Dying Day

I have, or rather had, 10 skeins (1100 yards) of Alpaca yarn hand dyed in Chile which I got for a very good price. The yarn was rendered in shades of green, which is usually pleasing to me. However, this particular yarn tended to camouflage-ish tones, which I do not find to be pleasing. I also had 33o yards of hand spun superwash merino which was perfect in every way, except color. That yarn was reminiscent of a drunken leprechaun festival.

Those yarns went into a soapy bath in preparation for re-birth in some new, and hopefully improved, shade.



You can see that I was not exaggerating about their initial colors.

Soooooo, what does one do with an overabundance of yellow and yellow-ish green? Methinks one overdyes with an abundance of blueish tones. So, in the spirit of overdoing, I mixed up an extreme concentration of bright blue and set it to steep with the yarn. After using half an ocean to rinse the excess color . . .

VOILA!

pretty much what I expected

I can live with these colors. The alpaca is still patchy, but I think it will knit up (or weave) nicely and will not look like camo. And now I can at least bide in the same room with the leprechaun hangover yarn.

OU are knitting??

Today is THE big game. OU-Texas, of course. And, since I live in Oklahoma, pay taxes here, bore my children here, and send tuition dollars to OU, it is probably no surprise that I'll be wearing red (ummm, pardon, crimson) today.

GO OU.

And, I'll be knitting. I'd LOVE to show photos of my knitting and weaving works in progress, but all those tea cozies are destined to be Christmas gifts. Which I think explains my recent (and ongoing) yarn-purchase binge as a generous act, not a condition in need of treatment. Y'all knitters, do not let your husbands watch the A&E show "Hoarders," they will just get ridiculous ideas. And, Kelly if you should happen to read this, setting off a balloon loaded with yarn and alerting the FAA and the media is sheep abuse and beyond ridiculous.

Speaking of yarn and knitting, and I think we were, have you seen the proliferation of EXPENSIVE knitted cowls, hoods, and snoods? Burberry has a knitted tube of these specifications: chunky cable knit cashmere 19" wide, 38" circumference for a mere $325.
This, supposedly is the new scarf. And, here is a link to a free pattern. The yarn used in said pattern costs $16, and I think the pattern design is better proportioned at 11 1/2 inches wide and 24 inches long. Either way, that's a hell of a tea cozy. Wouldn't it look great in crimson?

GO OU

A Tisket a Tasket

My friend Karin made me a basket.

Isn't it cute? Isn't she clever?

Karin is a weaver of baskets and cloth as well as a spinner of yarn. She went to nursing school with my sister and years ago all 3 of us briefly played on an indoor soccer team together. Anyway, I saw Karin at my first spinning guild meeting, and thought she looked familiar. It took us a while to make the connection, but we eventually did. As it turns out, in addition to being a fiber geek AND a soccer nut, she is also a bike racing fan who knows EXACTLY who I'm talking about when I say I got some killer shot of George Hincapie at the Tour of Missouri.

And, as it turns out I do have some shots of George.


George, as you undoubtedly know, is the current Pro US Road Race National Champion and who, by the way, helped shepard one Lance Armstrong around France on ALL SEVEN of Lance's tour wins.

AND

look here: a photo of Dave Zabriske, known to his friends as DZ Nutz, who happens to be the Pro US Time Trial National Champion AND the winner of the 2009 Tour of Missouri.

I could go on-and-on . . .

Meeting a DEADLY spinner

Perhaps you recall my post a year ago about another spinnerly gal.

Or perhaps you have a life to live and memorizing the contents of my blog by topic and date don’t even make the top 3704 of your to-do list. Fine, I can live with that. But now that you’ve been reminded, maybe you do remember a certain spider featured on the 9-13-2008 post? NO?? Harummmmph.

Anyway here is a year later and life brought me another spider. Yesterday I saw a web with two spider eggs outside my back door where my dogs go in-&-out-&-in-&-out-& . . . I was also going in-and-out quite a bit, as I was smoking some meat. On one trip I noticed the mama spider tending to the eggs, and looked closer . . . OMG!!!

A BLACK WIDOW

Of course I grabbed my camera and attached a macro filter so I could get a better shot. It is best to use a tripod when using a macro filter because the focus is real finicky. But, there was no getting a tripod that close to the ground.

