Long Time No Post

So life's been kicking along here at the Moo household. Baby Moo is sleeping better and Toddler Moo is continuing to master the immense challenge that is the Potty.

More importantly since I've been getting some sleep, I've also had some dying inspiration.

Behold: My new friends...

Smoke Amid the Roses is a Baby Alpaca Lace weight yarn. It's very soft, very smooth, and ultra yummy.


Next up: Gryffindor For Grown-Ups. I like Harry Potter as much as the next fan girl, and possibly more, so when I saw this yellow/gold/brown heathery base yarn I knew it needed some red.
Marigolds may not be my favorite flower. But this may be my favorite yarn. Marigolds is a superwash wool/nylon sock yarn.

Electric Green is the result of a top secret dying technique which I'm trying to work the bugs out of. I can say this, it works with fabric, and if I can get it to work on yarn it'll be brilliant. In the mean time I've not got some screaming electric green yarn!
A million years ago, back when Mamma Moo was in fact pre-teen Moo, I fell in love with a series of books called The Chronicles of Dragon Lance. This yarn was inspired by a certain Half-Elven Ranger. Then I realized that if I called the yarn Tanis, almost no one would know what it meant. Thus September Forest was born.
All of these yarns are now on my etsy site. Keryl's Crafts. I hope to update again soon, especially if I master my top secret dying technique.

Return to the Dyepot

So I'm sitting here debating how to dye lace weight yarn. Granted, I probably should have had more of an idea of what I wanted before I put it in the crock pot to soak, but I had a free minute and jumped on it. I already know what I want to knit with it, but the color is giving me problems.

When I dye, I like bright, bold, intense colors. Variegated is great, the higher contrast the better. But, when you knit lace you want the knitting to stand out, and it's hard to see what you've done if the yarn is more intense than the pattern.

So I could leave it mostly naked and just add a splash or two of color. Or dye it one color, probably something in a green. (The pattern is Celtic Knot in yarn overs. Seems green to me.) Or perhaps try get a gradation going, but keep the colors close in value so as not to over power the pattern.

So many choices...

Now for the finished objects.

I've also been doing some over dying. When I decided I wanted to knit socks I kind of went bonkers on eBay and got a lot of yarn. (Well, not by serious yarn addict standards, but I've got more than enough of it.) The problem is I didn't realize that most of what I was purchasing was the same color. (I thought I was buying a collection of yellow, green, pink and purple yarns, not ten balls of yellow, green, pink and purple yarn.)

These two started out as a red/ rust/ tan/ purple colorway. (The top one is undyed, the bottom two have been in the dyebath. Unfortunately this undyed one has the red on the outside instead of the orange or tan. The reds are all still about the same, most of the change took place in the purple/tan sections.) Not bad, but I just don't need ten balls of the same color. I stuck it in my mini crockpot with .5 tsp Procion basic red and half a cup of vinegar. Four hours later the dye was out of the water and into the yarn. I'm thinking it's looking pretty good now.

The ball on top and the hank on the left were both the same color when the mail man dropped them off. The hank on the right was a very vibrant Vinca yarn that was neon green, hot pink, dark brown, and a little yellow. I put them both in a dyebath with .5 tsp Procion Dark Violet. After five hours they looked pretty dark and just about all the dye was exhausted. It probably needed another hour to cook because when I put it on the microfiber cloth to dry out a little blue was left on the cloth.

I do think it's fascinating how the one yarn ended up so much darker than the other one. (And no, it's not just the dark brown bits that ended up dark violet, causing the difference.) I'm not sure if it's because the right hank is superwash wool, and the left is just plain wool. Or if it was some sort of different surface treatment. But whatever it was I ended up with one very dark hank and one light hank, even though both of them were in the same dyebath with the same dye sitting right next to each other. Likewise both hanks recieved an equal amount of swishing about in the dye, yet the one on the left was dyed all the way through, but the one on the right has large bits that got no dye at all. Hmmm... so much to learn.

Baby Moo is crying. Time to go back to real life.

Huh?

I listen to all sorts of music, which is why one of the channels programed into my radio is the 'Family Friendly Light Radio..."

So, I'm sitting in the car, happily listening along, and up comes 'You Ought To Know' by Alanis Morisette. Now, let me say, I like this song. I liked it when it came out ten + years ago, and I still like it. However, it's not exactly light or fluffy listening.

Or, for that matter, 'Family Friendly.' But the Radio Gods have decided it can be played, with some modifications. Also, it should be noted that this channel cuts an entire verse out of Dire Straits 'Money For Nothing.' (The verse with the extremely un-p.c. term for a homosexual male in it.) But for 'You Ought to Know' they only cut out certain bits of words, ending up with lines that sound like this...

"...would she go d-- on you in a theatre?"

"...and are you thinking of me when you f--k her?"

They leave enough of both words in so that anyone who's ever heard either phrase before, let alone the song, knows exactly what word should be there. What I don't get is why just cut the vowels out? Especially in the second case where the word sounds almost identical to it's uncut form if you leave in that final k sound.

Likewise, if you are marketing to the 'Family Friendly' demographic isn't the whole song inappropriate? Is it really just the words and not the subject matter? Would it be o.k. if the line went...

