variegation

I’ve been working on dyeing lately, and one of the things I’ve been developing is graduated dyeing, where one dominant color changes in intensity in one direction, from light to strong, with no repeats, just a graduation. It’s unusual, as far as I know, and it’s hard to show the true effect unless I package it in cake form.

You know, like this:

There’s two different types of graduation I’ve been doing, one is with a single color of variegation being dyed, steam set, skeined, and being allowed to dry, before overdyeing it into the graduated color. That’s the one I did here, although it’s a pretty subtle effect that’ll probably show up better knitted up, which, hey, I’m knitting it now…. Pictures of the object? At midnight? Surely you jest.

The other type is a simple graduation with no secondary variegation.I guess my question is, would anyone be interested in yarn like this? If so, for what kind of project? At the moment I’m testing this in scarves and socks.

smell

When is it a good thing that you can smell a slightly sour dishcloth?

When it’s the first thing you actually smelled in seven months.

It’s not a beautiful bouquet of flowers, but I’ll take the harbingers of recovery any place I can find them.

Sidekick blues

Reason # 678254292853742 why life is better with a Simona in it, as highlighted by a conversation today:

Simona: 24 has gotten lots of emmys this year
Simona: so be sure to watch the emmy this year
Frarochvia: it already occured
Frarochvia: But yeah
Simona: oh
Simona: whatevarrrrrrrrrr
Simona: well, yeah, that makes sense, otherwise how to know they got any
Frarochvia: That’s how they got lots of emmys
Frarochvia: *giggle*
Frarochvia: I’m not laughing at you I promise
Frarochvia: But that -is- funny
Simona: yeah
Simona: even i’m laffing at myself
Simona: good to know i still have some shortbus moments left in me

Funny people and funny moments are important in life, aren’t they?

I should be deeply ashamed I haven’t been leaving comments on blogs because Benkei the Sidekick’s scrolley thingy broke last week and I can’t click on any internet links on him. No, not ashamed about his poor broken scrolley. Ashamed I still haven’t called Tmobile to switch over to Benkei the Sidekick V. You’d think the sheer annoyance of only being able to hit bookmarks or pages I manually typed in or links in emails would have driven me to the point of calling them before now, but nooooo I have been doing things like knitting my sock and sleeping until noon.

Oh well. I’m pathetic, but at least the catchen like me.

Mail! I love mail. Mailmailmailmailmail. Mail. Today I received a six foot long box filled with niddynoddyish goodness. Now I can be a mad scientist this coming weekend and work on dyeing up more yaaaaaaaaaaaarn. Mmmm.

Matisse can’t wait to help me! Plastic and yarn, two of his favorite things.

guilty

I’m guilty. Of a lot of things. Except feeling guilty about feeling guilty.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

I’m guilty of recycling a picture. Sorry about that. Hey, isn’t Matisse cute?

This picture depicts the guilty party responsible for the ant infestations. Hint: it’s not the catchen.

Which leaves…. Me.

Dammit.

I learned, gruesomely, that my cat food storage system was spectacularly inadequate and the ants had been climbing up the ironing board onto the plastic drawer unit and crawling through the tiny tiny crack between the drawer and the frame and snacking until…. Well, let’s just say I happened to open the top drawer all the way and learned what the sight of ants living high on cat food looked like.

Shit. 20 pounds thrown out.

Know of any good cat food sales this week?

Picasso, on the other hand, is feeling spectacularly smug, if unrepentant, about his kibble tossing habit.

zen through tiny metal needles

This is what I’ve been looking at all day. Every 43 seconds. Preen preen. Sooooooock. Knit a few more stitches. Sooooock. Knit knit. Soooooock.

Do you ever get over that?

Baba, on the other hand, was feeling frisky today and sort of trashed the poor yarn ball a bit.

The yarn isn’t afraid of her, though, because she just plays with the ball, as opposed to the Matisse, who drools, and Picasso, who is dangerous.

Except when confounded with the presence of new! balls! in! the! bowl!

Neither boy could figure out how to bat the balls out of the bowl, which was endlessly amusing to me but I am a sadistic catstaff. Eventually, Picasso just gave up and sat amongst his balls.

And that, a couple cupcakes, three movies, and over 2,000 stitches, is how I spent my Sunday.

life’s a box of cupcakes

Gramma came over today.

There may or may not have been gramma offerings:

Mmmmmmmmmm gramma cupcakes mmmmmmm.

I may or may not have had two cupcakes today.

Mmmmmmmmmm my cupcakes mmmmmmmmmm.

Gramma and I ate breakfast, shopped, and went to get chinese for me to eat for lunch at home. It was all much more involved than that, of course, and possibly there was a lecture about the virtues of Maalox thrown in there, but I had a good time and am very much overtired now.

Which would be why I only managed to knit 556 stitches of the sock before I had to give up.

And baba was not impressed with me.

sock sock sock

So I frogged last night’s sock.  And then realized I had taken no pictures of it.

And then knitted this one up:

Great! Love the Koigu.  Great colors! But!

Hmmmmm that toe’s messed up.  Why did it take me this long to notice?!   Oh right. I’m exhausted.

Frog frog frog.

Try, try again, and this time, increase along the sides and not the middle of the foot.

Duuuuuuuuuh.

But I get it now. And I love toeup socks! I admit I’m a bit afraid of the heel  upsidedownness but that’s later and there’s the Perfect Toe Love and there’s no love  purer than that, sockwise.  The turkish caston Tiphanie turned me on to is dead easy.   And I love that gauge isn’t an issue because you cast on, you increase until you’re happy  with it, voila.

Now I want to sock everything in sight.

