dye for my personal use are more vivid and I never attempt to dull the color

These are pretty much the wools I've been overdying. A creamy white, an off white with pale green/tan strip in it, an ivory/beige/gray plaid and these are the end result.

In addition to the pinks and greens I also did some reds and blues. The blue was a specific request. A very grayed light blue was desired. I started out with Cushings Blue. It looked purple and scared me, so I added ProChem Brilliant Blue 490 now I had blue but it was a bright blue so I added Cushings Orange to this vivid mixture. Then I only used a little over the white and the stripe ad additionally I had a heathery cream with flecks of gray in it. It was about the desired color but a little bright. So then I made a solution of just the Orange and overdyed it again in a very diluted bath of orange. Now it was dull enough (the white/cream) but not deep enough, so I overdyed it again with some of the original solution of the blues and orange combined. It turned out as desired, I wish I would have taken a picture of the 1" x 1" scrap I was given to match. So on the left we have the particular blue. The other two it wasn't as important and I didn't give them the final orange bath and they remained a little brighter and a touch more blue green vs blue gray.

I had much fun with the reds I dyed and finally hit on a red I like. It actually leans towards orange, but I'm ready to dig out one of my patterns with poppies that I dyed yards and yards of wool and never hit on a color I liked. So I've never finished any of the rugs with poppies in them that I have.

These are the reds. And they don't even look like they look in person. This picture is really washed out as the yellows are deeper. The pink is close to actual and than what appears to be coral on my screen is really more intense.

And next we have a terrible picture of the rug I started in July. Notice anything wrong here? I sort of lost my mind and ability to measure apparently but it's fixable. I've already ripped it out. If you count 5 horizontal stripes down, you can see where the two middle boxes of gold are larger than the others, I didn't make the purple stripe wide enough. It's easy enough to fix and I'd rather fix it now than later.

Rabbit Servers

Just exactly what does one serve a rabbit and where and how.

I was browsing the listings on shopgoodwill.com and this was the item listed: "Arthur Court Silver Plated Rabbit Servers". I'm thinking who gets silver plated servers for their rabbits. Now I'm sure if you have a bunny rabbit to pick the what? hair off and spin into yarn you treat it good, but silver plated serving utensils? Come on, that's a little too much.

There's an itty bitty picture that you can't tell what the heck it is so curiosity got the better of me, I had to go look at the listing. Now I find that for most of their listings even the large (term used loosely, it's all relative) pictures are bad. And they usually have some logo across the part that undoubtedly you want to see but can't. So anyway, I click on the link and go to look at it.

Well hey, at least this time there are clear pictures.

Whoala, it's a serving set with rabbits as the design element on the handles. Not for serving rabbits after all. I'm thinking maybe it's a cheese serving set, but don't care enough to research.

You can't believe everything you read

"According to a new study in the journal Diabetes, drinking four cups of coffee every day can decrease a woman's risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by more than half."

Hmm, aren't publications supposed to be capitalized? Or maybe there is no such thing as the "journal Diabetes" and MSNBC.com is making up it's own rule and capitalizing diseases.

Whatever, based on this study, to which they give no link to, I can quit worrying about Diabetes. It would seem I'm safe since I drink pots of coffee a day vs cups of coffee. But I have cut back. Since I have started keeping a record of all expenditures whether it be by cash, check, online payment, atm, etc. I have stopped hitting the coffee shop for Lattes as often.

Anyway, a quick Google search and I don't find a "journal Diabetes", you can buy journals to track whatever people with Diabetes track, but I did find this article which in the end since they only studied Finnish men and women, who apparently drink a whole lot of coffee, but an amount they don't tell you, just goes to prove you can't believe it just because you read in on the internet. Or heard it on the news. Or read it in the paper. I have recent personal experience with newspaper articles. The article would lead you to believe something totally different from what you actually saw with your own eyes.

Well now isn't this interesting.

I have way more sewing machines than the average human being needs.

I could probably lead a 4H or Girl Scout troop teaching sewing and hey, no one would need to bring a sewing machine.

So after researching sound activated devices (another story another day) I then diverged wondering what it would take to turn one of the sewing machines into a felting machine. And then I came across this.

Well heck, I could use a scroll saw. I need to replace my picket fence and wanted to customize it. This could work, or not. I think I'll check into the size of motor powering a scroll saw vs a sewing machine, but really some of those hand held scroll saws don't seem any too powerful. I'm thinking this has possibilities.

I will be reading up on this transformation where I stumbled upon this at.

If it's worth doing once, it's worth doing twice....

I find myself saying that over and over at work, seldom do I do repeats at home (measure twice, cut once), but this pattern has me truly intrigued. I'm fascinated by it. I keep doing it and doing it and expecting it to take less time. I'd like to be able to knit this in two evenings. My guess is it will take a week of evenings. But since it takes an hour just to knit 4 row and the thing has 60 rows plus the ribbing, I may be just a tad optimistic.

I've been knitting way too much in an attempt to master this hat.

I've been possessed by a pattern called the Blue Tumpal Beret. The designer has a site where you can download it for free and there is also a link from Ravelry where a million knitters and fiber addicts hang out.

How can I tell I've been knitting too much. My finger that holds the yarn has a crack in it, the end of my thumb has a crack in it.

This is all very painful. I just super glued it together. I guess if they can send me home from surgery glued together (eh, one stitch or two, not worth the bother to thread the needle apparently, just put a little glue on it--you know those places where they make holes and stick things in you when they do surgery) it must be perfectly okay to glue small cracks in your skin together. At least it no longer hurts

Should you decide you want to tackle this pattern you are hereby forewarned. There are 2 errors on the chart, one error in the written instructions, and one bizarrely written sentence that is way simpler to state it has. I will gladly share but do not care at this date and time to post what took me hours of trials and tribulation and research to enable me to knit this pattern.

4 Yard of Wool

You'd of thought I would take a picture of the wool before I started dying it; but no, I just jumped right in and started dying.

This is the result. When next I go to the quilt shop I'll take pics of the bolts so the difference can be seen. In the meantime, here's a days worth of dying.

I dyed it twice, used 8 cups of dye in total. A whole package of Olive Green, a whole package Khaki Drab, and some orange, and a turkey red, and some chartreuse. This was not added to 8 cups of water, mind you. I made one (4c) solution using the Khaki Drab as the main color and the second using Olive Green. I started out loosely following numbers 50 and 57 in Lydia Hicks Triple Over Dye book which are geared to 7 x 9 pieces of wool in 6 separate jars. Well I had 4 yards of wool, so I started by dumping an entire package of wool into the jar and adding some of this and some of that and then some water and adjusting by eye and testing it on paper towel.


That's just what I ended up using throughout the day. As I couldn't find any of my dye spoons, imagine that, I just winged it. The person they were for was pleased and wants me to do more.

Tumpal Number 4

This pattern still takes what seems like forever, but I do like making it.

This is what it looks like before blocking.