imagine that’s being sung by Annie Lennox please.

The greatest irony about being a co-hostess of this Dyeorama thing is I’ve never participated in a yarn or knitting swap of any kind before. I did a secret santa a few years ago before I learned to knit and was involved in two ill-fated music cd swaps in which I totally overgave and didn’t even get everything that were the basic requirements from others.

Because of these experiences I’ve never joined a swap since. Which is kind of why I make a good hostess I think, I’ll totally nail your ass to the wall if you don’t fulfill your swap, and I have access to all the info as well. Swap shirkers beware of this Dye-O-Rama mama!

So I’ve never signed up for the Secret Pal groups because I don’t like sending out all these presents and getting my hopes up to find myself disappointed by sucky lazy people. But I have volunteered as an “angel” - to send presents to people whose Secret Pal bums out on them. And I’m excited because I got an angel assignment today! Goodie I get to spoil someone silly yay! I’ve already gotten a few fun presents together to send out to her. I feel so badly that she’s been waiting so long for her surprises. I mean, I’ve been hearing about this swap from my friends for months and months and I hate to think about her waiting that long for someone. So here I come to save the day!

Scout and the superkids came to pick me up to go out to breakfast this morning. The Farmer’s Market wasn’t open though! We suspect that everyone saw it rain last night for the first time in three months and got scared. So we ended up going to our regular snb Flying Star and checking out an odd Yard Sale. There was much driving around listening to Scout and her kids sing along and carseat dance with pop tunes I’d never heard of. And Toothless Wonderboy read from a new book about Harriet Tubman. We both worked really hard to explain slavery in a way he’d understand. It was a fun spur of the moment outing. They were cute. I’m never having kids. LOL

check it - jewelry made from inactive birth control pills to raise money for Planned Parenthood of Greater Cleveland. link via Colagrl

Barry says thumbs up.

Well, he does from his plush envelope flying somewhere over the Atlantic anyway.

Aww I love that you all love Barry too. He’s just so special and odd. Cody thinks that when Barry gets here I should start a series of photos called “Where’s Barry?” kind of like the dad’s gnome in Amelie and The Yarn Harlot’s sock in progress photos. We’ll see. In the meantime I thought you’d like to see Barry’s flat backside. Barry does not fall into the Big Girl Knits’ butt category.

While Cody codes the matching program for dyeorama I’m moving on to the Albuquerque project, and one of the two top secret projects. One secret project is on hiatus for a bit as it’s just not time yet. The other one’s material arrived in the mail and I’m going to start on it as soon as I finish a square or two for the Warming Grace project. I thought I’d get several squares done but I’ll be lucky to have one to bring Ramona tomorrow. Maybe I can get more done and mail them before May 1st? Probably not. Blah. I think I’ve overbooked myself. I haven’t even gotten my wheel out of the travel bag since the last Crafty Friday. And how many weeks ago was that?

Hoping I can go to snb tonight! Promise ya’ll I’ll be in a much better mood this week!

Who else is in love with those mochi ice cream thingies from Trader Joe’s? The mango ones are little balls of bliss frozen to my fingers.

Had a bit of a busy weekend. Heh. Busy weekend. Just a bit. Hehehehehahahahahahaheeeheeeheeheelmmfao

Yeah. Ok. So. Right now we’re looking at roughly 272 people for the dyeorama swap when I’m all done confirming a few entries and getting some info I need from a few others. Call me a softhearted woman but yeah I’m giving people about eleven more hours to confirm or ask nicely if they can join.

Let me say that again. Two hundred seventy two people. And the server didn’t go down. And it won’t show up as overage on the bill either. So hooray for Dreamhost! It shows a little having that many people signing up for WordPress but the swap registration form was great. All things considered there were very few problems to fix. Especially once we got the Internet Explorer issue resolved. When there were problems (primarily people entering wrong information and a RTFM moment or two) they were incredibly easy to fix thanks to Cody’s programming and Dreamhost running PHPmyadmin so I could maintain the database.

Now on to the programming a way to randomly match people and email them by May 1.