Baba, on the other hand, was more interested in mrspao’s kit bag, and appropriated it as  a pillow.  Catchen is weird.

Which reminds me!  Lisa was my knit sock kit swap pal, go see what I sent her! Since, like  an idiot, I didn’t take pictures before I sent the package.

Um, I realize I’m dreadfully behind on emails but I appreciate your patience, friends, since  I’m so tired….. So tired.  At least with knitting you don’t have to hold a train of thought.

scabs

Do not pick on your scabs. As an adult, I know this, so I don’t. Mostly. But every fiber of my being calls out for me to pick and pull and scratch, as though doing any of these things would make me feel better.

I know what it means, I do, but it’s amazing how much work healing is.

The burn on my arm is better, and would have been even better if I’d not scratched at it, so let’s move right along and pretend I didn’t. The one on my hand demands Eucalan lotion every 17 seconds but honestly feels much better. And me?

I slept through the night without narcotics for the first time in months. This, people, is PROGRESS. Of course I’m terminally tired and sort of feel trapped within my body but you know, PROGRESS. It’s only been nine days of these monster meds.

As the bacteria snacking dwindles, I’ve been infected by the Tiphanie style of ADD knitting. Damn you Tiphanie! I’m trying to knit a ballet tshirt sweater that I cast on for yesterday, but I gave that up tonight on row 11 when I had a fatal malfunction of not being able to tell a 11 from a 12. Sigh. I hate tinking. Still. It’s not like it’s horrible, given it’s knitted on 15s. Yeah, 15s. So no picture just yet, it’s rather a crumpled heap.

And then there’s the Tiphanie-induced sockfest where this morning she forced me to cast on for a toe up sock using the turkish caston and using mrspao’s Inox double pointed needles. I’m a convert! Love love love love love love love love love love love the Inox. Ask Tiphanie. I might have told her this 738 times today. I plan to (gack!) cast on for another sock in another set of Inoxes that Tiphanie sent me, in the Dave sportweight yarn, because the Tiphanie needles are a squooge too thick for normal sock yarn.

I’m still a single project person somewhere in there. I think.

I’ve been having a love relationship with Jaffa Cakes today. How can you go wrong with chocolate, orange, and soft cookie? And it’s healthy. The box says so! Recommended by sports nutritionists!

O! And the blog minion tells me I’m getting a 6 foot long box. Sheesh. I’m the most spoiled person on the planet! Surprises sure are fun, though….

And to end my blah blah blah blahing for tonight, here’s the Matisse and his poor tortured existence.

knit sock kit swap!

A box arrived in my mailbox today!

From mrspao! I, for one, find it pretty funny Chris was her ksks partner and mrspao was mine, because, well, I’m easily amused. We all read each other’s blogs and that’s funny to me.

All the way from Cambridge came this pile of goodies:

And amazingly, Picasso stayed out of the box and did not molest this tooooo coooool card:

Though I confess I tried my best to interest him. I know. Bad catstaff. Inciting wantonness in the young.

What goodies were in the box?! Let us see:

I haven’t tried them yet but they’ve already got serious thumbs up from me because hot chocolate and bubbly, how can you go wrong? Not possible! Mmmmmm. Only thing I need to ask is how is this made? Milk? Water? How much liquid? I take proper hot chocolate manufacture seriously.

Lemon biscuits! With lemons from Sicily! MmmMmMMMmmMmm. I may or may not have already ingested four of them and may or may not have seriously yummed out at the perfectly cromulent tartness of them.

There were also cheesy cracker type things I already ate. Hee hee. What were they? No clue. *snarf* Yummy.

I think mrspao wanted to feed me. You think?

Also there were these:

Facial masks! Terribly appropriate given my infuntiontasticness lately, don’t you think?

But that’s not all! It’s a sock kit after all, yes?

Mmmmm. The catchen have already registered their liking for this pattern in the best way they know how: by sitting on it. I think this will be a fun pattern! I hadn’t seen this before, very cool. Lace and I, I am sure, will again be on a first name basis. Also! There were Inox double pointed needles included, just what I’d hoped for. I feel lucky! And will use them ASAP. Outside the home. There’s the Picasso. We know what that means.

And the bag!

Only a close up today, but I love the colors, nice and neutral and perfectly fall. The shape is perfect, a circular almost-basket with short handles. I’m afraid I completely need the pattern for this! Love love love love it. And the needle felting, what a great idea! Scrolley goodness, my second favorite thing after circles. Really. I swear. Thank you for knitting it during the height of the sweltering weather…. I’m telling you, it was worth it!

Yarn! Of course there had to be yarn!

I have to go look for the label because um, you see, Picasso ate the ribbon and ran off with it. Bleck. Ew. Etc.

It’s handdyed goodness in teal, oatmeal, lavender, almost grey, and a multitude of colors besides. Perfect for fall. Mmmmmmmmm. I may or may not have sniffed this a lot today.

See?

Picasso, on the other hand, wishes to disclaim any ribbon eating and says that he didn’t hug the bag or chew the card, therefore he’s innocent of those outrageous charges.

Please believe him. Please. Please.

I don’t know about you, but I think he sort of lost that deniability about the point where I fished out several inches worth of ribbon from his mouth.

dread…. sock? Roberts

The dread mitten Roberts is powerful, but not self-knitting.

Clearly.

Because I knitted enough to get from below the fingers to past the thumb….

And then cast on for socks.

What’s that about?

At least it was Dave’s sportweight yarn, which is more beautiful knitted up than I’d imagined it was.

Here’s my naughty and blametastic favorite and incessantly cute Picasso and I, this morning when he woke me up.