best rabbit hole ever...

i am sat up in bed, watching nonsense on You Tube and eating floor-Oreos. hopefully i will do a better job of holding on to the opened pack next time around... hopefully.

it is Monday evening as i start writing this, and i am already waiting for this week to be done. last week was an especially rubbish one around here, and the weekend left me expecting that we were in for more of the same. i called my mother on Sunday, and my greeting to her was a dour, but apt one. "we are still alive. happy Mother's Day."

in that spirit of celebrating the tiny victories in life—including life itself—i present to you a tiny glimpse into the randomness that has brought some measure of joy to my corner of the Universe of late. 

we pulled a couple steaks out of the freezer and made a special meal one random day... just because.

these smashed potatoes have become his favorite dish of the moment. i boil whole potatoes (red potatoes in this case, as that is what we had on hand) in super-salty water, then smashed them lightly, and drizzled on a mixture of olive oil, melted butter, salt, black pepper, and a generous helping of crushed garlic. they go into a 425°F oven on a parchment-lined baking sheet until they are toasty around the edges, after which i turn on the broiler for the last couple-few minutes. i added a sprinkling of freshly-grated Parmesan cheese and shoved them back under the broiler for the last minute. not gonna lie... they are really tasty. he likes the leftovers served up with sour cream, so we make extra for the next day. so ridiculously good!

speaking of ridiculous... i woke up one day last week to find a new box in the entryway to our apartment, which currently serves as the 'quarantine area' for all incoming items.

me: was this here before?
him: uhm... no.
me: is this an 'unauthorized purchase'?
him: uhm... possibly.
me: what did you buy now?
him: it's a Master of the Universe. you like them. 
me: open 'er up.

after the absurdity of life of late, he can buy whatever nonsense he wants. so... welcome, Skeletor.

may you find peace among the countless other homages to a never-ending childhood that are already occupying our home. trust me... that is only a tiny fraction of the insanity in the studio. whatever makes him happy.

he hangs on to the boxes with interesting artwork, so this one was a definite keeper.

as i see it, we are all allowed our own brand of insanity. which reminds me...

i washed those two fleeces i talked about last time. this usually requires a lot of room to spread all that wool out to dry, but that would be asking for trouble in a home with three bored cats. so i divided the fiber into several batches that could be dried out of paw-reach, and washed them over the course of a week or so.

i separated out the 'best bits' from each fleece and took special care to try to wash them while maintaining the lock formations of the fiber, like this bag of cleaned BFL/NCC mule fiber. [i explained what that means in the previous post.]

i love the variation in the fiber from this one fleece. it is hard to believe that all of this came from the same sheep.

i did the same thing with the purebred BFL fleece.

this may look like a tangly mess, but i can easily separate the locks, which will help when it comes time to prep the fiber for spinning.

there is enough 'best bits' from the mule fiber for a generous sweater's worth of yarn, so i am storing all of that in a recycling bag until i decide what it will become. the BFL was a much smaller fleece, so those 'best bits' are living for now in one of the shopping bags that was sent along with my box of wool.

as for the mucky bits of both fleeces, they were washed in a less-organized fashion, using some plastic strainers and mesh baskets that i keep exclusively for use with fiber-related things.

i am going to need to open a few chakras before i can begin to tackle prepping this stuff for spinning. however, in all this madness, i welcome that challenge.

there were some impressively-long sections of the BFL fleece. i am actually considering getting one of their longer fleeces next year... should we last that long.

i am making progress on the summery top featuring my first ever batch of hand-dyed cotton-based yarn (which i spoke about two posts ago). i am taking all sorts of license in re-interpreting the designer's instructions... because i can. the top should be finished by this weekend, unless i get distracted by some other... hey, is that a butterfly???

oh, and i am still carrying those damn socks (from a few post ago) from room-to-room, although i must admit to having added not a single stitch to that project in over a week.

