Brief Update

• I need to give a belated thank you to Robyn from Craft and Found for featuring Dyeabolical Yarns in her blog last week. Go check her out!

• Over the next few days I will be changing some of the permissions on my Flickr account from public to friends and family only and reorganizing my sets. This change will affect some pictures from older posts. I will try to fix those older posts over the next few weeks. This might cause those older posts to show up in your feed aggregator.

• Yesterday I was lamenting the avocado green stove, dark brown cabinets, yellow counter top or the country hearts wallpaper that the building owner is reluctant to update or replace. Then I thought having my very own kitchen in my very own house. How lovely that would be, I thought. Then I thought about how I would feel the very first time I dropped a quart of dye on the floor of my very own kitchen in my very own house and how much it could cost to replace.The roll-out linoleum in my current dismal apartment kitchen is older than I am. There are no worries about ruining it any more than previous tenants already ruined it. The total cost of replacing the linoleum if I did ruin it would be about $20. I still wish we could do something about the country hearts, though.

• I just realized that my browser's spellchecker is not working. My other toolbars have not been working, either. Anyone else having problems with the new Firefox browser?

• I am working on getting descriptions ready for the new yarns. They will hopefully be up on etsy this evening. Here is a preview:

1. Born on a Monday--Solomon Grundy, Born on Monday, Christened on Tuesday, Married on Wednesday, Took ill on Thursday, Worse on Friday, Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday: This is the end Of Solomon Grundy; 2. Brownies IAB--Doesn't it look like the colors of Target's Real Simple line? Ann thought it looked like Brownie colors, but "Brownies," she sez, "doesn't sound Dyeabolical enough."; 3. Hidden Tiger; 4. Firefly; 5. Luthor's Revenge; 6. Frogs IAB--I just can't let a joke dye die. This color and Rubiau are the results of the Themyscira recreation experiments (sounds diabolical....); 7. Rubiau; 8. Flowershop Inferno

Shop Preview

I'm trying not to say something embarassing like "Dude, check out the shiny!", but Dude! Check out the shiny. My partner-in-crime suggested a new colorway. He then stood helpfully over my shoulder and guided me with words like "smash it down" and "like it was crawling from a sewer". I am in love with the new colorway, even though I don't think it looks like it crawled from a sewer. I will unveil it later this week. Here's a hint--The inspiration for this colorway was born on a Monday.

Other colors going up this week include Hidden Tiger, Luthor's Revenge, Jennie, Flower Shop Inferno, Firefly, 2 attempts to recreate an early Themyscira that are both gorgeous and house favorites* even if it isn't quite what I was going for and a new colorway which reminds me of the Real Simple line at Target. Still searching for a name with that one.

*a pretentious way of saying I love them and may not part with them
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I have temporarily pulled "Can't Hit the Side of a..." tencel roving and the Twisted barberpole DK merino from this shop list. If you are interested in purchasing or seeing these, please let me know.

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[Edited to add: You can now follow updates to my etsy shop by subscribing to the RSS feed. Actually, you have always been able to but I may have possibly neglected to mention it for months now. Go me. ]

A day of thanks

• Many thanks to Lime and Violet's Adminnie for listing Dyeabolical Yarns as the Etsy Site of the Day today.
• I am thankful for our knitting community. A few years ago I went out searching for people to just knit with. I never thought that I would find a sense of community. We have something powerful and wonderful here, don't we?
  
• Many thanks to semperfiona and lavendergrrl for this gorgeous scarf. I love it. I love it. I love it.
  

They alternated a skein of Trekking XXl with a very early batch of my own Themyscira colorway. Take a look at these three samples:

The top one is drastically different than the bottom one. Part of the difference is simply the variations that happen in each dye lot. Sometimes there are different chemicals in the water that affect the dye saturation, the fiber affects the uptake, sometimes it is cooked a little longer, sometimes a little more acid is used, sometimes a little less, sometimes I add a little more red or a little less. All of these tiny variations make each skein truly a unique skein. However, I should be able to recognize my own colorway, right? This is the second time I have encountered Themyscira in the wild and not recognized it immediately. Both times the skeins were from the first or second batch of Themyscira. I haven't kept track but I think I am somewhere near my fortieth batch. What happened? They are the same dyes, same saturation, same yarn, same pattern of dye application. I wouldn't call them drastically different, but different enough I think I could sell them as different yarns. The newer batches are more clearly red, green, turquoise and gold. The older batch was all shades in between.

