I'm Such A Slacker

This is the cat toy that I finished a few months ago. I guess I forgot to post pictures because about ten minutes after I finished it (and the cats even liked it, it was amazing) the dogs shredded it and I threw it away. It seems like a pretty familiar story, the dogs tearing up something that I've worked on. I have to say, it gets a little old.

Also, I have been needing some sort of cuticle cream because my fingers are horrible. Instead of chewing my actual fingernails off, if I have a hangnail or anything on my finger I absolutely cannot leave it alone until my finger is bleeding. As you might guess this can get quite painful and definitely not very attractive. So I decided to quit tearing up my hands and started looking for products to put on my fingers. Well, if you haven't looked around for stuff like this, the stuff you can buy in stores seems expensive and it is hard to tell what the texture and smell of the stuff on Etsy is going to be. I even looked up recipes so I could make my own, the only problem is around here it is pretty much impossible to find some of the ingredients. Plus, most of the recipes have about twenty different oils and waxes in them, and if I can buy a tube of this stuff on Etsy for three dollars, buying the ingredients just doesn't seem worth it. So, long, pointless story short, last night I gave up and bought the Etsy stuff. Good story, right?

Guess Who Came To Town

Well, technically not this town, but one that is only an hour away.



If you can't tell, yes that is our future President speaking at a stadium in Springfield, Missouri on Saturday night. I heard there were about 35,000 or 40,000 people. Now, that may not be the 100,000 people in St. Louis, but for this part of the state, which is pretty convincingly Republican country I think it was a very impressive crowd. Actually the whole Obama family was there and the four of them looked like tiny little specks from where we were sitting.

I have totally been slacking in the knitting department, so I have nothing to say about that. What I will say, in all seriousness, no matter what your politics are VOTE ON TUESDAY! Seriously, voting is cool and I think it is fun and everyone should do it (if you doubt any of this, let me just say that I am such a nerd that I actually registered to vote on my eighteenth birthday).

Vote, vote, vote, vote.

How Knitting Makes Me Green

These little squares are what I have been using instead of cotton balls. I have not used a single cotton ball in over a month. It is a small way to reduce the amount of stuff I throw away, but really if you think about it, using two cotton balls per day really adds up. I was actually using four cotton balls every day, one in the morning, one at night and one for each eye to remove makeup. So I made some of my squares into rectangles to use for makeup removal. I love them and I can't believe I did not think of this earlier. I still catch myself going toward the trash can out of habit, but that should decrease over time. Unfortunately the yarn is just that cheap Peaches & Creme stuff you can find at Wal-Mart and just about everywhere else and the colors fade very quickly. Although, with mine, it is not a big deal partly because I just don't care and partly because the green stripes fade to yellow, which still makes them yellow and white.

Next topic:
I don't know how I heard about this or how I found it online, but there is apparently a raw food diet for cats and dogs. Now to me, feeding your animals raw makes perfect sense. Depending on the food you might buy at pet stores there are different amounts of nasty stuff in them. Whether it is meat by-products or grain or corn or even ash(I have seen that on a cat food ingredient list) even if those things aren't doing anything bad to your animal, at the very least that is the stuff you are picking out of the yard or cleaning out of the litter box. Cats and dogs have no use for corn or ash, that stuff is just filler. Now, that being said, if I had the money and the places to buy quality organic meat for my animals (granted I don't even eat that well) I would do it. But I don't have a lot of resources, plus I am not an animal nutrition expert so I would not feel comfortable feeding my cats random kinds of meat and nothing else. I would imagine that feeding cats and dogs whole animals like rabbits or small chickens with fur and everything else still attached would be ideal, and you probably would not have to add vitamins or vegetables. But, that assumes the whole animals you buy were able to run around and eat flowers and grass and were not pumped full of hormones and other bad things. Also, raw bones are supposed to be good for keeping teeth clean (apparently chicken or turkey necks, as gross as that sounds, have softer bones so there is less worry of the animal choking). If I can do something to make my cats' teeth and breath better without spending hundreds of dollars at the vet for teeth cleaning, I am willing to do that. So basically, I have decided I am going to try to add raw food to my cats' normal kibble/canned food diet whenever I can get it. I have a feeling it will take some time to get them used to the idea of eating bones, but I think they will like it eventually. It might even make them feel like big wild cats, and what house cat wouldn't like that?

