I’m doing less and less writing these days and more and more knitting stuff.
I reckon that the pursuit of a craft/hobby is all research and may one day turn into tons of articles — when I have the brain points to churn them out.
Yesterday I combined my love of music with my love of cities and my love of my boys, and took a trip on the train into the city. We heard a kiddie concert and had lunch in a bookstore and shopped a little before coming home. It sounds ilyllic, doesn’t it?
It was pretty nice, but it would have been nicer had my eldest not been a complete raving psycho (brought on, I suspect, by a late night the night before) and whined about wanting to go home the whole way through the concert before biting me, kicking his brother in the face and head-butting anyone within range. I thought nearly-three-and-really-bright would be good enough for attending kiddie concerts, but apparently not. Still, I enjoyed getting to see just how big a basoon is, up close.
This morning I combined my love of yarn with my love of creativity with my love of my boys to employ A in my mini-sweat-shop where he happily helped me dye skiens of yarn with Kool-Aid.
First we mixed up some Black Cherry (a lovely deep purply red) and then some Lemon-Lime green and some Kiwi-Watermelon green. Then we cooked up* a skein of each. We maintained yarn apartheid for as long as we could stand it and then I let Angus loose. He mixed the two together until he got a lovely brownish black (in a third container). Anyone who has any interest in yarn (and has access to Kool Aid) NEEDS to try this.
*You choose an off-white, preferably natural fiber yarn. If it is wound in a ball, wind it around the back of a chair so you have a long, loose hank (secure loosely with the ends). Soak it in cool water and squeeze it gently. Mix up a couple of packets of your preferred colour of Kool Aid with just enough water to dissolve it. Dunk your yarn in and top off with cool water. (I did this in a two-cup Pyrex jug). Pop the jug in the microwave and give it two minutes on high. Let it rest for a few minutes (you don’t want to boil the water) then zap again for a couple of minutes. This time lift the yarn up to see if the water is clear yet. If it is, remove the yarn and let it cool in a dish. If not, zap again until the water is clear. When the yarn is cool, dunk it in a sinkful of cool water and dishsoap, then dunk it in a sinkful of clean water to rinse, roll up in a towel to remove excess water and hang to dry. At all times resist agitating the water or putting the yarn into cool water after hot or vice versa (this will make the yarn fuzzy, or ‘felted’). Unless you want felted yarn, in which case, go for it.
As well as dunking whole skeins, I put a couple of skeins in a shallow dish and poured various colours of Kool Aid over different parts. Then, most fun, I used a squirt bottle to add dots of Angus’s brown-black all over the place. I’m hoping this will turn the yarn into one of those cool space-dyed yarns that managed to make your work look like you’ve done a fancy fairaisle when all you’ve done is knit. “Angus One” is currently hanging on the clothes horse in the basement and I’m dying (or should I say “dyeing”?!) to see how it looks when I knit it. It could look awful but hey, we had fun doing it.