Ok, so the dyeing yarn with kool aid thing.

LOVE IT!! This totally caters to my art school girl and newbie obsessive knitter sensibilities. I can’t help thinking of the different color combinations I can come up with and what kind of crazy stuff I can use to dye all my plain yarn.

The knitter’s guild potluck was way down in the south valley, almost to Isletta. The lady who was hosting the party had lots of fun “critters” - two sweet dogs, goats, geese, all kinds of stuff. There were a few experienced kool aid dyers but most of us were flying blind. Thanks to the great thread at craftster and knitty article I came fully prepared with manymany packets of non-sugar, non-nutrasweet kool aid, white vinegar, little pots to mix the kool aid in, a turkey baster, and the infamous roll of saran wrap.

I had three skeins of undyed handspun wool from the estate sale - two were larger and one was pretty small. So last night I washed it with some baby shampoo (it was kind of stinky) then soaked it in a vinegar and water mixture and put it in a ziploc bag for the trip down.

Once we got down there I spread out an old towel on one of the tables outside, put a long strip of saran wrap on top, then laid the wet wool out on the plastic wrap.

On the small skein (Mr. Grape-Lime-Blue Raspberry up there) I sprinkled the kool aid powder right onto the wet wool (using two or three packets for each color to be sure the colors would be bright), drizzled some vinegar on it and scrunched it up to spread the color around.

For the larger skeins (the lovely sunset ladies down below) I premixed the kool aid with vinegar and water but made it very dense. I’d read on several sites that I would really need to use a LOT of kool aid to get the kind of good, bright colors I like. Then I just used the turkey baster to paint the yarn, sometimes getting impatient and just pouring it on.

Then I wrapped each skein in the saran wrap, then wrapped that in a black garbage bag, and set it in the hot July New Mexico sun to cook for a few hours. At first I didn’t think it would get hot enough. But who the hell was I kidding. It’s a black plastic bag in the sun at noon in July in New Mexico. It got plenty hot to cook that dye.

These turned out remarkably similar to the “Fire” color of the Giotto yarn I’d gotten for my birthday. How cool!

Anyway, I carefully brought the bags home, rinsed the yarn out in the sink, and hung them out to dry in the NM evening sun. Now to plot my next dyeing adventure with the estate sale brushed mohair mwahahahaha!

Oh, and I picked up the book I’d reserved at Barnes and Noble today and they gave me an extra present. Guess what the book was.

God I’m such a trendpuppy.

Don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’ve started adding the date to the “FO Friday” titles because the way I use movable type archives the individual entry links kept cancelling each other out. And I didn’t have a FO last week although I meant to post pics of the 4 WIPs but never got around to it.

But boy do I have one now.

That’s right. My very first adult sweater! There’s nothing that compares with wearing something you’ve made. Carrying around a purse you made is neat and scarves are fun and all but being able to actually wear a sweater I knit…indescribable. Once I can get over my current sock knitting hate (that sl1 k1 heel crap is tedious I hate hate hate it) I’ll be able to experience what I imagine is the joy of wearing a pair of socks I knit.

I wore it to lunch yesterday and carried the felted bamboo purse I’d made.

With a denim skirt from torrid and the pink birkenstocks my parents gave me for my birthday

And it perfectly matches the scarf they’d given me as well.

By the way, I’ve started a totally self-involved set for photos of things I got for my birthday. Hope that doesn’t seem like I’m showing off I just thought ya’ll might be curious.

oh and Mr. Man took the photos didn’t he do a nice job?

For the curious this is the loop-d-loop ballet t-shirt. I don’t have the book I just bought the pattern off the website and printed it out. But if this is any indication of what her other patterns are like I’ll be buying that book pretty soon, yo.

I knit this in two days. I’m not kidding. Maybe five-six hours altogether at the absolute most. It’s knit in one piece from the top-down on circular needles, just bind-off for the sleeves and do a single cast on to complete the body.

It was totally easy to resize the pattern to fit me. I was aiming for 22-24 and the pattern is for two size groups: 1-8 and 8-14. So I had to increase by two increments. Believe me, I’m math is hard barbie. Not that I can’t do it I just have no patience whatsoever where math is concerned. So the fact that I did the math on the fly for each and every number in the pattern with no writing should indicate just how easy that math was to do. I also did a few extra shaping rows and rows at the bottom to accomodate the belly.

The yarn is the cuddly soft and sweet-smelling “Atlanta” cotton blend I bought from Textiles a Mano booth at the Fiber Fiesta. I knit holding two strands together because it was going to be a pretty open knit otherwise. It still is a somewhat open knit but luckily I happen to have a blue bra that blends behind it perfectly. I’m not much for showing the nipple I know that’s a huge surprise.