Mmm, Yarn

It's here!!!!!!

It is even better in person than I expected it to be. The colors are so saturated and bright and wonderful that I found out it is nearly impossible to take pictures of it that show the true colors. The colors are Red Hot Chili and Pfefferminz Prinz (Prince Peppermint in German, or Bavarian, I'm not sure which is correct or what the difference is) and I'm not sure what color that little guy is (it is just a test skein/freebie) and I have no idea what to do with it other than just look at and pet it. Now, I have read a lot about how this yarn is supposed to smell really good because of the kind of soap it is washed in. To me it just smelled lightly of laundry soap, possibly a little like what Gain smells like, which is a good smell, but I guess I was expecting it to smell like candy or something.

Luckily I got into the Wollmeise Sock Club, so I will have more opportunities to smell this yarn. This Sock Club and the fact that I actually got into it is excellent and surprising news. You see, for those of you not familiar with sock clubs(yes, I am aware how ridiculous that statement might sound to people who are not knitters or who do not care about it at all), and I am by no means an expert, but they are basically any number of shipments of sock yarn spread out over a period of time. In this case there will be four shipments every three months for one year. For each shipment the colors are a surprise (I suppose depending on the club, even the kind of yarn could be a surprise) and there is also a pattern in every shipment and some double pointed needles in the first one. The process of getting a spot in this club is the surprising part. There were three days for people to sign up and then there was a lottery for the actual spots in the club. So, as I understand it she had about 500 spots available and ended up with over 1,000 entries. Typically I am very unlucky when it comes to winning things, so I signed up for the club assuming I would have no real chance of getting in. Then, as the day for confirmations approached, I started to think that I possibly should not have even signed up because I most definitely do not have the kind of money required to pay for it (I will spare you and myself from having to see the obscene amount in print). As soon as I started to regret signing up I knew I would get in. But all has been worked out, because it is now going to be the Christmas gift that keeps on giving. Sadly, because I have no control over myself and because some people already have their first shipments and because of those dang spoiler threads, I have already been spoiled. But I don't care, it was worth it to see those beautiful pictures.

I am feeling very wordy today, apparently yarn does that to me.

I have already decided what to make with the Pfefferminz Prinz (a Clapotis if you are interested) and after I struggled with wanting to knit versus keeping the yarn in the perfect skein, I decided to knit. So I wound the yarn into a ball last night and discovered something else about this yarn:



There is a ton of it in each skein! The other two balls are different kinds of sock yarns that I have. The middle one is my hand-dyed stuff which I got from Knitpicks.com and according to their site, the skein has 462 yards. The smallest ball is Regia 4 ply, which has 231 yards. The Wollmeise skein has 574 yards. Wow is the only thing I can say about that.

Two other off topic comments: I fixed the double title thing in the corner. I actually saw the same thing on someone else's blog, but I have no way to explain it, the extra title just showed up one day. Second, what the heck? There is a new season of Project Runway on and I had no idea about it. I kept seeing it on the satellite guide thing, but thought nothing of it because reruns seem to be on literally every day. I don't even know how long this new season has been on. What is with the lack of advertising or have I just not been paying attention? I am very disappointed in you Heidi Klum. Also, and I do not mean to pick on Tim Gunn, I think he is great, but hearing him walk in to check on the designers and say, "Suede," in that voice of his is too funny.

Decisions, Decisions

While I am waiting for my Wollmeise to get here I am going to occupy myself with torturing the animals. However, with so many wonderful animal torture devices, I am having trouble making a decision. So, look here, skip over the baby hat obviously, and help me decide. I am leaning toward the ninja or the beret, just because some of those look like a lot of work and the ninja hat would be harder for them to get off.

Also, more uselessness.

