A hard night's work

I got a good amount of work done tonight at school. I dyed 4 half-yards (aka two yards) of fabric. I did two shibori pieces; I painted each piece first with dye, light eggplant on one and light kiwi on the other. Then while they were still wet with dye I wrapped them around a pvc pipe, somewhat loosely, then scrunched it all toward the middle. I let it sit for about 10 minutes before I painted on the darker of each color. They sat for about an hour while I painted some stripes on two more half yard pieces. I rinsed and washed the two shibori pieces and spun them out in the washer at school. at this point it was about 8:30 (class is technically over at 8:20) so I brought them home and hung them in the bathroom to air dry.

I left the other two pieces at school, I'll rinse them out on Thursday.

Over the weekend, I worked on the baby booties. I cast on and frogged over and over, just sorta practicing the ribbing. But I kept getting weak spots in the yarn, I would be knitting along and all of a sudden, the strand in my right hand would just fall apart, and I'd have to knot it and keep going. I was sortof expecting this to be a practice bootie anyway, but I did want to use the so cute and so soft pink alpaca fleece yarn I already had 3 skeins of. I only had about 4 rows of ribbing that actually looked ALMOST perfect and I had 3 knots in it where the yarn had come apart. So I finally gave up. I took it off the needles and threw it at Ryan and exclaimed, "this yarn SUCKS!" The next day I showed the yarn to my mom and we examined the skein and we found little areas that must be moth holes. unfortunatley, this is second hand yarn, no way of knowing where it's been, how old it is etc. So I threw all 3 skeins away. I COULD unravel the skein and see if the center of it is usable, but that is too much work.

So we made a trip to not one, not two, but three places to buy yarn. hehehe. First stop was Knit A Round in Ann Arbor. We petted every different kind of yarn there twice or more, but didn't buy anything. Then we ventured over to Flying Sheep, on the other side of Ann Arbor (did I mention it was a UofM home game Saturday? yes, we are brave). I had the bootie pattern with me and we consulted the woman working the register there and she helped us figure out what kinds of yarn we could use and still follow the pattern exactly and how much yarn we would need. So I picked out a nice soft lavendar, which I think I'll only need one skein of. and there was this SOOOOOOO cute fringey yarn that matched perfectly, so I had to get some and I think I'll add a few rows of that in the ribbing.



And the third stop was JoAnn Etc. I think we have the best and biggest JoAnn store. I can go and wander for a long time there. I try to never go without a 40% coupon and I can't leave without buying something. So this trip, I left with a HUGE skein of variegated purple yarn to make a baby blanket. this honker has almost 900 yards on it! such a steal at only $7.99. perfect for a baby blanket that will be washed and spit up on and washed some more and who knows what else.



Yes, that bowl used to have chocolate ice cream in it. Don't ask me where it went, I don't know.