Excuse me while I digress for a moment ...

I.WANT.A.THERAMIN!!!

That is all .... now back to your regularly scheduled day.

No spinning for me and flying yarn

I've been asked when I'm going to start spinning to which I answered, "Never!" - not because I don't want to but because I cannot handle another hobby. It's hard enough working a full-time job, doing contract work, publishing an e-zine, crocheting, designing, knitting, and now dying yarn, while trying too keep up with my cross stitching, weaving, pysanky, sewing, and painting nested dolls! Oh, and don't forget finding time to do my artwork ...

Anyway, I was balling up my Mango Madness yarn last night because I didn't like the way it had re-skeined on the swift and wanted to redo it on my warping board. I was trying to keep the yarn loose so it would come out easily and the first skein went very well, no problems. The second skein was doing well, behaving, etc. and I was watching the pretty colors fly by, turning the handle on the ball winder ... fun! However, I was apparently turning too fast and not holding the yarn with enough tension and suddenly I saw a flash go in front of my face and land on the floor. After a moment of shock, I noticed that the ball winder was empty and there on the floor was the half finished ball of yarn! (sigh) So I had to untangle it and start over. This time I made sure that I had more tension on the yarn and it behaved this time.

I also re-skeined the yarn I'd dyed over the weekend. The colors started with a yellow on one end but it ended up too muddy even though I only put a couple drops of black in the dye mix. So, I dumped some red dye in the pot (don't ask how much, I don't know as I just added dye until it looked pretty) and dumped the rest of the skein in the pot.

And this is the result, which my sister named "Lobster Bisque" and has a bit of a burnt orange mixed in where the original icky yellow used to be:



Not too bad for a "ewwwww ... fix it" dye job!

This is using a Knit Picks Bare yarn and it is available for purchase (two skeins available) in my etsy shop along with the two skeins of Mango Madness.

Yarn therapy needed

I think I need some therapy to get over my addiction for learning new things ... like dying yarn.

My first attempt at dying was Skacel Merino Lace, 1375 yards in a gorgeous green. Of course, as I was trying to wind the finished skein into a cake, my swift decided to start sticking which meant that the ball was too tight and I had to re-ball it. Lovely, soft stuff. I'm hoping to design a wrap for it.

Here's the yarn hanging up to dry:



And after being made into a fairly nice cake:



So that was on the 19th and 20th. Over this last weekend, I dyed two skeins of Trekking sock yarn. One was Wool/Nylon while the other was Wool/Bamboo. I put an extra knot on one of the ties so I could tell which one it was and promptly forgot which one it was.

Here is the yarn in the glass pan after I had nuked it:



This is the one I think in the nylon mix:



And the one I think is the bamboo mix:



My sister said they looked like mangos, so I called this colorway "Mango Madness."

Taxes and stuff

Taxes are done! I'd put doing them off until the very last day, partly because I knew that my sister and I would both owe a ton of money and partly because I'd lost most of the W-2s and 1099s. So, on the 14th and 15th, I was frantically going through every pile of mail I could find to no avail. Finally, about 9:50 pm on the 15th, I saw an afghan on a box and picked it up to find all the missing paperwork - Woot! Thankfully, I still had plenty of time to do both of our federal and state returns on HRBlock.com.

In other news, remember that I'll be on the Getting Loopy podcast on Monday, 4/20. I hope you'll listen in join in the chat!

Lime & Violet

I have become addicted to Lime & Violet ... I started at the last episode and am working my way back to the beginning. So far I am to episode 61. I've been downloading each podcast (to save on bandwidth) and listening as I work.

Getting Loopy and other stuff

I'm usually a very mellow individual, not much gets me excited or angry, but every so often something happens that makes me totally giddy. I've been listening to the archived podcasts at Getting Loopy and PM'd Mary Beth on Ravelry telling her that I'd been listening to them at work. While I love my work as a tech writer, it can be pretty tedious at times and having something cool to listen to helps the day go faster. Anyway, MB asked me to be her guest on Getting Loopy on April 20th to talk about Crochet Uncut and whatever else comes up. If I weren't so tired right now, I'd be squeeing.

Besides work, I've been keeping busy with several projects, one of which is continuing to set up my craft room. I still have a lot of stuff in boxes, especially books and haven't yet been able to get my looms and sewing desk in there. Soon my precious ... soon ...

Another project has been rendering the Flamie awards in larger sizes and printing them out for the winners who want them. I had to go buy all new ink cartridges since the ones in the printer had been there since before I'd moved to Utah and had dried up. I figure I can get about 10 awards printed before I have to change cartridges again. The ink isn't easy to find since the printer has been replaced with a newer version and I've only been able to find them at Office Max for about $15 each. Since I need 7 different colors (not including the gloss cartridge), that's $105 for the ink plus the photo paper, cardboard, envelopes, and shipping. I'm only charging $10 per printout, $18 if the person won two awards, so I'm actually losing a bit on this deal but it is totally worth it!

A third project has been updating my art website, Fignations of Imaginment. It's been a very long time since I've added anything to it and I never actually finished the previous revamp. I figured it was time to finish it up and get rid of some old stuff that isn't useful anymore. I'd forgotten that my Bryce preset pages were still there and since the files are now included as default presets in Bryce since version 5.5, the pages need to be deleted from the server. It's not like it hasn't been two years already.

Oh, something else - since I've caught up on the Getting Loopy podcasts, I've started downloading and listening to Lime & Violet and thankfully have 85 episodes to get through. I was able to listen to three of them today and spent too much time laughing and trying to do it without bothering my office mates. I'm totally addicted already.