So, my first adult sweater! Go me!!

I’m going to an all-day potluck knit party with the Dropped Stitch Knitter’s guild tomorrow. We’re going to eat and knit and dye yarn with kool-aid. I just happen to have a bunch of sugar-free kool aid, some undyed wool handspun from the estate sale, and a turkey baster. And I thought I had wild weekends when I was a teenager.

Here’s my random ten

Spinal Tap - Stonehenge
Mar-Kays - Last Night
Cropstar - Crazy Poco (Beyonce vs. Poco)
Dead Kennedys - Pull My Strings
Lena Horne with Lou Bring and his Orchestra - Stormy Weather
The Pixies - Down to the Well
Squeeze - Tempted
Lucinda Williams - Sweet Old World
The Youngbloods - Let’s Get Together
The Band - Across the Great Divide

Why do the comments I write on other people’s sites always seem far more interesting and well thought-out than those on my own damn site these days?
Exhibit A
Exhibit B

At this point I’m considering copying and pasting my very own comments and posting them here for content. How friggin sad is that?

That said I’m going to attempt to write an interesting, (hopefully) well-written little vignette from my day.

Cody was off work today and we decided to go out to lunch. I’m too embarrassed to tell you where I’ll just say it’s a seafood restaurant chain that has surprisingly good gumbo. While there he asked me where I bought the gigantic spool of plastic foodwrap that I’ve had since well before he and I met. He wasn’t sure if it was actually the same one.

“Oh, that. I stole it from Judy Chicago in 1994.”

Then went on to tell him about a workshop I took with her during a summer term at College of Santa Fe where women basically paid a pretty big sum of money to have the privilege of having the famed feminist artist show up once a day, say mean paranoid things about how we’re fighting against her while we really have resentment for men, which occasionally resulted in making the big lesbian biker woman I’d made friends with in class cry, then take credit for all our artwork as a “sponsored group piece” in a gallery show. Made me rethink exactly who’s been doing the actual work in her famed art pieces that’s for sure.

In retaliation I stole the Sam’s club saran wrap from the leftover supplies. And coined the saying “Well she may have had to work hard to get respect in the male-dominated art world but she didn’t have to grow a penis of meanness.”

He knew about some of it because my self-portrait plaster casts from the show are decidedly in the garage and not hanging in the house like he thinks they should. But he was starting to suspect that I’ve been having a clandestine affair with the glad wrap man while he’s away working nights.

———-

http://www.tomcruiseisnuts.com/

I don’t even want to go into what he said about people who need antidepressants because his statements are just too ridiculous for me to feel justified in acknowledging. He’s clearly going through an extreme mid-life crisis of the narcissistic celebrity kind. I just hope that his statements haven’t made anyone with any form of depression reconsider getting the help they need. There’s enough of a stigma against people with mental illnesses a celebrity anti-spokesperson leading a crusade really isn’t necessary.

Oh, I can now say that I’ve tasted wasabi ginger and black licorice ice creams. And I probably never will again.

“Melon and Winter have been following me around all morning like I’ve got veal in my pants.”

It’s weird being my pets’ favorite toy all the time.

We went to the dog park in Rio Rancho yesterday and took a bunch of photos.

They’ve just added some nice agility equipment. Winter barely remembers her brief stint of agility lessons.

We were alone for a while (which happens a lot at the RR dog park) but around seven pm the population started to increase.

This is a three month-old chihuahua dachsund mix that I had to pick up and cuddle. These people who bring their tiny puppies to dog parks are SO MEAN.

Especially hound dog puppies.

I’m such a sucker for hound faces with big hound ears.

Also, since Cody and I aren’t always on the same sleeping schedule we have a hard time keeping up with when Winter was last fed. Being a ridgeback she’s always going to act like she’s starving, and the vet’s been giving us a hard time about getting her to lose ten pounds. So Cody came up with this solution.

He found a dry-erase board at Jo-Ann when we were there the other day buying more brownish fun-fur to make more hedgehog toys (I’ve had lots of requests to sell them and I’m pretty sure that’s ok since I strayed pretty damn far from the original pattern). It’s a neat board with a sparkly magnetic surface. It came with a cool pen with a dry eraser on the cap, a magnetic pen holder, and two little magnets.

Cody also found some cute dog theme stickers and made a little clock so we can write in when we last fed her. And there’s room to leave notes and stuff for each other. Our next plan is to add a place to note “am” or “pm” and if the dishes in the dishwasher are clean.

Isn’t it cute?

Pass the potato.