We were approached by a store for sponsorship and decided to give out some prizes in a random drawing from the list of people who completed the swap. I’m really pleased with the sponsor’s yarn and I think her dyeing kits are great! We’re accumulating several good gifts (I love the idea of having an incentive to be a good buddy) and trying to come up with a way to confirm when people have received their yarn. Cody has some great ideas.

It’s kind of hard to get across how much work programming something like this from scratch really is, or making things run as smoothly as possible with all the possible variables. I pretty much haven’t done much else this weekend but check emails, change database info, fix the website, and figure out how to fix bouncing emails. It’s not sexy or exciting but I’m proud of the work. And I think it’s going to be a fun swap.

The great part of this is knowing that between Cody and I we can pull off a project for almost 300 people. That’s something to put on a resume. Which is very cool.

So after all the work I’ve been shopping online for a prize for myself. Between this work and resolving a serious problem we were having wth PNM misreading our gas gauge and overcharging us by several hundred dollars, *and* selling some yarn this weekend (to a dyeorama member no less!) I feel like I should buy myself a present.

In a state of sleep-induced delirium yesterday I wandered around online looking at my favorite places. My favorites list at Etsy, Kpixie’s one of a kind yarn, the new Fiber-of-the-month club at Spunky…I couldn’t decide on anything.

After running to Trader Joe’s for groceries (we still can’t get over the prices there) and to Smith’s for the less glamorous groceries like toilet paper and kitty litter (I know TJ’s has hippie pine pellet kitty litter but that isn’t going to work for my cats’ industrial grade asses - we need crystals), I ended up going to Borders to get the brand new “Big Girl Knits” book. They couldn’t find it for me so the nice guy called Barnes and Noble (which was maybe a football field away anyway) and had them hold it at the desk for me.

It’s a great book - the models are actually plus sized not the like “oh she’s a little hippy but otherwise railass thin” kind of models. The advice is good, the patterns cover a wide variety of materials and shapes. I’m very pleased to hear that ribbon yarn is the novelty yarn for the big girl since that’s what my big tunic project is - also pleased to find out that they recommend tunics. And I love the boobs, butt, belly category. I found the bottoms section a little - well, kind of weird. But I’m not much for knitted skirts. And there weren’t any bottoms for belly people which annoys me a little. I might try the yoga pants pattern someday. Yoga pants are my favorite kind of pants. The accessories was an interesing section - mostly because of the advice to carry larger accessories. I can attest to that - there’s nothing that will make you look bigger than a tiny purse. Or make your neck and chin look larger than a mini necklace. So overall, I’m pretty pleased with the book. It’s a nice sized hardcover that will take a lot of abuse. I beat up on my books ya know.

So I was feeling pretty plus-sized friendly. And still looking around in my wishlists and things for something else fun to buy, maybe. And I’ve been going back to this one little weird thing on etsy the last few weeks. It’s by the same woman who made my incredibly cool purse. And I kept going back to this weird thing and last night I’d just pointed at this little chubby guy and made too many cute boopy “poking in the belly with my cursor” sounds for Cody - he decided that Barry had to come live with us. I’m very excited about this. He’s definitely a belly guy. No boobs and a flatter ass than mine which I wasn’t sure was possible. Aww but I love Barry. Can’t wait to have him here.

So click on the photo and give him some clicky belly boops with your cursor for luck and safe travels for Barry.

And now, photos of my ironically cabled socks (ironic of course because the cable was out when I started them) that I finished last week sometime.

a silly photo I took of myself in my rock n roll cowgirl t shirt

And a few birds have been building their nests under our porch roof again. This one had used a little strand of pink yarn. Isn’t it sweet?

Is this post long enough or what?

So. We’re three hours into signups and already have 80 (81, 82) DYE-O-RAMA Swap signups. Not all have been confirmed but we’re working on it.

For the most part it’s going well and I’m incredibly proud of Cody’s ability to teach himself a programming language while he creates a usable form and database and pretty proud of my ability to work with him, create and make a fairly usable group weblog, and figure out how to go into my php admin and edit database entries.

The internet explorer issue is, well an issue. And we’re hoping to get that resolved soon. But my man is tired and we’ve got it working for the most part. Absolute worst case is we have people email and we’ll enter the data by hand. But that’s absolute worst case. Here’s hoping this is the impetus for folks to switch to a really good browser like, say, oh, this one. But browser snobishness aside, we’re working on it for the IE people too.

