dye
Easter Fun!
Here are some pictures of our Easter fun!!
The kids did their egg dyeing first!
The kids eggs!
Mei Lan blowing out the inside of an egg.
Then the adults took over!
Starting pysanky.
The kids covered more eggs with leaves and flowers and then Mallory dyed them in red onion skins.
They remind me of sun prints.
Ash and Mallory's eggs.
My messy pysanky!
Still removing the wax.
Pysanky!
It was so much fun! I’m thinking about making it an annual thing!
Friday Night Project Parade!
I went to Friday Night Knitting for the first time in a few weeks. I was so glad I did! I missed the ladies!
Ash brought her friend Mallory who DOESN’T knit…but she DOES needle felt!
A girl and her fiber...
Check out Mallory's cute hat!
Ash not only came with a friend, she also came bearing gifts! Here come the yarn nuzzling photos!!
Danielle with her sherbet colored yarn...
MeiLan's yarny goodness...
Pretty lavender for Kate!
And for me…
Berry Blue Corriedale! WooT!
Ash dyed all this stuff with kool-aid. She did an amazing job! I can’t wait to start spinning it!!
But there’s more…
I swear I still spin…
I totally intended to type this during my downtime today, but every time I got the chance, something seemed to come up. It’s a good thing, sometimes when your day doesn’t go quite as planned, it makes the time go by faster. I was super busy this morning, then I went out to lunch with Suzanna, then we had a software meeting where I actually spent most of my time sketching out plans for a new sweater…when I wasn’t drawing unicorns or how I spent my day yesterday. Of course Mike had to add some details to my quick sketch…
What I did yesterday. Mike decided to add the missle.
Did I think to snap a pic of my sweater ideas? Of course not! But maybe I can sketch them while I hang out in the cell phone lot at LAX tonight.
So now, as promised, actual factual finished yarn!
Army Girl. It's really more green than yellow.
It’s over 300 yards of fingering weight. Not quite sure what I am going to do with it yet. I also started working on that roving my friend Wendy dyed. I had already spun up one cake (single, laceweight) so I am starting on the second bobbin. I think there is twelve ounces, so I am going to guess that it will be done in three bobbins. Spinning laceweight takes forever though. I will eventually ply these.
Wendy's wool/nylon roving. She dyed this at Sheep Shed Studio.
So that’s all for now. Probably won’t be updating via video blog for awhile since my folks will be in town. I guess I will have to see how things go.
Summer is coming…
…so why am I looking for alpaca projects? I do live in Southern California after all…
Lots of things happening around here. I wish more were fiber related, but we have been super busy and my folks came out to stay with us for a couple weeks to help celebrate the twins’ fourth birthday. There have been trips all over the place, including Disneyland (which I hear will not allow needles in the park…good thing I didn’t have any down time there)!
So, it started with the Cookie A class I took after meeting her at Unwind. I designed my first pair of socks! Of course I am still test knitting them…so we’ll see how they turn out. Then my folks came bearing gifts from Frankenmuth.
Pictures from my parents trip to Frankenmuth
My folks scored me 2 3/4 pounds of fluff!
1lb. white combed top, 1 lb. white alpaca, 3/4 lb. of dyed alpaca
I am now swimming in alpaca and I have no idea what to make with it. The hot weather is here, but the office has been in deep freeze, so I might have a good reason to make some alpaca garments. I still have the bag of alpaca and bunny that my mom got me on her last trip to the mill. That will be the next thing I spin. I have some yarn on the bobbins right now that has just been chillin’ there. One of the bobbins is a surprise project I can’t write about here….the others have just been waiting for me to get some time to dump my photos onto any random computer I can find so I can make room to take proper, non-mobile phone pictures.
Once the parents left I went a little cuckoos mcgoos. The last two days I have spent dyeing fiber after the kids have gone to bed.
Messin' around with acid dye
I dyed some mills ends wool with some Jacquard acid dyes. I was messing around with dye to try and find my groove. I am new to this.
Then I decided to take that pound of alpaca my folks brought and hit it with some black food coloring. It turned out gorgeous!
Alpaca in purty greens and purples...
Of course, this whirlwind of crazy doesn’t include all the stuff I did last night which included handcarding some other stuff I dyed and making goodies for my Fiber Collective Swap Partner. But those are secret….shhhhh…..
Easter Fun!
What to write? What to write? It isn’t like things have been boring around our household as of late, but things are starting to settle down a bit, thankfully. After a month of bouncing germs off of one another, we all seem to be on the mend again. We have fought a mighty battle with the pink eye and won (for now). Everyone still seems to be coughing all over each other, but hopefully that will start clearing up soon. Oh, and my laptop with all my bloggy/photo stuff is still toast. Boo.
Easter is never normal around our house. The kids are still small and we haven’t really established any real traditions yet, although I may have started one. In order to combat my homesickness, I decided to make Easter dinner up Midwestern Polish style. Now I am not saying it was authentic, because quite frankly, I have *zero* time to be making pierogi from scratch…but it was tasty.
Tasty!!
Easter day was different for us too. We decided to take the twins to the Aquarium of the Pacific…
The twins checking out the fish...
Where my daughter dropped her pink poodle (which she named “TX”) in a tank of toxic stuff….
The "stuff"
Which I stuck my hand in and fished out before seeing this sign. Awesome. So TX ended up in the trash and lil’ girl and I headed straight to the restroom to wash our hands, all while she cried hysterically. An emergency call to Grandma was made so we could ask where she bought the pink poodle of doom. Answer: Walmart. I hopped on the twitter, my husband talked to the folks at the aquarium, and before we knew it, wehad directions to the nearest Walmart in Long Beach. We picked up the last poodle they had.
TX, number 2
And all was again right with the world.
So what have I been doing fiber-wise? To be honest, not a whole hell of a lot. Or at least it seems that way to me. I have done some dyeing, I mean, who wouldn’t given some extra wool and some food coloring and Easter egg dyes?
Green-blue roving dyed with food coloring
I gave this green and blue roving to Wendy for her birthday… I also attacked the Easter egg dyes once the kids were done dyeing their eggs.
Wooly Easter fun for me!
How to deal with stress
The last few weeks have been incredibly stressful around my house. One kid had bronchitis, the other an ear infection…and Daddy was home all week too with his own yucky funk. If we weren’t dealing with that it was unnecessary family drama back home in Michigan. It was all a little too crazy.
So, in order to deal with everything, I shut my brain off to it and tried my hand at dyeing fiber. I have to say it turned out much nicer than I had hoped. I used Jacquard Acid Dyes in a great big pot on the stove.
First I started with russet...
...then I tried some emerald green
These were originally mill ends roving that my friend Wendy had ordered for me from The Sheep Shed Studio. They were brown and white wool mixed with white mohair. I really thought I wouldn’t like these when they were drying, but they turned out much better than I had hoped. Next on the list of things to try is handpainting yarn. I have some white roving at home I haven’t yet pulled out of the closet.
A little loopy, but with a completed scarf!
I did actually try and felt it a little on Saturday, but I am not sure if it did anything. It looks super cool though. Hopefully I will get a better picture of it later.
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