I think I can point to two reasons. I recall at one time Themyscira being an unholy mess to dye and swearing on my dye pots never to dye it again. A yarn store owner who shall remain nameless (her name rhymes with candy) kicked my ass until I agreed to dye the color again. I modified the dye pattern so it wasn't quite as unholy a mess. That makes some difference. The second difference is that I didn't write down the dye recipe until after that ass kicking. Did you hear that noise just now? It kind of sounded like my mom yelling at me for not writing important things down. I hate it when she's right.

Picture of me

The rules:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search. [For questions 1-11 I went to the advanced search option and restricted results to only images with Creative Commons licenses.]
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into the mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.


[Attributions and source pictures are on the photo's flickr page]

Jazzed

Guess what? I am in the Etsy Main Showcase today. I am jazzed that I thought to go to Etsy right as the showcase spots went on sale. I am pretty jazzed that two people have already added me as a favorite and it is only 8:45 Sunday morning.

I am hoping this Etsy Showcase thig will be big--that I will be discovered by the biggest bloggers, authors and podcastsers of all time and that they make me filthy rich beyond my wildest dreams by giving Dyeabolical Yarns all the free advertising it can handle. I will settle for making enough sales to cover the cost of a new printer, though. My workhorse LaserJet 4 Plus died quietly sometime Friday. We did exactly what Uncle George would want us to do with our economic stimulus payment and went out and bought a new printer rather than saving it, investing it, fixing my car, paying bills or getting ahead. I could really use that printer money back.

You think I would be more grateful to have Uncle George's money, but I am certain Uncey George is in league with that devil Murphy. The alliance between George and Murphy means that the arrival of that stimulus check made my printer die. If George would have kept his money to himself rather than bankrupting the treasury department and taking on more debt than this country can ever pay, and if he would stop making unholy alliances then perhaps my LaserJet 4 Plus would still be alive.

Did I just blame George Bush for making my 20 year old printer die? Why yes, I believe I did.

Interviewing myself

Can one be both inspired and unmotivated at the same time? What about motivated and uninspired? I have been swinging between both for the past few weeks. I'm knee deep in knitter's block, writer's block and a touch of dyer's block. The only way to get over it is bite the pre-formatted bullets and just post before writing becomes a Daunting Task.

I am not sure what to write about, so I thought about what I want to know about other bloggers. I want to know what is on their minds, what is going on in their lives, what is on their needles and what inspires them. If I want to know that about others, why do I think that no one would want to know the same thing about me? If you are feeling blog blocked, feel free to steal these questions or add your own.

• Why do I feel compelled to write a blog post? I like feeling connected to my community. I like keeping track of what is going on in my fiber life. I use this blog to stay connected with customers. I get so much enjoyment from others blogs that I feel like I need to give back.

• What is on your needles? Nothing requiring a purl stitch. I am not sure how that happened, but I have a garter stitch baby blanket on the needles, the cast-off sweater which is knit in the round, and the same plain socks I have had on the needles for months.

• I love, love, love, love, love the baby blanket. I don't have any babies in mind. One day I was suddenly gripped by a need to knit a baby blanket and I felt some urgency about it. A few days later I found the perfect pattern--lightening bolts! It is called Revolution by Pat Ashford and Steve Plummer. Their website is a little hard to navigate, but you can buy their patterns through Ravelry. No affiliation, yadda yadda. Just a fan. :) How great would this be for a cute little kid bent on world domination? It kind of reminds me of Starbuck's mandala, too. [Oooh! Someone made a Starbuck's mandala hat pattern. BSG geeks unite!] Someone had better have a baby soon or Scott might claim this as his own.
  

