Long time, no blog....

Has it really been almost 2 weeks since I posted? Wow, things have been a little hectic here at Chez Karen. Not much knitting going on though, I'm sad to report. In fact I don't even have any progress pictures for you. I've been slowly (and I do mean slowly) adding a row here and there to the first of Doug's socks. Is it possible to get SSS before you even complete the first one? I also have a bit of yarn left for the coral lacy tank, but I've ceased knitting on it because I'm so scared of running out of yarn. I could just order more, but that would be too easy. We've finally finished unpacking and have been hanging pictures, sorting out junk, building shelves, blah blah blah. I had a huge yard sale this past Saturday. I made a whopping $15, and I think I spent that much on the posterboard and gas to advertise the damn thing. Oh well. I convinced my mom and sister to cart all the unsold junk to Goodwill and some of it was not even accepted, so my poor mom now has a few boxes of my crap cluttering up her living room. It was a valiant effort. I unloaded most of my acrylic to a lady who crochets, in fact that made up about half of the $15. My poor little heart was crushed while it watched the lady drive off with two heaping bags of yarn. I mean, I know it's acrylic, but it's still yarn!!! I'm sure I'll recover, but I can't help but feel like I need a hearty trip to the LYS to fill that void in my stash.

Lots of stuff that's non-knitting has been going on though. The biggest news is that my youngest sister and her fiance got engaged! He proposed in front of the fountains at Kings Dominion, which is sort of "their place", they've been going there every summer with season passes for the past couple years. I'm so excited for them.

On mother's day we all went to my mom's house to celebrate (though briefly since I had to work). We had some good eats and I got to catch up with my other sister who lives about 2 hours away. Here is Morgan working on her May/June Project Spectrum knit, a pillow case. This will be for her son Joey's room, and is made in a Lion Brand boucle, not sure which one though. She is having a hard time getting pictures on her blog, so now we can all see what she's working on!

I had a really great day last week when I came home from work to discover not one, not two, but three packages for me! The first was from my May Sock Yarn Swap Pal, Kelly. She sent some beautiful hand-dyed sock yarn in some yummy greens. I'm thinking this yarn is destined to be some P-word socks, but first I have to get through at least one of my current WIP's. She also sent some other green goodies: lip balm, skittles, a mini-candle, and a little tea flower that blooms when immersed in water. I can't wait to try that last one out. I also received a card from my Secret Pal-I count that as a package because it is just for me, it is unexpected, and it's not a bill or junk mail! The last thing I got was such a complete surprise I'm still not over it. I'm in Dye-o-Rama, the dyeing swap that Scout organized, and each month Wool2Dye4 randomly draws a name from the participants and sends them a prize. I was this month's winner, and I received 1/2 lb. of their new fingering weight Kona superwash. Half a pound! That's about 1100 yards! I am so excited to try it out!

Speaking of dyeing, I've been doing some of that. I dyed two hanks of KnitPicks Dye Your Own this past week. The one on the left I dyed using Jacquard's Professional Acid Dyes (this is my first adventure with acid dyes). I tried doing the painting method first, but it was too windy to do outside, and inside proved to be way too messy. (Just ask my poor doggy who ended up with a teeny splash of turquoise on his cheek-I promise he was not exposed to toxic levels of the dye nor did he consume any.) So I decided to sacrifice an old pot and do immersion dyeing, which I've decided is my favorite method so far. I convinced my husband to "help" (he did it all) me build a warping board following Scout's design and a niddy-noddy too, which we spray painted red for creativity. I did a double section of turquoise, then chartreuse, then a double section of periwinkle, and then jet black. I love how vibrant the colors are and I think I'm officially hooked on acid dyes now. I want to stock up on lots of colors-does anyone have any recommendations for any cheap, great acid dyes? The hank on the right was dyed using Kool-aid, which I still love to use because it's so accessible and cheap although I'm always a little embarrased by the quantity I buy at once. I used three different pots of color, using blue-raspberry, grape, and black cherry as the primary colors. The grape came out very deep and I love it! I'm inspired to do a shades of grape color for my July Sock Yarn Swap pal. The blue raspberry is a kind of denim color, and the black cherry is pretty crimson-y. I like the overall look of the colors together, and I think this is the one I'm going to send to my Dye-o-Rama pal because she likes jewel tones. I named this color Berry Patch because the colors all resemble a berry of some sort. I haven't named the Jacquard skein yet because I can't think of something that would do it justice. I was thinking of simply naming it Maryland since I got all four colors at MDSW, but that seems a little drab. Any good color suggestions out there?

That's all the non-knitty stuff. Maybe next time I will actually have some knitting news to report.