"...would she felate you in a theatre?"

"...and are you thinking of me when you have sex with her?"

Oh well... that's my "huh?" moment of the day.

Dye Pot

Yesterday's experiment was supposed to be a very subtle gradation. If it had worked the way I thought it would I would have ended up with 24 shades of blue. Well, to my eye it looks like I've got six.

I started with three balls of Pattons Lacette. From there I wound them into little golf ball sized units. The idea was to dip 1 in the dye bath, then replace the missing dye with water. Thus the dye would slowly become less concentrated resulting in many shades.

And, perhaps with a lighter hand on the dye (1 tbs procion fiber reactive dye sapphire blue in two cups of vinegar) or with a 100% wool yarn I would have gotten a more varied response. As it was I hit the maximum saturation of dye for my yarn long before I got it diluted enough to make a difference in the final shade.

But I did learn two things: Pattons Lacette, which is a nylon/acrylic/wool mix does dye and takes very dark colors nicely. It's been discontinued so it's a bit hard to find, but the places that seem to have it also seem to have it in the bargain bin. So if you don't like the color, grab it anyway and play with it.

Secondly, next time I want to try a gradation along those lines I'm going to start with all my balls in a vinegar bath, and then add a little dye at a time. I may not get as subtle of a variation, but I can guarantee that I'll have shades from light to dark.

I Love Snow

This is our backyard this morning. It's so pretty! And this being Richmond, we've waited four years to see this. (Granted a few years back we did get a very pretty ice storm, but it's not quite the same.)

I know a lot of people are very anti-snow, but living in Richmond is kind of like always being a kid on the night of a snow. Almost everything closes, so even the grown-ups get snow days here. It's almost noon, there's six inches of snow out there, flurries are falling, and only one of my neighbors has had to shovel his driveway. (Good thing he's got a truck, because his driveway may be shoveled, but nothing even remotely like a snowplow or sand truck has been to visit our neighborhood.) The rest of us are just enjoying the white. Especially Toddler Moo who is just old enough to get the idea that there is something really cool (pun intended) about snow.

Alas, we don't own a sled. But he has been having fun with snow that comes up to his knees.

On the Needles

Here are two of my three current projects. Project three is a present for someone who may actually read this, so it will remain shrouded in mystery until after it's been presented.

This is The Woodland Shaw. It's about three quarters done, and currently unblocked. Check out the link to get an idea of what it should look like when it's finally finished.

The pattern is well written and quite intuitive. Once you've got it down it flies.


Project number two is the beginning of a baby blanket. I love patchwork quilts but due to Toddler Moo being physically incapable of staying away from anything sharp or dangerous, I'm currently not doing anything involving sharp scissors, sharp circular cutters, or sharp sewing machines. But I did think up a way to create a knitted "patchwork."

I'm not totally sold on this one yet. I'll have to knit more of it before I'm certain it won't be frogged. But I do like how the mitered squares look and I love the idea of being able to make something that looks like a quilt.

Healthier Chocolate Chip Cookies

Over the years I've been looking for ways to make things I love better for me. And like just about everyone else in the US I love chocolate chip cookies.

Now, let's pause a moment before I get into the recipe. These are healthIER chocolate chip cookies, not HEALTHY chocolate chip cookies. They've got lots of fat and calories. They are still real cookies, not cardboard tasting diet things.

But, they also have anti-oxidants, calcium, and iron, things not usually found in chocolate chip cookies.

2 Sticks of Butter
1 1/2 cups of sugar (or if you really want to up the "healthy" aspect 3/4 cups sugar and 3/4 cups Splenda.)
1 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract (use the good stuff, it's worth it!)

Cream the first three ingredients together until light and fluffy.

1 1/4 Cups All Purpose Flour
1 Cup Almond Flour/Almond Meal
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda

Mix dry ingredients together.

2 Eggs

Once butter mixture is creamed add the first egg. Mix until fully incorporated. Add second egg, mix until fully incorporated.

Add the dry ingredients a half cup or so at a time.

3 Cups of Chocolate Chips. (I use a mix of half Nestle Chocolate Chips and half bits of Ghirdelli dark chocolate. The more dark chocolate the more anti-oxidants.)

Blend in the chips.

Drop onto a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Bake at 375 until you can smell the cookies (about seven minutes).

This dough freezes very well, so I portion out the cookies when I make the dough, cook some of them and freeze the rest. When I want cookies I grab some from the freezer stick them on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet, and bake at 350 until I can smell them. Ten minutes give or take. Only making two or three cookies at a time also helps keep these healthy, you don't feel the need to eat six or seven of them because they're just sitting on the counter waiting for you.

The addition of Almond flour to the recipe adds Iron, Calcium, and Protein to the cookies. The dark chocolate adds anti-oxidants. (If you like some of the chocolate chips can be replaced with dried cherries, which would also increase the anti-oxidants, and make these more of a 'grown-up' cookie.)

These are thin and crispy chocolate chip cookies. Very crispy. Don't try to sneak one near the kids because they'll hear you crunching it even if they can't see you eating it.