The pattern is called DoKnit, of course. It is now hanging on the wall underneath what else but a beautiful piece of "art" that involves a mouse and a doughnut that looks exactly like this one.

And then,

Yes, they are cute, but I hate them. For such small things, they caused me a ridiculous amount of trouble. I had to rip them not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES! That is just stupid.

I am also working on a cat toy right now. It is my mission to find a toy that my cats will play with, one I don't have to buy at Petsmart and that is not a rabbit fur ball. It is impossible, I am aware. So basically, very soon I will have a cat toy to give away.

Wollmeise Is Mine!!!

I have not mentioned this yet, but I am a huge, dorky yarn stalker. But it finally paid off. I got two skeins of Wollmeise this morning! Now, if you don't know what, or who, Wollmeise is allow me to explain. The Wollmeise is a yarn dyer in Germany, she is just one person and she usually updates her site on Fridays, which is usually very early in the morning here. She makes beautiful yarn (either look around her website or look here, I suggest clicking on any of those pictures and going through the slide show). I heard about her while listening to the Knitters Uncensored podcast, and if you are like me, when you see the pictures of her yarn you will see why I was instantly obsessed with it. The yarn is wildly popular with the people who know about it, and when she does update her site, the yarn is usually gone in less than an hour. Just to prove my dorkiness, the last update was on August 8th, and I set the alarm on my phone for every hour, starting at one in the morning. When I woke up at 3, the yarn was gone, and the site was updated at 2:30. I am so beyond excited. I cannot wait to get the yarn and take pictures of it and pet it. (By the way, if you look at that Flickr group slideshow, keep in mind that each skein averages out to a little over $20, so when you see those huge piles of yarn, try to add up the amount of money people are spending on this yarn.)

Okay, I need to get these out of the way:

This is the treat bag for dog training class. the training is working, by the way, it is so cute to see her start to understand things. Especially stay, which has been really hard for her. But she is really good, she just sits there and stares so intensely at the hand the treats are in and wags her tail the entire time.




Also,

Sorry for the terrible picture, the camera battery was about to die and it did not want to focus. These socks are called Crazy Monkeys. The non-crazy Monkeys (at least you can see what they look like better there) are knit from the cuff down, but the Crazy Monkeys are toe-up. Other than that, they look the same.

That's it for now, except that I would like to say that sushi is really good (and that is in no way a dirty joke about Michael Phelps[see my last post], I promise).

Knitting Takes A Backseat To A Fish

A real, real purdy one. Good grief.
(As if everything else has not been saturated with Michael Phelps pictures, but I can't help it.)

I am finding it difficult to knit and watch men's swimming at the same time. In fact, I can't be expected to knit and watch at the same time. I really don't know how anyone can drag themselves away from the tv. By the way, just for this post, and for research purposes only, I was forced to look through 55 pages of a Michael Phelps image search. Oh the torture.

Edit: Somehow I must have forgotten what I was going to say. While I fully support Speedo wearing in men's swimming, what I don't understand is why the women's volleyball players have to wear little bikinis. Don't get me wrong, they look amazing in their little bikinis, but it seems like a pair of shorts and a tank top would be just as functional. The men volleyball players don't have to wear skimpy little things, but most of the women marathon runners I am watching now are wearing practically nothing. By the way, why would you air a marathon run live?


Another Edit:


How's that?

Just to be completely sure, I also had to go through every page of a Ryan Lochte search. I definitely deserve a gold medal for each picture.

Tested On Animals

Kip approved.















Ah yes, knitted olives. Possibly the most pointless thing I have ever knitted. Their redeeming quality is that it took minutes to make each olive. Great for when you get tired of bigger projects and need a break, though.





This picture is kind of weird, I couldn't get the light to work with me. But, this is what the olives are doing right now. Sitting in a martini glass on a table. Totally pointless.

By the way, I tried to fix the extra header but I don't know how to. When I go into layout and page settings there is no option for deleting page elements. I did edit the header that should not be there, but that changed both headers. Why can't it just be an easy fix?