• What are you reading? I just finished Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment. It was okay. I hear really wonderful things about Pratchett's Discworld series, but I don't think it is my thing. I started Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist yesterday. It is a collection of Wilder's columns she wrote for the Missouri Ruralist. What is it about Laura Ingalls Wilder that makes us want to run off to Southern Missouri and play farm girl?
  

• What about knitting books? I got a great deal on More Big Girl Knits, Knitting America and KnitKnit. I have petted KnitKnit and drooled over the pictures. I loves me some avant-garde art. I have flipped through the books, but I haven't sat down and read them yet. I still need to post my Romantic Knits review. Short form: I love it.
  

• Spinning anything? Yeah! I have abandoned all hope of fixing my Babe. It is such a simple little problem and I am flumoxed about how to fix it. Instead I fixed Scott's Ashford Traditional by adding an 88-cent spring and Scott fixed the tendency of the wheel to fall off by simply rearranging a few washers and nuts. I spun a bobbin of junk roving to get the feel for it. Then I broke out some new bobbins and started spinning some superwash merino I got from Aija of zer0 marker and sockpr0n fame. I am going to try to spin up the buffalo roving Annie brought me last year next. I was going to wait to get my spindles back, but I have given up hope that I will ever see them again.
  

• How is that dye pot doing? Ah, the self-promotion part. I have had to make peace with promoting my yarn line. No one is going to do it for me. It still makes me feel squicky inside. Again I remind myself that it isn't squicky when other people are proud of what they have done and promote the products in their blogs, so why am I letting an attack of low-self esteem get to me? I AM proud of my product and I am in charge of it. Why wouldn't I talk about it. Ask me that question again.

• How is that dye pot doing? GOOD! Roving and 2 batches of sock yarn have emerged this week and last.
  
• I did a batch of jewel toned superwash merino roving that I love.
  

• The first batch of sock yarns was a special request for more quasi-kettled dyed muted colors . They aren't my kind of colors but I have had very good response to them. There are a few left in my etsy store. (link at right).
  

• The second batch of sock yarn was with a new line of dye. I liked the results, but it doesn't have the brilliance of the dye lines I currently use. They are pretty,. I like them. These new dyes won't replace what I currently use, but I can see them being used together in new colorways, such as Primaries, Secondaries and Unity pictured below.

• That vampire dream in your last post was weird. Did I ever tell you about the one where inanimate objects were infected with the zombie virus? The blender infected my sweater-in-progress and I had to fend off my own silk sweater while it tried to eat my brains.
  

Can't sleep. Cheesy groan-worthy dreams will get me.

It is too quiet to sleep. It is so quiet that the neighbor's dog's bells startled me as he came in from his night time walk. Why does one need an albino pit bull in a one-bedroom apartment, anyway? Best probably to not ask. It is so quiet that I can here my other neighbor's a/c unit running. There are no cars, no insects buzzing and no car stereo noise drifting in from outside. Even Scott and the cats are breathing quietly. The only noise is my a/c which keeps kicking on even though I turned it all the way up and wrapped myself in a clapotis because I am freezing.

I finally got out of bed and decided to post one of the two entries I have written this week. One is a book review of Romantic Hand Knits. The other is a dream I had that isn't fiber related at all, but amusing (to me) nonetheless. Dream now, book review later?

In the last few week Scott and I have watched 28 Days Later, Angel season 1, Return of the Jedi and part of the only season of The Dresden Files. I finished listening to World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War audiobook highly recommended, and started listening to Christopher Moore's You Suck: A Love Story, a funny novel about a newly turned teenage vampire. With a steady diet of vampires, zombies, demons and bad special effects is it any wonder I had the following dream earlier this week?

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I was lost in dream thoughts when a badly dressed vampire snuck up on me. He wasn't any danger. The dream party I had just been at had rules and one of the rules is that vamps weren't allowed to feed outside the boundaries of the party zone. Why any of us would go to a party with vampires to begin with is beyond my conscious mind. We were nearly to the parking lot so I wasn't worried. Anyway, I had mace, my car keys and a stake right there in my hands just in case.