(via)

P.S. Things are fine. I’m just not in the mood to write anything. Housewifey knitting summer stuff.

Meg tagged me for this last week but I didn’t get to post it last Saturday. Now I realize how totally appropriate it is to post today. I’m thirty-three today. I haven’t accomplished a lot of what I thought I would. But I have accomplished many things I never thought about either.

Spending my childhood in a snooty suburb in Alabama I never thought I’d end up in a kitchy 70s suburban house in New Mexico. Never dreamed I’d be so happily married to an adorable computer geek with uncontrollable dark curly hair and baby blue eyes. Didn’t consider that I’d end up with a houseful of pets. Or a degree in sculpture. Who’d have thought I’d obsessively take up knitting in my early thirties? And no one would’ve ever guessed I’d have such a head for history, be so good at understanding tax codes, or have an instinctual knack for the stock market.

But all in all if you’d asked, say, the eighteen year-old me what she thought I’d be doing at this age the only thing she’d be surprised about is that I wasn’t growing a better garden and hadn’t made the back porch into a pottery studio.

My present to you..

Since I gave this song away for my birthday last year I thought I’d upload another birthday-themed song. If one can’t violate copyright laws on one’s birthday then life just isn’t worth livin’.

And here’s the Childhood Meme..

Things I miss from my childhood (in no particular order).

Summers at Nana’s Farm.
My grandmother had a farm in a tiny town outside Holly Springs, Mississippi called Red Banks. There were chickens and cows and she tended a respectable vegetable garden. I would spend at least one month of my summers there. Nana was a busy lady but always had something fun and interesting for us to do. One summer I rode a horse every single day. I miss Nana’s hands (although sometimes I see them in mine), her kindness, and the special non-judgemental love she had for most people, her grandchildren in particular.

Friday nights at Gringo’s and Saturday mornings at the ballpark
Before he retired in ‘99 my dad was a confirmed workaholic. And there was no more stressful time, it seems, than working for the phone company in the late seventies and early eighties. He and all the other programmers and computer security guys seemed to work hard and, to quote a bad deoderant commercial, play hard. Friday nights were usually spent at a Mexican restaurant called El Gringos. It wasn’t quite as authentic as what I eat here in NM but for Alabama it was remarkably close. Our waitress was a hilarious diminutive Mexican immigrant lady named Rosa and she served some kick-ass cheese dip.

Saturday mornings were spent at the softball park in Homewood watching Dad play with his team of other Bellsouth (or South Central Bell depending on the year) guys. They were all pudgy and middle-aged and looked ratty with no common uniform but every year they kicked all those younger guys’ asses to the championship. We used to call them to the Grateful Dead of softball teams. After the game in the morning well into the afternoon the guys would stand around drinking beer out of red solo cups under the sign that read “No alcoholic beverages in the park” telling their softball version of front porch fishing stories.

Saturday morning cartoons
In the late seventies you were almost guaranteed to be entertained by cartoons from seven to eleven-thirty am when “Land of the Lost” came on and cartoons were effectively over. Sure, there’s the cartoon network and Nick toons and Boomerang channels with cartoons 24-7 but it’s not quite the same. Rarity makes things valuable.

I can’t think of any more for now and I need to go get dressed and I wanted to try the first part of Clapotis again so I’ll add more as I think of them.

The good part about being too sick to go to the baby shower is I still had the baby kimono here to photograph for this fo friday.

Punkin bear is about the same size as a baby so here he is wearing it. Actually I’ve been meaning to make a new sweater for punkin. Maybe I’ll do one with a skull and crossbones from Hello Yarn?

And here’s a sleeve detail.

There are a few more photos in the flickr set

Also, my present from Mr. Man arrived early and I managed to wait until tonight to open it so I could put it together.

It’s a Goko Yarn swift! Yaaay! Oddly, I don’t mind balling the yarn by hand. And I don’t really care if it’s a center-pull ball or not. But I hate bothering Cody to hold the high-maitenance yarns so I can hand ball them. He’s a sweetheart about it, of course. But I really do hate to ask him to do it anyway.

I just put it together and it really is a work of art. The wood isn’t that rough splinter-causing stinky cheap pressed pine that you have to force and warp to get everything to fit right. Oh no. This is perfectly shaped and sanded. It all fits together perfectly. And the metal arms adjust to stretch the yarn to spin. I’m loving my swift but I’m going to wait until I get my Giotto tomorrow to try it out.

Cody traded with another guy at work to get tomorrow off and my parents are taking us to Ichiban! Yeah, ok, they’ll eat teriyaki and we might be able to talk mom into trying tempura but Mr. Man and I get to eat sushi!