Also, I made soap. Soap from scratch, with lye and coconut oil. In hindsight, I probably should have done a little more research than I did before jumping right into soapmaking because I don't think I did it right. The research I did do recommended using an immersion blender to mix the soap because that way it only takes about 15 minutes, while if you mix by hand with a whisk it takes at least an hour. Well, I don't have an immersion blender so I mixed with a whisk. My arm got tired after the first hour so I quit. The next morning the soap was thick and perfect so I poured it into my mold (metal baking sheet thing with plastic bag lining). I let it cure for a couple of weeks and took a vegetable peeler to each bar to smooth out the edges, which then made a thin layer of the skin on my hands peel off. Nice, right? I haven't touched the soap since then, which has probably been about three months now. I think there was too much lye and not enough of everything else. From now on I think I will go to Michael's and buy the melt and pour stuff they have. That way I can keep that layer of skin on my hands.

I'm Not Even Busy And I Don't Post For Two Months

What have I been doing? I had no idea it had been so long since I posted. I guess I will get to it then and quit wasting time.

Finally, even though I finished it a long time ago, embarrassed dog pictures:


These are useful for two reasons: the sweater and the toy. Because both of the dogs like to tear up my yarn. More specifically, my wool yarn (they don't seem to care about cotton, acrylic or anything else). I made them toys out of wool that I felted. There was no pattern, I just made it up as I went along. When I finished the sweater and was going to take these pictures

he would not drop the toy. So I went with it and took the pictures anyway.

It has been so long since I finished the sweater I don't really remember if there was anything I wanted to say about it. I really am going to try to get back into the posting habit. I have some knitted olives that I need to put up here, and I have some socks that are very close to being finished, then there is the dog treat bag that I finished today (we have to take our insane dogs to training classes, so treat bags are a must). So that's what has been going on, except for my growing obsession with sock yarn, which I buy whenever I see it with money I don't have.

How Long Until A Dog Destroys These?

They are doomed. I know it. It is only a matter of time before I will be picking shredded parts off the floor. But until that happens I can enjoy how cute they are. The actual knitting took maybe a couple of hours per animal and then they took about a day to dry after felting. The finishing is what kills me with every project, and these had so much finishing. The inside of the ears, the eyes, the teeth and the noses are all cut out of felt and sewn on. They are stuffed with little plastic beads in the bottom and batting in the heads. Luckily these are so small, or else they would have never been finished. The first animal I finished was the fox, so I took pictures of him by himself to put on Ravelry, and just because I like the picture, here it is:















I have noticed in the upper left corner of this page there is sort of a double title thing going on. I have no idea why it is there twice and it is possible that this computer is the only one showing it. Is anyone else seeing that?

More Adventures In Dyeing

Last week I took over the kitchen and made it into my dyeing lab. And I successfully made brown out of different fruity flavors of Kool-Aid, which is more complicated than you might think. I mixed Kool-Aid and tested on small amounts of yarn. From left to right there is the squirrel body color, then the squirrel tail color, then beaver color (I used black for the tail), and finally, fox (I used some of the white, un-dyed yarn for the end of the tail and the face). As much as I'm sure I could bore you with the detailed descriptions of the color mixing, and as much as I would enjoy that, sadly, I can't remember how I mixed the colors. This might make my next dying experiment a little difficult. I guess I will have to turn the kitchen into my lab again.

That's it, just a short one today. By the way, I still demand everyone go look at the Crafty Alien site.

I Am A Negligent Blogger

I have finished projects that are backed up just waiting for me to stop being lazy. I think the problem is that I just don't have that much to say about coffee cozies. This one is for mom, even thought it is too small for most coffee mugs and has to be stretched so much the XOXO cables disappear. Both of these are the Adjustable Coffee Mug Wrap. I had to change the pattern because the original pattern was to wide for my mug. I would have been drinking coffee and getting wooly hairs stuck to my lips. So I had to take care of that problem.