I snapped a few shots and went inside to find some agent to chemically dispose of the spider, can’t (or won’t) use pesticides because of the bees. I thought 409 would do it and sprayed mama and the eggs. Mama ran off to her hole and I thought she was dead but a few minutes later she was back checking on the eggs. So, I squirted mama and eggs with Dawn dishwashing detergent. She bolted again and I removed the eggs and web to the trash with a stick, a looong stick. About a half hour later . . . she’s BAAAAACK. I snapped a few more photos.

And then, I doused her again with a blob of Dawn. This time she was really curled up, and I supposed she was dead. A few hours later I found her in the middle of the patio on her back, apparently dead.

Whereupon Kelly was summoned. He picked her up (with a tissue) and flushed her. I’m pretty sure she’s truly dead, but I think everyone should watch their backs anyway, if you know what I mean.

09-09-09 or Happy Birthday Kelly

Yes, indeed. 09-09-09 is a special day

Kelly's birthday, actually. And I can't think of a better person to celebrate than the fella who has pretty cheerfully put up with my enthusiasms for years and has provided loads of funny sleepwalking stories.

We had a lovely lunch today at Gilcrease Museum and then dinner at my parents' house. I took a really crappy photo of Kelly at lunch and since it's his birthday, I'm honoring him by not posting it.

The real celebration was the purchase of the smoker.






Of course using the smoker will probably mean that we both have fewer birthdays, oh well.

Shawl Finnished

There has been a bit of knitting lately. I found this lovely shawl pattern on Ulla, a Finnish on-line knitting magazine. Although the pattern is in Finnish, and although I know only a dozen or so words in Finnish, I was able to decipher the instructions by taking several steps.

1) I ran the pattern through the mostly unhelpful Google translator which provided insightful tips like these:

Watered scarf, squeeze it dry and pingota. Enter
huivin be pingotukessa until it is completely dry.
Heads Telecommunication Finally the yarn ends.

2) I cross-checked the Finnish instructions and the translated ones with the Ulla site's Finnish/English knitting terms.

3) I luckily mentioned my effort to knitting savant Sue, who happened to be knitting a shawl that appeared to begin in the same manner as this one. So I used her instructions to begin the project.

4) The lace portion is charted and most knitting charts depict the same stitches in any language, so it wasn't all that difficult after all. Anyway, I'm pretty proud of my Lumi Shawl (Lumi means snow).

And, I know my Finnish grandfather (who taught me a few words in Suomi) would be proud too. So, here it is . . . knitted in a Elsabeth Lavold yarn "silky wool," whose obtuse name cleverly disguises the fact that it is a silk and wool blend.
There has been other knitting too--CHRISTMAS KNITTING!!!! or maybe birthday knittting, I haven't decided which. You see, there are two lovely nieces who live in the fantasy world of Laura Engels Wilder and for whom I made prairie dresses last year. Certainly they need shawls to go with those dresses, and so as of this morning I am one shawl to the good in filling that need.

This shawl is made of a 6/2/3 weight pima cotton weaving yarn. It is wonderfully drapey and I think just perfect for the intended purpose. One similar (or identical, I haven't decided--but do not want to start a fight) shawl to go along with the decision whether they will be September birthday gifts or Christmas gifts.

A Few Days in the Ozarks

Kelly and I left town last week for a little R&R in the Ozark Mountains of Northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri. We camped two nights on Beaver Lake outside of Eureka Springs, Arkansas and then stayed a few nights at Big Cedar Lodge on Table Rock Lake in Missouri. (I refuse to say we vacationed in Branson--have you been there????? YUCK)

Anyway, we went to visit a water powered grist mill at War Eagle and bought various milled grains, took a bird watching class, rode bikes, took a tram ride to visit some elk and buffalo, and best of all hired a guide to take us fly-fishing for trout. I took my spinning wheel along and got two bobbins of sari silk done.

On the wildlife tour they stopped the tram and spread grain along the ground to get these guys to come visit:


That was really cool until they got this CLOSE. (I was NOT using a telephoto lens) I was fearful of being the lead story in the Ozark Hillbilly Post--Tourist Gored on Idiot Wildlife Tour.

Fly fishing was great fun. Kelly was all duded up in his outdoorsy stuff: Mountain Hardware camping shirt, Columbia shorts and cool hat, putting on the waders kind of changed the picture.


Ummmm, Kelly dear-- you really are NOT much of a "hat guy".