Blessings to Mothers Everywhere

The older I get, the more I understand - the way it's supposed to happen, right? Even though I'm a dog mother and not a person mother, I have so much more compassion these days for the pains and sorrows and joys that mothers go through. Had a lovely dinner last night with Dear Friend Sandi, her husband Don, daughter Rhonda and friend Ann in celebration. Ann is a dog mother too. She rescued a German Shepherd named Addie who is a gentle, sweet, and timid soul. We all love to see her and give her pats whenever we can. I'm always shocked at anyone who can abuse an animal and/or abandon it, but thank God there are many of us who want to make up for it and do what healing we can.


For anyone who doesn't follow the Mason Dixon blog, several weeks ago Kay lost her beloved husband Peter after a sudden illness. People are knitting squares for Afghans for Afghans in Peter's memory as Kay's preference rather than getting knitting or donations directly. It's a charity she's long publicized and supported. People on Ravelry are all over this. Today, Kay wrote an entry and showed a few of the afghans that people at her LYS have already made up. Between the entry and the comments, I suggest you have your Kleenex box close to your computer before you click on.


I seem less adverse to admitting my own foibles on the blog these days. Took me a week to unpack from dye day since I bring a lot of the stoves and bits of equipment that come in useful. That means the things I dyed sat in Ziploc bags for a week, germinating. Fortunately, it didn't hurt them - so yesterday was wash and rinse, wash and rinse, rinse some more until the water finally ran clear. Since most of us are still new to how little dye it actually takes to make a dye bath give good color, sometimes the rinsing goes on forever. When everything works right, the dye gets all sucked up by the wool and the water is almost clear - this is called "exhausting" the dye bath. You can always add more dye if you need it so this works well. Sometimes we get over-zealous with our amounts (I'm certainly not exempting myself from this description) and two or three people dye things in the remnants of the dye bath and it still could take more!


So here are my pretties drying on the front porch. There is nothing so wonderful as a washer to spin out the water once the fiber has been washed and rinsed. Dries overnight! I dyed a bunch of silk bells (caps?) and a bunch of shawl blanks of fingering-weight Rambouillet wool that Rebecca of Both Twins knit up for me on my knitting machine. I originally meant to paint these up in different colors like sock blanks but it never seemed to happen, so I went for solid colors and hope to use them up sort of like Kauni yarn, knitting a pattern with two of the contrasting colors in a sort of faux-isle technique. Couldn't find a really good description of what Faux Isle means. Many people use one plain color and one variegated color so they never strand with more than those two yarns, and the color changes come from the variegated yarn changing through the pattern. Perhaps I'd better get or dye some variegated yarn in the same wait to try this. Would that be project No. 872? Probably.


Had a chance to see Michele of Toots LeBlanc and her mother Jeriene for a few minutes today - she was in town for Mother's Day. Since I believe my selling-at-craft-fair days are pretty much over, I've been trading her glass display heads for her booth. They show off her hat patterns made from her wonderful rare-breed yarn nicely. She says her booth - which she runs with brother Carl, will be at OFF, Black Sheep, Sock Summit, and SOAR this year. She also has a full-time job so this truly amazes me. The Yarn Harlot talked about making a shawl with one of her best-known yarns a month or so back. It's a fingering-weight merino/angora blend and is really lovely. It's only now after knitting for the last 14 years or so (late bloomer here) that I'm starting to enjoy knitting wool that is naturally colored. This is a result of spinning in Judith MacKenzie's classes and seeing Michele's blends and how wonderful the natural beastie colors are. I thought all the naturals would be way too blah, but it's just like your Mama said - go with neutrals and then accent with colors - everything goes farther and it's a sophisticated look. Don't see myself as sophisticated since I principally shop at Value Village and eBay for the truly discounted, but I guess I could let a little sophistication sneak in.