You spin me right round, baby, right round

Adam wanted to try spinning as well. Actually, he tried it the first day when he put it together after I'd had a go, but last night he was watching me and said he wanted to try again. He's watched other spinners before and I guess it's contagious.



I really love doing it. It's completely absorbing. Last night I was frustrated and irritated with the bamboo roving that I was trying out for the first time; it's got a very different feel to it and it was totally different from spinning wool. But even that was pretty nice. So far my favorite thing to spin is the roving my mom got me from her friend Terry's sheep. I think that's so damn cool! My friends (and now my coworkers too) are joking with me that I will want to have sheep of my own soon. Well, maybe some day, never say never, but right now I'm fine with somebody else doing all the work of raising them feeding them trimming the hair from around their butts and shearing them, not to mention cleaning and carding the wool once it's sheared. And it's dirty stuff. So give me a nice clean roving that somebody else has already done all the work to. I'll just spin it up quietly in my little chair. Hee.

WW update: Day two, successful so far

I brought my Fat Burning Soup to work again with me, as well as a Lean Cuisine and a boiled egg and an apple. I also went out at lunchtime and got some Power Bars (4 pts each and I love them). I'm not QUITE as hungry today as I was yesterday, although it's been hard. Midday I was pretty foggy, mentally, which I think was just needing to eat.

Back on Weight Watchers again starting today

I've been working on getting up the willingness to diet and I started back on WW today. I joined again online, and I made some Fat Burning Soup (my sister gave me the recipe when I did it a few years ago) and bought all the diet foods that give me the scant comfort available ... It's so hard getting started again. But I am really trying to be willing and so far, so good.

Yarn dyeing party of one, your table is ready

I decided that the yarn I spun was really only good for something that I would knit and then felt, in which case it needed to be a darker color than cream, which would get dirty easily. So I had to dye it, which I did last night. On my way home I stopped at Costco and bought some blackberries which determined my choice of colors.

I am using Jacquard acid dyes, and the info sheet that I got off the Dharma website gave the recipe of 1 tsp dye and 3 tbsp vinegar for every 100 g of yarn. I weighed the yarn, and determined its weight to be 350 g. I used 1/2 tsp Jet Black (639), 1/2 tsp Brilliant Blue (623), and 2 1/2 tsp Cherry Red (617) dye to get this purple color.

Instead of mixing the dye carefully with water before putting it into the boil I just put the powder straight in. The black (which was first) mixed in instantly, but the blue and the red kind of floated on the surface and I had to stir to get them mixed in, which I think is how the resultant dye gradations occurred. The yarn appears mostly dark purple with some areas almost black. I like how it came out. I think it'll probably pool colors in whatever I knit (Adam's lobbying for an afghan) but I'm okay with that. Here's a picture of the skeins, almost dry:



They are hanging over the utility sinks in the basement.

I cooked them on the stove upstairs, but I'm not comfortable doing that again so I'm going to get a hot plate to use in the basement. I used a dedicated stainless steel pot (not used for food or anything else except dyeing) but I still felt it was too close to where food is prepared to be a good idea going forward.

Here's a closeup of the colors.



I counted 101 rounds at 66" around and that comes out to 6,666", or 555.5 yards.

Felted Dinosaurs

Here's T-Rex:


and Utahraptor:


and Dromicieomimus:


Astute online comics readers will recognize the cast of characters from Qwantz.com, aka Dinosaur Comics. I knitted them, felted them, stuffed them, and made a pattern (contains all three dinos) for you to do the same.

To purchase this pattern, please go to my Etsy store.

My very own handmade yarn

I spun two bobbins of single ply but I was afraid to ply them together. Adam harassed me until I got out the wheel again and plyed them (and plyed them and plyed them). Then I spun some more from the roving Mom gave me, which was easier than the roving that came with the wheel. I plyed that with more of the first batch, and so on, until I had five finished skeins of yarn. It's very bulky and uneven, obviously, as it's my first, but I'll do more for sure and it will gradually get better.



I have a tremendous feeling of accomplishment!

Happy New Year!

We had a great time last night. We were disappointed that Adam's sister, her husband, and their boy weren't able to come over after all; evidently the babysitter flaked. And she was family! So there's no excuse. But you can't fire family, on the other hand. So we stayed at H&R's through 230 am. We rang in the new year with a very sadly impaired Dick Clark and fireworks we could see over Newark.

A lot of our conversation was devoted to plotting a gardening coop. There were three of us couples there; we went through the 2008 Burpee seed catalog and divided up what produce we want to grow this year. We did really well with cucumbers and sweet peppers last year so we're doing more of those again, and we're going to try onions and garlic. I'd like to try a different type of squash, but only one or two plants as opposed to the infestation of them I did last year. We're also going to grow a few herbs - lavender, thyme, and basil, says Adam, and I'd like to do some rosemary because I adore it.

Further on into the evening we played Apples to Apples, which I'd never played before but which is very fun. All in all it was a lovely evening.

Today, Adam's sister et al came over and hung out for a bit before they drove back to Virginia. We spent the rest of today lying on the sofas in front of the TV, watching Planet of the Apes movies and (me) knitting the rest of the orange sock. Those socks are going to Tammy, Adam's sister.