Happy Thanksgiving

I want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. May you have plenty to eat, in a warm safe place, surrounded by those you love.

Redi-whip or Cool Whip ?

Yep, the big pig out day is almost here ! I love turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, all smothered in gravy. But most of all I LOVE a huge slice of pumpkin pie covered in Redi-Whip. Now there is a great debate in my house over Redi-Whip and Cool Whip. Ralph hates Redi-Whip, me, well, Cool Whip is okay, but tastes a little fake. Besides that, Redi-Whip brings back lots of childhood memories of squirting as much of the stuff as possible into your mouth straight from the can ( i still like that) . Redi-Whip is a food that not only tastes good, it's also fun to play with, you can't say that about Cool Whip.

So, what's your favorite, is it Cool Whip or Redi-whip ?

Photos from Yarn Haul

Geez, I forgot to show you the yarn from my "yarn haul" almost 2 weeks ago ! Why didn't somebody remind me?
So here it is, a total of 11 skeins of yarn. Notice the "black and gold", that's for a scarf for my brother, we live in "Steeler Country". The black and gold is Plymouth Encore.





Here's a better view of the other two yarns, the green in the front is Crystal Palace Yarns, cotton chenille. It was discounted and I'm going to use it for face cloths.






Here's a close up of the Dive, Mohair Kiss Ombre, it's very soft, 73% mohair, 22% wool laine and 5% nylon. I plan to make a scarf for my sister from this and if there is enough left, one for me !!

Coming soon....................

photos of the finished items.........................

Crocheting Like Crazy

Not to worry if I don't post for a few days. It's finally sinking in that I have very little time left to get my Christmas crocheting done. So, I plan to be "crocheting like crazy" for the next few days. And I have to do my "big" shopping for next Thursday's feast. I can't believe Thanksgiving is a little over a week away ! This year has really flown by. Now back to hooking..............

To Dye or Not to Dye

I had every intention to try some Kool Aide dyeing yesterday, but it never happened. I decided, unlike the crockpot dyeing, where I was just basically "playing", I wanted to do more of a controlled dyeing, you know measure the amount of dye solution, weigh my yarn, that sort of thing. This way if I create something I really like, it will be easy to duplicate. So I dragged out my handy digital kitchen scale, that I use to weigh yarn, and the stupid batteries were dead ! It was cold and nasty and rainy and I really didn't want to go out just for batteries, so no dyeing took place yesterday, maybe later today or tomorrow.

Since I couldn't dye, I decided to make myself a purse with some Cascade 220 I got a couple of months ago. It's in the washer as I type, I'll show it to you when it's all done.

In case you're wondering if I have all of my Christmas crocheting done, the answer is "NO". But for some reason, I just can't quite stay focused on them. I want to dye yarn, I want to make purses, and make slippers, all for me. Okay, enough procrastinating, I better get back to my Christmas crocheting, at least for a little while.

Look, it's different !

As you may have noticed my blog looks a bit different. I did the "blogger upgrade" , it's much easier for someone like me that doesn't know much about this sort of thing. I've begun to add some of the blogs I read, there are more to be added, along with some other stuff.
It's time to quit playing on the computer and get some constructive stuff done, like my laundry...............

Crockpot Dyeing Results

Okay, blogger seems to be cooperating this morning, so I have to type fast.

This is what the water looked like after 2 hours on low. I turned the crockpot off at this point.


After sitting for about another hour, the water was clear, but still quite warm.

Now for the results. As you can see, it turned out quite dark and didn't dye evenly. I think I'm to blame for the uneveness, the water was so dark that I couldn't really tell if I had "mushed" the yarn down enough.

Just a close up of the uneveness.

The finished product is still drying, but it is a very dark purple. I'll show you what it looks like when it is dry.

Since this was soooooooo easy to do, I'm going to try it again today, using much less dye. I'm still going to use the food coloring, attempting to make maybe a sunset orange color. While that cooks, I'm going to do the Kool Aide thing.

I have to start some laundry first. So if blogger continues to be nice there will be more pictures later today.

Invisible pictures !

It's been about 2 hours and the yarn is done ! As you may be able to tell I did try to post some pictures in a previous post, but they disappeared ! I'll try again tomorrow, by then I just might have some of the Kool Aide dyeing to share.
Sleep tight............................

Adventures in Crockpot Dyeing

I decided that I wanted to try dyeing some yarn, it seems like such a fun thing to do. I had some Lionbrand Fisherman's wool that I thought I'd try first. I did order some yarn from Stickchick
the other day, to dye, once I try out a few things on the Lionbrand. Here is a short photo journal of what I'm doing.

First I wound about half of the skein into this:





Next the yarn is "wetting" in my kitchen sink. It really swells up and smells like a wet dog !

Here's the yarn after I squeezed out the excess water.

I'm using just regular old food coloring that I had on hand. The technique I'm using is "crockpot" dyeing that can be found on Bella Online. I wanted to try the rainbow method, but the colors started to run together, so I stopped with just blue and red. The result is what appears to be a really dark purple.

Now I'm in the "cooking" time of 2 to 4 hours using my flea market find crockpot. I only paid $1.00 for it, it is a bit small, but perfect to try out this technique. Oh, the wooden spoon was .25 from someone else at the flea market.
So now we wait...........................................................

to be continued when the yarn is done.............................

(more experiments to come using Kool Aide and the microwave)

Yarn Haul

Alas, blogger won't let me upload pictures again this morning, but I did try, maybe it will let me upload it later.
I wanted to show you my "haul" from Knit-Wits, which I learned about from a post that Cheryl made a while ago. (thank you very much Cheryl, I loved the place ).
I want to make a few scarves for gifts, which fit in perfectly with the CAL at FiberFreaks. So, since I can't share the picture I have to tell you what I got. Not too much diversity, but good scarf making stuff. Hmmmmmm, lets see should I save the best for last ? Yea, I thing that's what I'll do. First I got one skein of Crystal Palace Cotton Chenille at 30% off , it was the only one left, the color is what I would describe as a pale lime green. This of course is not for a scarf, but for a face cloth or two. Thanks to Deneen for telling me how nicely the cotton chenille works up into face cloths. Then I got 6 skeins of Plymouth Encore, 3 black and 3 yellow (gold). Why those two colors you ask ? I'm only 15 minutes from Pittsburgh and black and gold are Steeler colors ! I hope to get a scarf and a hat for my brother out of these. If there's some leftover, no problem, it will get used. The Encore feels really nice, it's 75% acrylic and 25%wool, so it should be really durable and hopefully warm. And last but not least, for a scarf for my sister (and i'm hoping me too) , 4 balls of Di.ve Mohair Kiss Ombre ,it's really yummy !. I chose a colorway that's predominately off white with camels and greys ( it looks like colorway 404), it is soooooooo soft and should make a really pretty scarf. I also have some homespun that is in my stash and has been for a while (about 2 years) that is going to become a scarf from a pattern that's in the 2007 Crochet Pattern a Day Calendar, the Snuggly Scarf. It just happens to be one of Deneen's patterns.
Now, I'm off to do some laundry. Have a great weekend !

Stolen

I stole this from Deneen, it's a quick little quiz. I think my years of living in Florida still have an infulence on the way I talk. It's either that or the quiz doesn't ask the correct questions for my Pittsburgheese to come out. Y'inz guyz know what I mean 'nat ?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes