Oh Happy Day!

We got the van today! Yay yay yay yay! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

After a miserable two weeks of car problems, we got the minivan G's parents were replacing! It was like once we found out that they were going to sell it to us when they found a new one, we had one problem with the Buick after another. The car is old, and it has been a decent car, don't get me wrong, but did it have to freak out and start breaking right after we found out we'd be getting an unbelievable deal on their old one???

Anyhow, that's all over and done with! And I am jumping for joy!

My hands are hurting most of the time now. I'm not sure if the therapy is making things better or not. It feels like it's not but is this a case of "you gotta feel worse before you feel better"? I don't really know how this works, obviously.

I've been playing around with Kool-Aid and food/icing color dyeing. I've only done the microwave method so far but want to try Crock-Pot and stovetop dyeing. The microwave way is really easy so if I continue to do any of this or try to do like so many others and make the attempt to sell my work, I'll probably keep doing it that way. But I want experience with the alternative methods under my belt.

I tried to make a funky blue and yellow combination using McCormick food colors. The actual combo failed but turned into a great colorway that if I can duplicate it will be called Spring Grass. It's got light and medium greens in it and some yellow and chartreuse.

I tried some Wilton's Royal Blue icing dye and that gave me a lovely mottled turquoise which I'm knitting up right now to see how it looks.

Last night, I got the most fantastic chartreuse using the McCormick's. This will be repeated. If I start selling, it will be one of my permanent colors. It turned out gawh-jussss! I'm planning on making up a special batch of that for a certain sweetie WHO REALLY DESERVES IT.

But my hands are arguing that I need to stop typing. Boo. :(

KooAid!

I dyed yarn with KoolAid for the first time recently! It was simple and fun. Yippeeee!!!!!

This one was Grape and Pink Lemonade. I will be doing more soon.:-) I went and bought more of the ivory sock yarn. Plans include a Berry Blue and Lemon-Lime combo, a Black Cherry run, and possibly an Orange skein.

I got a new camera the other day. It's a Sony Cyber-Shot. Comparatively cheap, but very nice for what I need a camera for. AND IT'S PINK! Soooooooooo cute. This is what it looks like:

Found out on Monday that I'm going to need surgery on my hands. Fuck you, carpal tunnel. I know it's an easy, common procedure but that doesn't make me any less unhappy about it. Doc says we might have to try physical therapy first but that the surgery is inevitable. Crummy.

Knitting has again been sporadic. I've been trying to make a Chain Chomp hat for Bam. I've actually got the hat itself done, I just need to get the teeth, chain and eyes on it. Laziness in action. I've also got a hat to make for Annie. I had that one about 25% done and had to frog it because I screwed up some stitches and couldn't figure out where. Duh. I dunno, that's all I can think of right now. I'm pretty sure that I've done more but have knitting emptiness of the brain at the moment.

My brain is filled with thoughts of the Magic Yarn Ball Swap! This is the coolest thing. I'm so glad I waited to join a swap until this one! First, it's in the Pants. That is the coolest part of it. But the concept of the Magic Yarn Ball is the next best part. You take whatever yarn you're giving your swapee and begin wrapping it around some sort of middle/core -thing-, some sort of goodie that you've chosen. Then you continue to add in little bits of awesomeness as you wrap the ball up. Linky to one example: http://whipup.net/2006/04/25/kids-yarn-project-the-magic-wool-ball/. I can't wait until April 1st! (That's our open date!)

Enough for now, off to make dinnah & think about swappy goodness and what flavor to dye my next skein of sock yarn!