If you remember my last post (I'm too lazy to find out if I can link to my own blog, even though I am pretty sure you can, plus I don't know if anyone actually looks at the links I put up here.) you will also remember that I made a Calorimetry and that it did not fit. Well, I made a new one that does fit. I will spare you the picture of me wearing it so that you can enjoy the button I used. I have no idea how old this button is, I would guess it is at least 20 years old. But it is a pig, and it is funny.

Right now I am working on a dog sweater, hilarious pictures of a sad dog are to come, I'm sure. Also I am working on the Beaver, Fox and Squirrel patterns from Crafty Alien. I beg you, even if you never go to another link on this blog, go to this one and look around. These things are ridiculously cute.

To Rip Or Not To Rip

I can't decide. I just don't know about this yarn for this pattern. It is hard to see the lace pattern, which is a little sad. I think I really need a solid color sock yarn. Plus, this sock has been sitting for so long because it is attached to a giant knot of yarn and I made Mom promise she would untangle it because her skanky dog messed up the yarn. But she hasn't done it yet. So, I think this sock is going into official hibernation until I figure out what I want to do.

In the meantime, I made a Calorimetry and had to adjust the pattern a little because the yarn I used was bulkier than what the pattern called for and I read on Ravelry that the finished headband was too big for people. By the way, this yarn was wonderful. It was just another case of the wrong yarn for the right pattern. The yarn is cashmere and wool and it is hand-painted. It was so nice to work with. But anyway, the pattern says to cast on 120 stitches, but I did 80. So when I finished it, it took literally one day, I tried it on and it was about 4 stitches too small. Then I frogged it, bought some new black yarn and finished the new one. I am just trying to find the button I was going to use before I take a picture of it.

Also, what is with all the tornadoes lately? I guess there were more last night, or this morning technically, the sirens went off at about 6:30. Just a couple weeks ago there was a really bad one around here. Craziness. Is it all just part of global warming, or just a streak of really bad weather, or is it this guy's fault:

Stupid Dog

This is why animals are the devil.

This is my hand dyed yarn that was such a huge mess to untangle when I dyed it. This is also what happened to it after the dog got it, for probably the third time. I know after the first time it is completely my fault because I forget hide it when I want to stop knitting (this used to be attached to my sock, but the dog broke the yarn and then strung the yarn literally from room to room and then finished making it into a giant knot). Yet it still makes me incredibly angry and makes me want to hurt the dog, just a little. So for now the sock is on hold until I am ready to sit down and untangle it.



I also made these on Tuesday and finished them on Wednesday for someone my mom works with that I have never met. The yarn is an alpaca/silk blend, so it is hand wash, which may not be the best thing for a baby. But the yarn is so soft I think it is worth it. I have to say, I don't want a baby of my own, but I like knitting for other people's kids.

Socks. Finished Socks.

Oh the excitement! I finished them on Sunday night and they are in the washing machine as I type. Hopefully the ends I painstakingly weaved will not be ripped out. I would really hate to pull a tangled mess of yarn out of the washer and not socks. I used the Universal Toe-Up Sock Formula and I won't go over the yarn again because I think I did that earlier. Just scroll down if you are interested. They are just plain stockinette stitch all the way up the cuff so that they roll, which is exactly what I wanted them to do.

I had to use a little yarn from my second skein, luckily I had a second skein, so next time (I have already cast on for next time using my Kool-Aid yarn and this pattern.) I will know to cut the yarn in half before I start so I will have enough yarn for both socks. Speaking of Baudelaire, I am slowly working my way up the toe and these things have the pointiest toes ever. It looks a little weird right now, but hopefully it will look better when they are on my feet. Also, they made me finally learn how to do a M1 the right way. I have looked up the technique before, but I always forget if you are supposed to pick up the ladder with the left or right needle or from front to back. So I usually just make it up, which works but does not look very pretty. Now I know to pick up the ladder from front to back with the left needle and to knit into the back loop, which I never did on my improvised increases. So now my increases are much nicer and they don't leave a big, gaping hole in my knitting.