Good news! Monica has resolved the IE issue! We think! We hope?

We hit 100 forms submitted right before 11 pm tonight
14 people haven’t confirmed their email links
the form page shows 86 so it’s correct in showing confirmed registrations for the swap

I’m showing 64 registered users on the group weblog (including the admins)

There’s 43 hours to go.

So this is one of the projects I’ve been working my butt off on. Kind of explains why I haven’t been posting very much hasn’t it?

If officially ended Saturday around 1:30 pm my time. We justified this by saying that it was Easter sunday in Australia and the yarn store wouldn’t be open on Sunday anyway. Considering that I had bought no fiber in any form since Ash Wednesday I have to say, I did well. Particularly for someone who doesn’t really observe Lent anyway. And to my complete surprise I didn’t go crazy buying everything I saw or had on my wish list. I hadn’t been to Village wools since the large koigu shipment had come in so I was happy to sift though the shelves.

So I bought four skeins of a pretty color of koigu to make myself some kneesocks

And, social dork that I am, I did succumb to peer pressure and purchase the yarn to make a shadow shawl with my abq snb girlies. Hey, without them I never would’ve tried the Jaywalkers pattern especially as my first sock and to my utter surprise I’ve become quite the joiner. The pattern calls for three skeins of koigu kppm and three skeins of E Lavold Silky Wool (which I’ve eyed several of the last times I’d been in the store) in contrasting colors. Several people have been getting dark silky wool and bright koigu. I kind of went the other way.

So those and I paid Mama-E for her project spectrum sock yarn subscription and that was pretty much my discretionary portion of our tax return. But I’m very happy and really looking forward to those kneesocks and casting on for another project with my snb buddies.

All the purchases (including my April mama e sock yarn) involves yellow orange so I suppose it qualifies as Project Spectrum. I’m way WAY behind on my PJ project but I’ve finished the ugg booties and ironically cabled socks.

In Dye-O-Rama News, which i’m sure you read at Scout’s anyway Cody and I are putting the finishing touches on the signup forms and the Swap website tonight. SIGNUPS WILL BE TOMORROW NIGHT AT 6PM MDT - THEY WILL END SATURDAY NIGHT AT 6PM MDT. Number of participants is unlimited but only one swap per person. There is a group blog and you’ll be sent to the group blog signup form after you finish filling out the swap form. It’s all very complicated and stuff for us but (hopefully) easier for you.

My Albuquerque-related project is on hold until the signups are done but I’ve pretty much paid for and finished part one of the big indescribible project. I really wish I could go into it more but that one’s seriously top secret.

Back to the salt mines with me. Where the hell are my glasses.

I’m just working working away on my little projects. Scout cracks the whip and I jump. Ok just kidding but damn that girl can really light a fire under your ass if you mention you were thinking about maybe doing something sometime.

The big news at the moment is we have a set time for signups for the Dye-o-Rama swap. It will be this Thursday at 6 pm Mountain. That’s 8 eastern, 7 central, and 5 Pacific for you math is hard Barbies out there. We will be running countown scripts (which I need to go work on right now) on our sites and I’m working on a group blog for all members (which is pretty close to done). Rather than limiting the number of people who can sign up we’re going to have the sign up forms only available for 48 hours.

Cody is working on the form and database for the signups - which will include the ability to set a password so you can go back in and change info. There’s also the ability to volunteer as an angel to cover for anyone who flakes out on their swapee. Of course we’re hoping that won’t be the case. Please, please don’t sign up if there’s a good chance you won’t get to do it. Really. I’ve been in exchange things where people have flaked out and it just sucks to be that recipient. We all understand bad circumstances but there’s also just the flake factor. There’s also the great threat of public humiliation. And I know I’m not above threatening that. So seriously. If odds are good you’re not going to get around to dyeing that yarn and mailing it to your person, just don’t sign up. Mkay?

The special Albuquerque project (which several of you already know about) should be ready to post in the next few days.

Ok so here’s the offical thing I’m supposed to post but accidently just paraphrased.

