The Yarner October 15, 2010
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Been fiddling around with pictures and paper to print ball bands for the hand dyed yarn I’m selling. I’m not convinced I have the best possible yet, but for now I’m satisfied:

ball bands

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The Yarner August 11, 2010
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I re-skeined the first batch of cotton today, and here’s how it turned out:

skeins

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27°C – showers

The Yarner August 10, 2010
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Humidity was up in the nineties again today. I hung my skeins out to dry anyway, but they’re still damp. The cotton took the dye really well, but on the wool (the four skeins in the back) it’s wasted. I’ll have to redye those skeins.

skeins

The gasman was here to change the meter, which makes me very happy, because I repeatedly had to call their emergency number for the old one when it smelled of gas in the vicinity. Hopefully that’s taken care of now.

And in other news my computer suddenly decided to lock me out this morning so that I was reduced to checking mails on the netbook, with no access to my files. The tiger did some open sesame trick, and now I’m back home, but he says he’s a little worried that he doesn’t really know what caused it. There’s a suspicious log entry that points to a small bug in the recently downloaded pattern font causing a domino effect. That kinda sucks, because I’d been hoping to use that, but of course it had to be deinstalled. Hrmph. Well, at least I have my computer back, and will watch with an eagle eye now if anything like that happens again or if it was really related to that font.

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I *was* going to paint the trellises today

The Yarner August 9, 2010
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I swear, I was. Only it was still a bit cloudy and humid today. Paint wouldn’t have dried well in this weather, right? Aaaaanyway, I had this whole lovely batch of fibre reactive dyes sitting there, waiting patiently to be tried out. And I acquired all these skeins of cotton on Thursday. Right? And besides, I’d been depriving myself of a good yarn dyeing spree ever since we started to tackle the basement. Things just came to a head today. I *had* to dye. Right? Right.

I had nine skeins of something like a fingering or light sport weight of cotton and one large skein of lace weight cotton. I thought I’d use up all my dye on them, but I had lots left over, so I ended up dyeing a handful of sock yarn skeins as well. (I also managed to spot dye the shirt I was wearing and my hands, even though I wore gloves.) So far, the colors look spectacular. If they look that good after the skeins have been rinsed, I’ll be extremely pleased. And I only have to wait until tomorrow to find out. *starts pacing the floor*

Dye stuff

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Spring has sprong

The Yarner March 3, 2010
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’twas a beautiful day today, mild, sth like +5C with sun and clouds. Big patches of grass are appearing between the snow banks. Unfortunately I had to go to the dentist, but nothing too bad.

Took the opportunity to hop over to the Lee Valley to pick up some replacement trays we’d ordered for our mini greenhouses, the Ikea to get some shelf brackets (these are for the bedroom, to install a window sill) and candles, and to the Michael’s to get some felt for the tiger’s dead fish hat (the felt’s for the eyes) and some pins for blocking. I also found a tie dye kit I couldn’t pass up. I want to try that for yarn painting, esp. the cotton that my acid dyes won’t work on. Mhmmm, now I can’t wait to get back to yarn dyeing. But first, more shelf staining.

At least I kicked the monkey off my chest and finished the frelling newsletter, and if my betas don’t find anything fantastically wrong with it, it goes public tomorrow. Someone remind me again why I volunteer for these things?

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