Finally, Willow's birthday was Monday. Because I got her at Petsmart from an adoption agency who had her mother before her mother had her they actually knew when she was born, so I also know. It is kind of nice to know the exact day, because Kip was a stray that I caught and brought inside, the vet had to guess that he was about six months old at the time, so I don't have the exact date. She got some Whisker Lickins, moist of course because who likes to go to all the trouble of chewing on your birthday, and a new cat teaser. She is so obsessed with cat teasers that she even plays with the old ones that don't have any feathers anymore. She not only drags them around the room in her mouth, but you will sometimes hear the bell on the featherless stick jingle because she drags it up the stairs. She drops it and it slides to the bottom of the stairs, she runs after it and drags it back up the stairs. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. So, happy first year!

Introducing Bob

Bob joined the family last night. I love these tiny projects that can be done in a few hours. Bob is the definition of instant gratification. Sadly, one of Bob's legs is longer than the others. I originally thought that he is the Nemo of Bobs, but really Nemo's special fin was smaller than the other. So I guess he is the opposite of Nemo of Bobs with his special leg.


Bob had a very exciting morning. As you can see he went kittyback riding. Kittyback riding is so much fun until you slide off the cat and land on the floor, as Bob discovered.



I have a confession. A non-Bob related confession: I like movies about dancing. I have no idea why, because I am in no way a dancer, although there is a dance club kind of place here that is fun to go to just to watch people. Hours of entertainment are to be had sitting at a table in that place. One time there was a group of girls who were dressed up, and I would not even say they were just wearing fancy dresses, but they were more like prom dresses. One of the girls was so drunk she fell up the stair going from one room to another, in the poofy, glittery prom dress. It was fantastic. Anyway, off the tangent and back to dancing movies. I inexplicably like movies I can admit are pretty bad, but I also don't like some movies that are, I suppose, classics. For example, I do not like Flashdance (If you owned that strip club, why would you continue to let her try out her routines on stage? She doesn't even get naked and if you do not get naked while working at a strip club then what is the point?) But I did not mind You Got Served (don't judge me). Maybe it is not technically dancing, but Bring It On has been a favorite of mine for many years. I love, love, love Center Stage. The acting might not be perfect and the plot is not really original, but the dancing is amazing and I can't even tell you how many times I have seen it. I even bought it because I got tired of paying to rent it so often.

So, to further my love of dancing movies, I Netflix-ed Step Up. It was horrible! Not only was the acting bad, but the dancing wasn't all that great either. I assume the only reason to watch this movie, unless you are like me, is because of the lead actor. And really I don't even understand that, but he is probably very attractive to those people who like non-smiling, muscular, military-esque types. So whatever you do, avoid this movie at all costs!

Model Pets

I finished My So Called Scarf yesterday and put it outside to dry. It was so windy yesterday the scarf dried in about two hours.

















And because I have very little in my life, I made the animals try it on.

Surprisingly they dealt with it pretty well.






















Again with this cat's whiskers! Amazing, or maybe I am just biased.


















I saved the best for last. I think the reason Kip likes getting his nails trimmed and being held upside down and that he doesn't mind modeling things is because he is desperate for attention. Not because I completely ignore him, but because I could never give out enough attention. He loves to butt his head against my chin and believe me, he does it all the time. Usually after I have let him rub his face on my chin a few times I am done with it, but he is not. He gives me 'the look', which tells me to lean over again, and of course I do, because I'm pretty sure he has me trained.



So when the scarf was wrapped around his neck 'the looks' did not stop and I had to push him away and hold him back just to get him far enough away to be able to get a picture.













So I got the angry look after I kept pushing him away. I walked away from him, to the other side of the table he was standing on, so he would follow me. That is when I got this:

Kitty Concussion

Let me paint a picture for you. There are cabinets in the room we call the utility room, they are both connected but there are two doors, one above the other. The top part of the cabinet is where the cat and dog food and treats are, along with about a million other things crammed as tight as they can get. There is also a desk next to this cabinet. The cats have gotten into the habit of jumping up on the desk when someone opens the top cabinet door, thinking they are about to get treats.