We sat down on the steps leading to the parking lot. talked about the life of a vampire and how lonely it is even though he has all these other vampire friends. I shared some of my own life with the vampire. We talked for a long time. We gradually inched closer to each other, brushing our hands against each other, feeling sparks of attraction and connection that shouldn't be there.

Our faces were close to each other. I wanted to kiss him. The rational part of my brain thought that I had the upper hand should he decided to try and suck my blood instead of deliver a passionate kiss. I had my car keys, a stake and sunlight just a few feet away. A stray thought wondered if I did kiss him if it would be one of those kisses. You know, THOSE kisses. The kind of kiss that makes you forget that one of you is a vampire and the other is meat.

I was lost in thought about what kissing this suddenly-a-lot-cuter vampire Could Be when I dropped my car keys. They fell on the other side of the vampire. I went to reach across the vampire to reach for them and that's when I remembered one important piece of advice--Never cross a vampire. Oh, so that's what that means. Never cross over a vampire. Something is always lost in translation.

I reached across him anyway, picked up my keys and gave him a kiss of the maybe-if-i-kiss-you-you'll-forget-i-just-crossed-over-you variety. The vampire pulled back and looked at me, his face was warm and pink. He touched his lips. "I still have to kill you, you know. You crossed me."

"I crossed over you. I was just reaching for my keys," I replied.

"I don't have a choice. It is the rule of our people. We have to kill those who cross us." He brushed my hair back and kissed my cheek.

"But I thought that meant something else, not literally crossing in front of you," I protested. I wondered briefly if I might be dreaming and how funny this would be if I didn't die.

His tone suddenly changed, "Meh, rules. Whatcha gonna do about it? Better get this over with, eh? Gimme your neck, love." I should have known then that this vampire I just had a just shared spit with was an idiot. I chose to ignore the fact my vamp had suddenly lost his charming and captivating accent and fallen in to his native dialect of colloquial I Leaned This Accent From the BBC and Speak This Way To Impress My Friends at Vampire Conventions.

I asked the vampire to at least make it a passionate, skilled and sensual blood sucking like in the movies. I figured if I was going to get bitten anyway I might as well make it good and prolonged. A long bloodletting would give me more chance to stake the guy. Plus, let's be honest, if I was going to die some physical contact would be nice even if it was with a bloodsucking fiend. A hug is a hug, right?

He looked deep in to my eyes, wrapped his long fingers around my torso and pulled me to him. I bared my neck and slyly slid the stake I had set down up my sleeve. The vampire leaned in and like a cheap romance novel breathed hot breath on my neck while a breeze stirred our hair and a crow cawed in the distance. He kissed my pulse, opened wide and then clamped down like a damn bumbling fool. This vamp had no finesse whatsoever. He slurped my blood and lapped at it like a junkie.

I pushed him away. "What are you doing," I asked. "What is wrong with you? Is this what sensual means to you? Is this the way you make a connection with someone else? I could be anyone. You just came at me like I was just any kill. I offered up my life, my soul to you and you come at me like I was interchangeable with any victim. This could have been special and you turn it in to something cheap you could have with anyone. This could have been special and YOU CAME AT ME LIKE I WAS THE LAST CHICKEN WING AT THE BARBECUE!"

The vamp pulled back. "Guy troubles," he asked? I plopped down on the step and threw the stake down.

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

"Me, too."

"I still have to kill you."

"Not if I kill you first," I replied.

"You don't mean it."

"Neither do you," I said pretty sure I had this vamp's number and sorry I hadn't seen through him earlier.

"You are dribbling blood. Here, let me clean that up for you."

"Ew! Stop licking me! Stop it! I said stop! Don't make me....oh that's it!" I grabbed his head and pushed away. The vamp kept trying to charge at me, his jaws snapping. I won't confirm this 100% but he might have been making nomnomnom noises. I put my knee in his chest and recited a line from a movie I am ashamed to admit I have memorized.

Then like a bad Twilight Zone rip-off, the scene faded to us on the couch both human and watching a movie. I reached across him for the popcorn. He grabbed my wrist and delivered the corniest one-liner my dream mind has ever come up with, "Never cross a vampire, love."