When one's sister comes to visit and brings about 300 g of undyed sock wool with her, what can one do but pull the gloves on and make some colours?

The first lot I made a mega long skein up and down the corridor, but I really should have been mindful of keeping the tension even so it didn't snarl up in the vinegar soak. But I didn't, and it did. But anyhow, it dyed up great using the food colouring in the vaccola jars in the microwave method, inspired by Happy Spider. But still, how delicious does this look?and it turned out great, we managed to have it dyed, cooled, dried, untangled and wound up before my sister went home.

I also wanted to give my $3 fete crock-pot-especially-for-dyeing-yarns-and-fibres a go, and also experiment with using procion dye and acid on protien fibre.

First, put vinegar soaked skein in crock pot.
Look at that potential!

Then mix up some dyes. My sister requested purple, red and black. Allrighty then!
mmm, rich red! rich purple!
and black black. Black is a bugger to dye with, since getting a nice dark black is a supreme pain in the rrrrrrs. But it worked this time! Hooray for Drimarene K Jet Black.


Now to get the syringes ready for squirting the colours,mwahahahaha.and the pics stop there, folks :( why? I have no idea. I was doing the colour and my sister was taking some photos, but we got so excited about the dye that we forgot about the photos! Sorry, blog followers. Sometimes the process is more important than the documenting :) But the yarn turned out great, and the crock pot did a wonderful job. I can't wait to do some more heh heh heh.

Being school holidays, and since we were invited, myself and Monkeys two, three and four headed West to visit our friends for a few days. Of course it was relaxing and fun and the kids had a huge time playing and yahooing and singing singstar and playing guitar hero. I also had a huge time, eating and driving and chatting and singing singstar and playing guitar hero.

We went for a day trip to Wagga Wagga, and among other things, visited the little zoo there. Given I had driven 600km in two days with 3 or 6 kids in the car (different passengers for different les of the trip), on not much sleep, the pics are lacklustre. But evidence nevertheless.

Behold some donkeysand a scraggly looking peacockand a grumpy looking gooseAnd not to go all Bill Henderson with nekkid kids on the internets, I just want to post this shot of a happy kid with a nakey bum enjoying the warm western sunshine :)

Thanks so much to my dear Bilby, who sent me some goodies in our latest round of Carrier Bilby. Carrier Bilby is kind of like Secret Santa, but for carriers, and is a very cool swap indeedy.

This round I got sent a slingified wrapwhich I think is made from a Storchenwiege Vicky, dyed yellow, and then slingified. Noice.

I was also sent a crocheted bilby
and me getting this bilby is either a bit freaky, or more likely a sign that great minds think alike or that crocheter babywearers are pretty cool, since I also bought the exact same pattern from Crochetroo, and crocheted a bilby for my Bilby recipient! But the bummer is that I did not have time to take a photo before I had to wrap it and send it away, since my parcel was already running late. I have seen a photo, but since the swap was supposed to be secret, I can't ask her for permission to post her photos else the jig would be up. So imagine two bilbies in this post, mine being made from light grey alpacca yarn from the clearance table at Cassidy's. I so love the clearance table at Cassidy's!

My parcel arrived today, thanks so much Bilby :)

My brain seems to be a bit melty. I will try to back fill this little blog with some of the things I have been up to lately. So many things. But not blogging, obviously...