KATIE MAD!!!!!!!!

I HATE CIRCULAR NEEDLES! I HATE THE MAGIC LOOP! I HATE ANGORA FINGERING!!!!!!!!!

It BROKE?!?!?! BROKE?!?!! IT BROKE!!!!!!! IT FREAKIN' BROKE!

I quit!

I have started and restarted this project about 20 times! (literally!) I've tried it on corculars with the magic loop, dpns and two circulars! I finally made some really great progress and the flipping yarn broke from a row I had just worked and I couldn't fix it before the whole thing fell apart! grrrrrrrrrrr...

Does anyone have any suggestions? Does anyone even read this thing? I would hold the yarn doubled but I'm not sure I have enough of it... I think I'll try it anyways. Nothing else is working...

... Ok it's working way better now, yay!
No more freaking out for a while!

Ok holy crap, nevermind... my flat screen monitor all of a sudden fell down! I caught it before it really touched anything though. It's the stupid base, the monitor just clips into it and you can't really tell if it's secure or not.

So I started to dye stuff this weekend, it was really fun! All Kool-Aid goodness. FYI, I'm smart! I am! Really! I made the prettiest olivey-brown color with lemon-lime and cherry! See? Yes, I'm smart! Look!









I couldn't really get a very good picture of the color but it doesn't look anything like the dye did. It's much darker and more brown. I think the third picture gives you a pretty good idea.

That was my tester batch. so i mixed up another batch and put in two big hanks of the yarn.
Just then, I happened to be having a moment of utter blondeness. I seemed to have forgotten that, even though I mixed the dye the same way as I had for the test batch, it would not nessicarily turn out the same. DUH! Same amount of dye + way more wool = lighter yarn and stupid katie. But I don't mind, the color that came out was actually closer to the color I had originally intended to acheive. Much more springy.

I have also discovered a way to dye my silk hankies. Just like the regular wool, of course. I just mixed up the dye and put in a corner of the hankie(s). But you've gotta make sure that the hankies don't touch the burner and burst into flames. So far, on this batch of hankies, I have one corner of strawberry and another of orange. I also intend to dye another corner with cherry and the last corner and the center of the hankies with strawberry-kiwi.

The first picture is when the hankie becomes fully saturated wich only really starts to happen when the dye gets hot. The second picture is the hankies before they're saturated, the color doesn't sink in and it just beads off or pools on top, when the hankies begin to saturate in spots, it will look like holes are forming at first, it will make the hankies very transperent but that means it's working and it will dry back to normal. (3rd picture) I thought that I had melted holes through mine! Scared the crap out of me.

With the left-over orange dye, I over-dyed a skein of my White Buffalo LAMA. I really like the result, it didn't really color the wool so much as it brightened and intensitfied the pre-existing color. Before, the yarn was also very ratty and I think it needed to be washed. Boiling it seemed to bring it back to life and puff it up a bit more, it's alot softer now.

Sooo, I think I'm done here. I love Kool-Aid, blah blah blah...

Love KT