We’re looking at sign-ups taking place this Thursday, April 20th starting at 6:00pm MST. We have decided we will not have a number cut-off this time but we will only have sign ups for 48 hours. If you won’t be around please have someone sign you up okay?

We are lucky enough that Noelle’s husband Cody is our techy guru and is creating an online registrationg form that will go into a database for us. He rocks and we all should thank him big time for helping us.

A few things about the sawp. PLEASE DO NOT SIGN UP IF YOU ARE GOING TO FLAKE! There’s nothing like having to hunt down flakey participants. Please don’t make us do this okay? If there is any chance you can’t dye one single skein of yarn in 6 weeks then don’t hit that sign up button. You hear? Remember that picture of me with the hammer and drill? Don’t go there.

There will be a choice on the registration form to sign up to be an Angel. This means you are willing to dye a second skein of yarn to replace a Swapper who had the nerve to flake out on us. It’s nice to know we can contact someone to help us out if we need it. I’m hoping we don’t need Angels but it’s nice to have that as a back up plan.

We also have a website in the works for the swap. Everyone involved will be able to register there and post. This way people who don’t have blogs can post questions, updates, post photos, etc. We already have a few guests who are dyeing pros who are going to share some tips with everyone and be available to help answer questions.

Later on today we will have a countdown timer for y’all so you know exactly when the sign up will start. Let us know if you have any other questions. We’re really excited about the swap and already have over 100 people ready to play. Pretty cool!

So just keep checking back to know exactly when the sign up will be.

Yep, so that’s one of my projects revealed I’ve joined the ranks of the Dye-O-Rama Mamas doing some web design and nerdy tech organization stuff and we’ve even got Cody working on a database form for the signups. I think we’ve found the downside to my feeling better - I’m more active and social that means he’ll have to be more active and social haha.

So this is the project involving yarn I hinted about in my previous post.

————-

A few pieces of information about the swap:

-We will give plenty of notice about when the offical sign up will be. Just keep an eye on one of our blogs and we will give you a 36 & 24 hour notice.

-You will need to register to be a part of the swap. Just leaving your comment in the previous post does not ensure that you will be in the swap. We will need all of your information and that will be your committment to join the swap.

-Beginners will be welcome. We will have two official groups. One will be the WTF am I doing group and the other will be for people who feel pretty confident in their dyeing skillz. We’ll be giving tips and information on the official Dyeorama site so the newbs can find out how to dye their yarn.

-You may use any dyes as long as they are permanent and lightfast.

-We will do international swaps. We will specifically ask whether you mind having an international pal or not.

-We have had a lot of interest already and we may have a 100 person limit for this first round. We will let you know about this.

-Finally, please do not sign up for this swap if there is even the slightest chance that are going to flake-out on us. We recruited (Me!) to help with the organization of this swap and the 4 of us will not be very nice DYE-O-RAMistras if you don’t follow through with your committment. Most of you have probably been a part of a swap before and know that nothing sucks more than having a pal who doesn’t do what they are supposed to. Ya know?

So stay tuned for more details

I haven’t posted in a while and usually that’s a bad sign but I’m actually feeling better physically and mentally this week than I have in a long time. I think we may have found the perfect medicinal cocktail now. I’m very excited about this. The shorter hair seems to help as well. Easier to care for, less tangles, less heat on my neck.

And I actually have several surprise projects in the works. And, get this, none of these particular projects are knit or spun (by me anyway). A few involve crafts in general, one involves yarn specifically, one involves photography and crafting of a sort, and another one involves..well, no real way to describe that one so I’ll let you wonder about it for a while. They’ll all be revealed in time.

In other non-surprise project news we went and did serious grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s now that Cody wasn’t afraid of the potential hippiecrit prices (to be honest I don’t blame him our bills in a normal grocery store can be pretty outrageous) but we did well! Several new things to try, several re-purchases of things we liked from last time. And while we still have to go to the regular grocery store for a *few* things the bill at TJ’s was WELL under our usual grocery bill. So we’re both pretty happy about that.