____________________

it is roughly twenty-four hours later and i am pleased to say that i have fallen down a rabbit hole that began with the Betty Boop classic "Minnie the Moocher", and has resulted in the past couple-few hours being spent watching segments of swing music/dancing from a truly impressive list of old movies. between the likes of the Nicholas Brothers, Cab Calloway, and Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, i have hummed, snapped my fingers, and tapped my toes enough to chase away most of the gloom that i feared would cloud the next few days of my life.

best rabbit hole ever!!!

i wrapped up my evening by returning to where it started... with good music and classic animation. this time, it was the Warner Bros classic "Three Little Bops". [the only video i could find that includes the whole piece was this one from Vimeo. and, yes... the video quality sucks.]

then my favorite animator walked in.

him: are you listing to the "Three Little Bops"?
me: yep. been listening to it on repeat for the last twenty minutes or so.
him: i was listening to that just yesterday.

then i smiled. it is nice to be reminded that our insanity intersects every once in a while.

happy little lunatic...

i have a couple-few calls that i have been putting off making because i am genuinely sick of talking about the elephant in everyone's room. in fact, i sincerely wish that someone would design a bit of software so that when you place a call, instead of the usual sound of a phone ringing on the other end, you would be greeted with the following message:

the number you have dialed cannot be reached, because it will only add to this person's stress. please hang up your phone and try again when you want to talk about... anything else!

welcome to my life.

i spent part of the weekend stalking the Facebook page of a farm on the other side of Canada, and i purchased a couple fleeces from this year's clip. so there is a box somewhere with my name on it, full of right-off-the-sheep wool. you have no idea how happy this makes me.

in other news, the never-ending quest for distraction carries on.

after many years of neglect, i was already anxious about sitting down in front of my sewing machine, so this did not seem like a good time to get back to that particular craft. having once had a sewing machine needle break in my finger (i kid you not), i know far too well how dangerous that beast can be when approached with the wrong mindset, so i kept on looking.

i have been amassing a collection of bare (natural-colored) cotton-based yarn for dyeing, so this seemed as good a time as any to give it a try. my first victim sample was a cotton-acrylic yarn that i am already working on turning into a top to wear this Summer... if Summer ever happens, she says, staring at the snow presently drifting past the window.

this yarn was put up in one large hank, which is a massive tangled knot waiting to happen...

so i added a few extra ties to try to keep things organized. i may have also crossed my fingers at this point and hoped for the best.

i soaked the bundle of yarn for about two days in a soda ash solution, and arranged it in the bottom of a laundry basket, before sprinkling dry dye powder directly onto the surface of the wet fiber. i used Dharma Fiber Reactive Procion Dyes in the colors Robin's Egg Blue, Peacock Blue, and Watermelon, and i mixed a bit of each dye powder with kosher salt for more control when sprinkling it onto the fiber.

i wanted to keep the background relatively light, with little pops of color to break up the monotony. basically, i was trying to achieve something similar to all the lovely speckled wool yarns that are so popular in the knitting world. however, the dye i used for this is designed for cellulose (plant-based) fibers, so i knew that the color would not show up quite as intensely on this 50-50 cotton-acrylic yarn as it would on something with a higher cellulose content, but i persisted.

if you look closely, you can see the tiny specks of dye/salt, before they dissolve into the water in the yarn.

then i shoved the  basket inside a couple recycling bags (which were re-used for their intended purpose) to prevent the yarn from drying out. the next morning, i gave the mass of fiber a flip, and repeated the sprinkle-and-plastic-wrap process.

it looked AMAZING, but i knew that a lot of that dye would end up being washed down the drain, so the end color would not be as intense on the finished yarn. still, i was super-pleased with the result at this point.

you can see how all those specks of dye have dissolved into something resembling a watercolor on the fiber.

unlike most wool dyes, this stuff does not require the addition of heat. all that was needed here was a bit of patience to allow the pigments to bond to the fiber. i was very tempted to wash it out after an hour or two after applying the color to the second side, but i knew i would have been disappointed if very little of it stuck to the yarn, so i ended up waiting until the following day to give it a wash.

it took a couple days to dry completely, which makes sense as it is a garment's worth of yarn in a single skein. finally it was done. look at it!!!

 do you see all those lovely little blips of color? i was such a happy little lunatic at this point.

dye often "breaks" (separates), especially the ones that consist of a blend of different base pigments. as a result, you often find interesting colors popping up on fiber that has been dyed in this sprinkled-on fashion. i used two shades of blue and a watermelon color, so i was surprised to find little pops of yellow on the yarn. that is part of the joy/magic of hand-dying.

there is just enough color play to add a bit of interest to the knitted fabric without venturing into the realm of 'gaudy display'.

so now i have a garment's worth of yarn (that i can actually wear).

 and it is already on its way to becoming the newest part of my summer wardrobe. yay!