Monday, May 08, 2006

Inspiration and Fried Onions


oops, I planned on uploading the Indian Blanket flowers to load first (and no, it's not my pic) These flowers are seen a lot here and I just love them and thought maybe they would make for pretty yarn. So with orange, lemonade (I double strength and with a blurp of orange to intensify it) and tropical punch and black cherry kool aid all mixed up I started out. Obviously the orange won out. And the black cherry disappeared LOL. It's not really dry yet (lots of rain here this weekend so everything is taking longer...even the laundry) but I'm thinking about over dying some of the orange. What ya think? Oh and I dyed it in the crock pot. Way easy and no drips all over the place, but maybe that's what caused the other colors to be eaten. As I looped it in there, I was careful to put like colors on top of each other. I've also thought about soaking it, and then instead of diluting the kool aid, just sprinkling colors on top of each other.

As for the fried onions, Saturday was Burger Day here. The town is noted for it's fried-onion burgers and sure...why not, have a festival. Would have been nicer if it hadn't been quite cool and drizzly but still had a good turn out considering. They fry up a 750 lb burger with 150 lbs of onions. The whole town smells like cooking onions! And, after it's cooked, they cut it up and give it away. There was also the opportunity to just buy a burger ( I had 2...they are small) or cheese fries, or cotton candy or strawberry crepes and other treats. They had a big craft tent but nothing called my name (except food LOL) and a car show and a motorcycle show and lots of things for kids to do as well as entertainment. In the car show there was a really old (I've forgotten the year) restored cream colored Rolls Royce. Oh be still my heart!!! It was gorgeous and I think I could get used to riding in it :-)

Once I got home and warmed up and cleansed of onion scent, it was off to the grocery and time to give the dog a haircut. I'm not skilled at this, but she seems to enjoy most of it and it needed to happen. She's so goofy. Once I got her down from the table, she ran around like a spring lamb. Got that all cleaned it up and called it a day.

Yesterday was supposed to be yard work if the sun ever came out and dried the weeds a bit. But my back was NOT cooperating so it was dyeing afternoon and lots of heating pad. I did discover that I can lie on my side and knit...very slowly but hey. I lack about 4 little rows and will be ready to graft. Odd thing tho, this sock, at least the foot part is huge. I counted and I have the right amount of stitches...maybe it's from trying it on so much. I hope so. The ankle part is still fine, it's just the arch down. LOL more house socks???

OK off to do morning stuff!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You really captured the colors of the flowers dead on! That is a great match!

Ann said...

I love the flowers and love the yarn. Soooooooooooo pretty. You really did a great job, I am very impressed and I may borrow that color combination myself.

Anonymous said...

wow, way to dye! I love that color combo.
-secret pal

~France said...

Beautiful match Murph!!

Susan said...

Thanks y'all. It's growing on me. I hang all the drying yarn on the shower curtain rod. So every time I take a bath I get to move it aside.

~France said...

Not to mention you have a nice rainbow to see while you lay back and soak! LOL

Susan said...

Exactly, Paris...bathroom art! gotta love it!

Susan said...

Hi Sere! btw I love saying your name!

I didn't spin it. I wish I could spin, maybe someday. It's Knitpicks Dye-Your-Own sock yarn.

I soaked it in a tepid water and vinegar..enough vinegar to make the kitchen smell like salad LOL.

Then, with the koolaid colors mixed up rather strongly (I think I used two packs to a cup of hot water), I spread out the long skein on my counter with plastic sheet underneath. Actually I use one of those plastic table cloths cut in half. I put the colors on in stripes across the yarn skein..not longways. Dang I should have taken pics.
They were probably about 3"wide with a tiny bit of white in between so hopefully the colors wouldn't completely merge. I used syringes but foam paint brushes work and so do squirt bottles like you use for hair color or ketchup :-)I just happened to have syringes.

Then, I put the first part of the skein into the crock pot kinda twisting it around the bottom. Then I just continued to coil the yarn on top of itself. I tried to put orange on top of orange, yellow on top of yellow etc. Then turned it on high and left it for 3 hours. Shazamm I had dyed yarn..no water or color left in the pot. I let it cool and then rinsed it well. It smelled strongly like orange LOL so I gave it a bath with just a bit of Dawn dish soap. and hung it to dry.

I like this method better than my attempts at stove top w/steamer method because it seemed that I either tried to burn up the pot or got too much water and it got into the yarn.

I have one skein of undyed yarn here and am going to try it again this weekend but this time I am going to cut pieces of those plasticy crock pot liners and put between the stacks of spirals to see what happens. I have one of those round crockpots but have my garage sale friends on the lookout for one of those long ones.