And the cats seemed to like the non fish flavored cat food tins. I don’t recommend the tuna for cats it doesn’t have a pop lid and that annoyed me I don’t open the cat food in the kitchen I open it in the kitty bathroom dammit I don’t have any can openers in there. So we’re going to try a small bag of the dry cat food and see how they like it. They’re very picky about their dry food. In this case picky means they only eat crap Science Diet that I put out as a last resort. But the dog, who will eat any dry food I put out, and loves eating the cats’ poop when she sneaks into the laundry room, likes the dry dog food. Which wasn’t really a surprise. The question was whether or not I’d approve of the food for her. And I do! No corn, first ingredient is not a meat meal or bi-product so I approve.

Ok, it’s been a fairly long day. Before Trader Joe’s I did some work on a really cool project (my Albuquerque knitter friends will LOVE this) and we had a visit to Scout’s house since she lives near TJ’s. So I got to meet Supergirl, Superboy, Superhusband, AND Superdog! Her house was unbelievably clean and organized (would you expect any less) and the kids were so sweet. Let me say, those Superkids are WAY cuter in person. My friend has a great little family there and I can’t wait to visit again sometime. I’d invite them here but..I’m afraid the house would scare the children.

t’s been warm which is nice but the angle of the sun is brutal on the house this time of year until we get the energy to go on the roof to get the swamp cooler working. So even with the windows open and the fans on the house doesn’t cool down until late at night.

Not a lot of knitting going on. Still working on the same old projects. Still need to ply that pretty green yarn.

Oh! And you have about fifteen minutes to go wish Cari a Happy Birthday before she turns into a birthday pumpkin. I don’t remember how old she is today but this girl totally kicks ass. She knits and snowboards. Not at the same time of course. And likes Upstairs Downstairs! Paisana!

I had a blast at Crafty Friday. Yay!
Cody found my digital camera in one of my project bags. Yay!
He found it when it fell out onto the garage floor when he was bringing my project bag in from the car. Boo!
The camera’s still ok. Yay!

I was ubergirly last night. Yay!
I dyed my own hair dark strawberry blondish. Yay!
I used that cool depilitory Veet squeegee stuff on my legs and underarms. Yay!
I missed a spot and found a “soul patch” smack in the front middle of my ankle. Boo!
I also got a chemical burn on the underside of my left upper arm. Boo!
I found some neosporin for the healing and found some monistat topical cream (the stuff that comes in a little tube for numbing your hooha before the internal medicine works) for numbing the pain. Yay?
We got some real medicine and bandages today. Yay!
I don’t make much of a girly girl do I? Yay.

We finally made it to Trader Joe’s today! Yay!
It was unbelievably crowded. Boo!
They have good pet food. Yay!
It was comparatively cheap with higher quality than Smiths. Yay!
We didn’t buy a whole lot else. Boo!
We did get a pot of daisies…Yay!

To bring to my mother-in-law when we went for a visit this afternoon. Boo?
We got free haircuts from the mom-in-law! Yay!
The father-in-law and I did not argue about politics once. Yay!
He made a compliment (I think) about Cody looking like “the president” after his haircut. Boo
I joked “Ok Cody now you have to make a face that’s simultaneously dumb and smug!” Yay!
My mother-in-law gave me free Tupperware! Yay!
Alas, we did not get a free meal. Boo!
But I did finish the second ugg baby bootie. Yay!

My Tivo DVR thingie is acting up. Boo!
But it taped the new episode of Huff. Yay!
I’m going to go watch it now so this post is ending soon. Boo!
And eat some hummus and Pitas from Trader Joe’s. Yay!
But first I’m going to show you all these photos. Boo? Yay?

Here are the long-awaited Noro Stash photos.

All the Noro
with bonus puppy lying in the dirt!

Silk Garden

Kureyon

Iro

Cash Iroha

Transitions

With bonus Fiesta Yarns porn!

La Boheme and Gelato in “African Violet”

Kokopelli in Turqoise Trail and Watermark in Taos

La Boheme and Chamisa in Arizona

This is a neat handpainted yarn from a local artist in the East Mountains, Robin Pascal. I used her yarn to make the craaaaazy scarf.

And this is my current Project Spectrum project yarn. I’m in the second repeat on the front of my Sprout tunic with this Giotto yarn. I’m going to use this pretty gold Fiesta La Luz silk for something this month as well.

And this is the puppy wearing the glam punk rock neckwarmer