What a Week!

Ahhh, I think I'm almost better. For the major part of the last week I've been really drained. Not really super sick, just congested and exhausted. It got to the point on Saturday that I was nauseated so I came home from work after half a day. By that point in the day the "have tos" were done for the day and it was just helping customers for the rest of the day. I still have a headache, and am still tired, but at least I'm functioning again. I'm not a person that normally takes naps, but boy I have been lately.

The above is the explaination as to why the fish tank was not set up until today and why I did not dye any of the delicious silk that arrived on Monday. I did get the large tank set up with the water, substrate, filter and heater going. That is getting the cycling started but I'll need to get some plants to be able to put in the CO2 injecter and really get things moving. Right now it's just a tank of gravel as far as anyone's concerned. Abbie is terribly excited about the tanks being put back up. She keeps checking the 20 gallon at the bottom of the tank stand for progress, but the substrate didn't come in on the last order, so it will need to be reordered before I can set up. Wait till she figures out the top one's going and she can get on the counter behind it! lol I'm sure there will be kitty pics of that!

I started to knit a Fan and Feather scarf out of the silk that I completed this week. The yarn knits wonderfully but didn't really like the pattern. lol. I switched over to the Lambs Pride Wool that was rejecting the Children of Lir Stole and, low and behold, happy yarn....happy knitter. So...the silk is going into the frog pond and a little voice is telling me to look at my crochete patterns again...wasn't there SOMETHING that I wanted to crochete that was really lacey? Hmmmm. I'll find it eventually.

I've almost completed the second bobbin of Melissa Purple which means I can ply up and take measurements. The felted clog pattern was ordered and should arrive soon. Good thing too because I need to know when I can stop spinning purple fluff and move on. Unfortuanately the best information I could find without the pattern said I'd need between 300 and 800 yards. Well I don't know about you....but that's a chunck of spinning time. I'm trying not to spin up too much more than necessary as I have three other people who want the clogs too and they all have different color preferences. (Good thing, cause I could get sick of purple really quick!) Although I have an idea for the left over "purples" dog hair that I won't go into now. If the dyeing experiment with the black dye went ok today I'll have something really special in about 2 weeks.

Speaking of the dyeing experiment today...I'll have to explain. I really wanted to see how true a black I could dye the white wool today. Now I normally approach these things with a "let's see what we get" attitude, but to be honest, I was hoping for black. lol. Looks pretty purple to me right now...but the rinse and dry isn't done. If it turns out purple, it's fine...it will still work for the rest of the experiment. It's only ironic because it looks like solid purple....you know...the solid purple I tried to get a month or two ago? lmao.

Ok, and I'm not dyeing ANY silk until I see how today's experiment comes out. Then I'll go with my best results before dyeing any silk. No silk will be hurt in any way during any experiments on my watch! Tomorrow there should be fiber drying....maybe some pics. Not sure though.