Last Saturday I went to the cabinet to decide what I wanted to make for breakfast (the bottom part of the cabinet is where cereal, rice and other things are kept) and the little girl cat followed me. I opened both doors and as they swung open the cat, who was in the doorway, jumped towards the desk but smacked into the cabinet door pretty hard. It was obvious that it hurt quite a bit, her left eye was closed and she ran away from me when I tried to pet her, which she never does. I watched her all day and am still watching her. Her pupils are the same size and they are responsive to light and she is walking and eating like normal. So, I guess she is fine, but I was pretty worried. I'm not sure if cats can get concussions, but if they can I would guess jumping into a door would be enough to cause one.


Enjoy the videos, I know they make me laugh. But attempt to ignore my extremely messy room.

Now for my knitting related incident. I am working on a very popular pattern called My So Called Scarf. Just to let you know, on Ravelry 2,497 people have already made it or are working on it. It was going pretty well if you don't count the two times I had to rip and start over when I first started it. It is now about two and a half feet long and I was knitting away when in the middle of a row I had some sort of brain block. I could not for the life of me remember how to work the next stitch. I tried as many ways as I could think of and nothing looked right. I finally had to look up the pattern again to remind myself and it turns out I had forgotten an entire part of the pattern. It was so crazy I don't even know how to describe it. It would be one thing if I had not been working on the scarf for a while and forgot how to do it, but I was in the middle of a row! One stitch before I had known what I was doing. My brain is a weird, weird thing.

Dyeing Is Fun

I ordered this yarn a few weeks ago from knitpicks.com and was so excited I read everything I could find about dyeing yarn with Kool-Aid. Apparently 100 percent wool takes dye better than wool blends. So, being the loser I am, I ordered 2 skeins of sock yarn that is a wool/acrylic blend. When I first ordered the yarn I thought I would take my time before I got around to dyeing it to figure out exactly what I wanted the yarn to look like, the best way to accomplish it and to look around in more than one store for just the right flavors of Kool-Aid. In my brain I could see a mixture of blues and greens for one skein and a mixture of reds, pinks and purples for the other and I knew it would be either variegated or self-striping. I have to say, that yarn looked amazing in my head.

So I immediately ran out to Walgreen's to buy Kool-Aid. What do you know, Walgreens does not sell Kool-Aid in the typical little packets, they only had bottles of pre-made Kool-Aid. So I sucked it up and went to Wal-Mart where they had the full Kool-Aid collection. I started grabbing packets and ended up with Grape, Pink Lemonade and Cherry for the red/pink/purple skein and Lemon-Lime, Black Cherry and Berry Blue for the green/blue skein, don't ask me how I thought Black Cherry fit into that category.

A few days later when I got the yarn I broke out the baby shampoo and gave the yarn a bath, rinsed it a few times and left it to soak while I mixed each Kool-Aid packet with a few tablespoons of water (I bought three packets of Grape and Lemon-Lime and two packets of the other flavors). Then I went looking for a turkey baster or something similar to use to squirt the Kool-Aid on the yarn in stripes. This is also when I realized we do not have a turkey baster or anything remotely like a syringe in any way. I had to get super creative, so I used a spoon. Not ideal, but it worked well enough. It looks a little weird in this condition. Like a colorful toy snake after being washed. I originally decided to hang the yarn outside to dry, but I heard thunder and brought it back inside seconds before it started to rain. The yarn took a full day to dry and somewhere along the line it turned into a huge mess and I spent three days untangling it and rolling it into a ball.

On to the next skein, I wanted to try out another approach, so I washed the other skein and set up the Kool-Aid glasses in a circle, or triangle I guess, since there were three of them. I put a third of the yarn into each glass and microwaved it. It was kind of strange because the Kool-Aid/water combos in the glasses before I put the yarn in them was very dark, and after it was a slightly cloudy white.

I was extremely careful with the second skein, so it did not tangle as badly as the first one, and despite all the problems, I enjoyed myself thourougly. I recommend everyone dye some yarn, and then send it to me. So there you have it, just look at those balls.










