Monday, April 21, 2014

Dyeing Yarn with Cuties

I am way behind here - waaaay back at the beginning of March, I visited my sister's family at their new home in Iowa for the occasion of my niece's fifth birthday.  My nieces are simply the sweetest girls on planet earth, and (bestill my heart!) they both are into knitting.  So, you understand, we HAD to dye some yarn.

The cheeky little blond (wait, they are both cheeky little blonds) in the swimming suit is the birthday girl.  It was below zero Fahrenheit outdoors that day, but she insisted on wearing the swimming suit that I bought her for her birthday.  I think it had Rapunzel on it, though THE character of the birthday weekend was Elsa from Frozen.  Alas, there were no Elsa swimming suits at the Disney store.  We later persuaded her to at least put on some clothes underneath it.  It made me shiver just to look at her.   


Here we are before adding dye.  We used Kool-aid and food coloring (both work great on wool!)

  

Addi with her first batch, carefully monitoring the temperature, as was I.  At the altitude where I live, water begins to almost boil at just the temperature where I slow things (about 180 degrees), and it makes an audible rumble that tells me when to turn down the heat.  Unused to cooking, nor yet dyeing yarn in the lowlands, I made sure we used a thermometer to keep the dye pot from getting too hot.   

Somehow I lost the photos of our many finished hanks of lovely yarn.  But I'll close with my favorite photo of the weekend . . . dear little Lauren knitting away at her project.

 
The look of concentration on her face is the best!

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Welcome 2014!

Of course the turning of a new year always inspires us to think about the past and the future.  2013 was a fine year in general; I worked very hard and made some significant decisions, and I will be surveying the implementation thereof in the coming months. 

It is with anticipation, mixed with excitement, mixed with a tiny bit of trepidation that I greet 2014.  Really though, its mostly the first two, and I am so looking forward to . . .
 


shifting my work to creative and far more rewarding endeavours,



more travel,


and spending more time working on our homestead. 

Who would have thought, that I have found that I dearly love splitting wood?  Brian has been working at a job off of the homestead a lot lately, so I have been helping with this to give him more free time when he is home.  What I thought would be a chore is actually deeply satisfying and confidence-building.

Happy New Year, and welcome 2014!