Easter Leftovers?

The leftovers I have aren't food items--they're Easter egg dyed wool. See? This wool was dyed with the dye leftover from our family egg dyeing evening. I separated the dyes into two groups-blue, turqoise, green, teal in one group, and purple, pink, and red in the other group. I then used the oven pan method of dyeing from the book "I'd rather dye laughing". The pink/purple/red turned out just the way I thought it would, but the other dye pan turned out mostly green.I don't know what happened to the blue dyes, they just didn't seem to take hold on the fiber. The wool is from a romney fleece I bought from a fiber shop in downtown Fond du lac called The Woolgatherers. This is a fairly strong romney, but it has a really nice shine, and it's not too coarse. I've combed some of the wool, but I haven't started to spin it yet. I couldn't resist dyeing some of the wool with the easter egg dye. Now I just have to get around to spinning the wool.

So as I mentioned in my last post, my daughter has tagged me. While I will not pass the tag on, 'cause I don't want to, I will pass on some useless information about my self.

Useless info #1--I hide and hoard chocolate. I'm not sure why, since it's just me and my husband now, and he doesn't eat chocolate. Maybe I hide chocolate for the same reason that a dog hides his bones. I think deep down I'm afraid a chocolate thief will come looking for my candy stash in the night.

Check back soon for more useless information about me!

Doldrums

As my daughter told me in my comments--I'm a slacker. I'm such a slacker, I'm not answering her tag--not today at least. But it's warming up outside, and the days are getting longer and I think I'm getting out of the doldrums. Just like Milo in the Phantom Tollbooth (my favorite book when I was a kid, by the way), I'm thinking of things and I seem to be moving along.
In new developments, I've been invited to join ravelry. Yeah! It's going to take me a long time to get all my wips on the site, not to mention my stash. Oh well, maybe ravelry will help me keep track of all my stuff. Yeah right.

cold cold cold

How cold is it? Cold enough I would just like to see zero. Negative numbers are just so negative. I have one dead car (mine) pushed into the road so that we can get the older beater van out. It’s still running, even though it’s 10 years older than my car. Oh well, it’s not supposed to last much longer, the cold that is, not the van. The van seems to be indestructible.
In the good news dept. it’s Packer game day! Yeah! Go Pack GO! To make it even better, I finished some socks today that have sort of kind of packer colors. See?
Also in the picture is the 'mandatory' knitting blog cat. Her name is Pouncer and she doesn’t do anything cute, she just curls up on blankets and sleeps. I just woke her up when I took the picture.
But the socks are done after hanging out in an unfinished state for an ungodly amount of time. That’s cause for little celebration. Now if the Packers win that would be great!

Now let the Straightening begin

So Christmas came and went and I did not get my projects done. Except for the shawl for my sister-in-law, the only finished Christmas projects were sewing ones. What is wrong with me? I just don’t know. The afghan for my Mom, --- unfinished. The vest for my Dad, -- unfinished. Even the socks for my brother, -- totally unfinished. To add insult to injury, my knitting projects are scattered from one end of the house to the other. All my carefully hidden yarn was moved because of Christmas decorating, and piled into heaps in the attic. In my regular knitting areas which are now disaster areas, I have many, many false starts that have to be pulled apart and restored to ball status. January is shaping up to be one hell of an organizing month.
But on the other hand, I did have a very nice Christmas, and I did get the quilt for my niece done. See:

You can’t see it in the picture, but there are frogs in the blue fabric. My niece is just crazy about frogs. So I did get one project accomplished this Christmas. Now I’m just going to have to spend all January straightening up. Now for next Christmas......

Getting Christmas done

So it's been a pretty productive weekend at the woollyattic. Not only did I get the shawl done for a Christmas present (for someone who cannot be revealed), I also got the bunny done! Isn't she cute? Since my niece can't read yet, I'm pretty safe in revealing that this bunny is destined for my littlest, newest niece. The pattern is from McCalls, but I embroidered the eyes instead of using plastic eyes because my niece is so young. I think the bunny turned out well. I also got alot done on another Christmas present while the Packers played. Good thing this weekend is so productive--Christmas isn't far off!

Humble (Homely?) Pie

As we say in our family "Happy Thanksgibey". We are heading for my mother-in-laws for the large meal, and when it comes to holiday meals, I have one major role. I am the dessert committee, and on Thanksgibey, that means pie. Well, this has not been a stellar pie year. The punkin is homely, the apple pie boiled over in the oven and the crust for the banana cream drunkenly hangs over the edge of the pie plate, instead of standing up in pretty crimps. I know part of the problem is laziness on my part in buying the pre-made (pillsbury) crust. It shrinks much more than homemade crust and is too soft to make the stand up crimps I wanted for the banana cream.

Really the problems with the banana cream and the pumpkin are purely cosmetic, and the pies should be just as tasty as usual. Pumpkin pie isn't the most beautiful pie, even in the best possible example. Why else would you cover the pie with cool whip? However, I am a little upset about the apple pie. I didn't follow my usual Betty Crocker recipe, which was my first mistake. I tried the recipe in the new Cooks Illustrated magizine, which cooks the apples first over low heat before putting them in the crust and baking them. This is supposed to keep the apples from shrinking in the pie. Unfortunely I also didn't follow the directions about draining the apples after cooking them. I looked at the apples, didn't think that looked like too much liquid, and just dumped them in the crust and threw it in the oven. This was my second mistake. This liquid seeped through the bottom crust (thanks Pillsbury) and boiled up between the bottom crust and the pie plate (instead of in the pie crust, like it supposed too) and made a horrific mess of my oven and a soggy bottom crust. Oh well, maybe it will taste good, even with the soggy crust. I think I'll go back to my usual apple pie recipe for the next holiday, cause that holiday brings home my true blue apple pie lover--my son.

Since we are going over to my mother-in-law's apartment for Thanksgiving, I have given myself permission to start another project. Like I needed permission! Anyway, since we are going to be there for many many hours, I needed something to meet a couple criteria. First it has to be a fairly simple pattern so I don't have to bring along my pattern book, yet not as boring as all garter or all stockinette stitch. Second it has to use circular needles so I can't lose a needle while I'm working on the project. This rules out socks and any cable patterns. Third, and this is most important, I need not to have to measure it constantly, so this leaves out started projects that I need to start the shaping on, say at the armholes. Fourth it needs to be not so huge that it takes up alot of room. This leaves out the afghan I'm working on for my mom. So you see, I needed to start another project! Now I could have just started another scarf for my etsy site, but Christmas is coming so I decided to start a nice man's sweater or vest, either for my ___________ or my____________. (Thanks Franklin!). This fits all the criteria wonderfully. First of all, its a mans sweater-- the men in my family like unfussy patterns and I just happen to have 12 skeins or so of toasty brown wool yarn in my Woolley attic. Second I'll work it in the round, using the circular needle. And since I've just started it, I have lots of knitting to go before I have to measure. Lastly it takes up less room that an afghan. I just cast on last night, and I've got a couple rows done, so when I blog next, I'll show a picture of the progress. Happy Thanksgibey!

Just like dear old dad?

While I was reading knitting blogs today, I responded to the open mike question about the layout of the new Interweave Knits mag at The Knitting Curmudgeon's blog. I am not a fan of the new layout at all. I think it is a worse layout than the layout at Vogue Knitting and the Knitters magazine. The new layout is all chopped up, with the picture and part of the pattern in one area, then the rest of the pattern somewhere else in the magazine. Not only is it hard to follow the pattern with this layout, it also makes it harder for me to store the patterns.
I have my own system of storing patterns I like. I have bought a lot of knitting magazines over the years, and I don't want to keep every magazine, but I hate to just throw them out. I tear out the patterns I like and file them into categories. With some patterns categories, I've even made binders with the patterns from different sources. (For example, I have a one for sock patterns, one for hats and gloves, etc.) This makes it easy to find a pattern when you want to make a particular article. With the old layout, the directions followed the picture of the finished article, which made it easy to store the patterns. With the new layout, my storage of patterns is not going to be as easy any more since the patterns are more spread out through the magazine.
I was thinking about this habit or effort to organize or whatever you want to call it, and I am sure that this is actually a family habit. My father is well known in the family for his file cabinets full of articles that he's gonna read some day, and projects that he's gonna to make sometime in the future.
I think the our shared pattern storage habit just might be one part of the bad hoarding habit that runs in the family. My paternal grandmother,( God rest her soul), had so much stuff stuffed into her trailer and shed, it was impossible to walk through most of the rooms. So while I may think that I'm saving clearance yarn from a sad existence on the store shelves at Jo-Annes, I'm actually building my own hoard of yarn. My own woolly attic. No wonder my husband is worried about the yarn taking over. But there you have it, the reason for my bad yarn habits--it runs in the family!