By the way, has anyone seen the commercial for these crackers that are a pretzel on one side and a cracker on the other side? It is just weird. Why would you ever need a double-sided cracker pretzel?

Wide As A House Or Broad As A Barn?

What a dorky picture. I sometimes wonder if it's not that I don't photograph well, but maybe I am just ugly. Who knows.

The sweater is finally finished! I'm pretty sure it took about six months to finish. But I go through phases, as I have explained before, where I knit on it obsessively for a while and then don't touch it for twice as long. Anyway, I was trying to decide if the sweater makes me look as wide as a house or as broad as a barn. Technically a barn would be bigger, so I will go with broad as a barn. By the way, I am not fishing for compliments when I get all self-deprecating, I am just kidding.

After I blocked the sweater I left it to dry on a towel on a table. Not so surprisingly this happened:

Who knew drying sweaters become cat beds? The funny thing is, if I actually knit her a cat bed, she would not go near it.

Plasma For Yarn: Fair Trade?

How wrong would it be if I donated plasma to get more money for yarn? Sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Helping others while satisfying my growing wool habit. I actually just bought some sock yarn that has not been dyed, and I am going to dye it myself with Kool-Aid. I am so excited about this prospect that it is truly sick. It really is a disease. A dream of mine is to learn to spin and then buy a sheep so that I can make my own yarn from start to finish. Plus, sheep are cute. Maybe I could have a goat too. A cashmere goat.

I tried to take more cute animal pictures, but I did not have very much luck.

Kip just gets annoyed when I take picture after picture of him and refuses to look at me. Willow, however, seems to love having her picture taken. While I was trying to get Kip to look at me I happened to look over to my left and saw this:



Just staring at me as if to say, "I can wait until you realize that I am also pretty and very willing to have my picture taken." She is always staring and watching everything. She is an odd little cat, but look at her whiskers. I have never seen whiskers that go in so many directions. I caught Kip in his favorite chair a little later and tried again to get a good picture of him.



No such luck. His whiskers were smashed against the arm of the chair when I woke him up, so his mouth looks a little weird. His eyes also never look right in pictures. I think it is because he is a little evil.

Changing subjects, my sweater is almost finished. I am pretty excited. The only part I have left to do before finishing is work the ribbing on the collar.


I am watching the BBC Office again and in the second episode of the first series there is a moment that I thought was worth sharing for those of you sad, sad people who have not seen it. Just to explain a little, the office manager David Brent saw a picture that was being e-mailed around the office with his head on a woman's body (you will have to watch the episode to get the rest of it, I don't want to ruin it for you). Then Gareth, the office weirdo, to describe him very briefly, investigates to find out who made the picture. So, Gareth is the sick-looking one and Tim and Dawn are the other two. I dare you not to laugh.

Tiny Project, Hilarious Results

For those of you who don't know, Greyhounds and other dogs like them, have very little hair and very little fat, therefore they get cold. We have Italian Greyhounds, one of which is skinnier than the other, so he is constantly cold. Also, his ears don't fold over like they should unless he is warm. So, there are these things called snoods, I'm not exactly sure what the word means, but my best guess is that it has something to do with a hood.

In this case it is more like a tube to keep the dog's head and neck warm. I used some acrylic yarn I had in my stash and after measuring the dog's neck and making a gauge swatch I cast on and there you have it. I like to think of it as a Fetching for dogs.

When I finished the snood I got the camera out and luckily the dogs heard me moving around and came into the room. My victim knew something bad was about to happen, as you can see he does not look like he trusts me for anything. I called him and made high pitched noises, but he still would not come to me. After a few minutes he either forgot or gave up and came over, so I trapped him and slipped the snood over his head.

I took a couple pictures in between my fits of hysterical laughter. Just look at his eyes, how sad and mortified is he? Why is it that animals don't think they can move when they are wearing anything they weren't born wearing? Like, say you put a dog sweater on a cat, just for fun, and if they do move they act like there is a 20 pound weight on their back that is weighing them down so much that they can barely drag themselves across the floor? And why is it so completely hilarious?