Pretty String

 So I did my first venture into yarn dying on the stove. I didn't use Jaquard dyes, which are the more professional version, partially because they're toxic so to use them it's really a good idea to have pots and stuff that are just dedicated to their use, and since I wasn't sure how I'd like doing it... so that wasn't a great idea at the time.

 I over dyed one skein (colored over color) and dyed two others. ((I'd post the information but the tags were 'vanished' by the yarn Mafia ((the kids))

 We used food coloring and vinegar, and put it in a pot on the stove, since using food coloring requires acid (the vinegar) and heat (the stove) to set.

 We learned a couple important things: One is that yarn, especially for over dying, sucks up food coloring like it's going out of style, especially if you want a rich, dark color. Second we discovered why you're supposed to make sure a skein is tied in several places before soaking it, because my first one came only tied in one place, I didn't add more ties... and it's going to be a 'Please untangle this' project for the husband.

 I'll show you some pics later when I finish knitting up the green one ((assuming I actually have enough for the shawlette I'm trying to use it for.)) But here's everything!

Iron Man (Yarn) to the rescue!

So if no one figured it out from my earlier grumpy post, I was having a bad day, including being forwarded a bullshit pseudoscience article on why using moisturizer was going to give me Diabetes ((Certain people feel that the correct response to being angry is to indirectly wish harm on others by sending them "Scientific" proof that it will DEFINITELY (kindofmaybeintotallyunrelatedcircumstanceswithpoorevidence) HAPPEN. It's obnoxious, childish and vile. And maybe slightly insane.

 ANYWAY: Went out to water the garden, and decided to check the mailbox just in case. Lo and Behold, the first shipment for Buena Suerte's "Shawarma" Yarn club had arrived!

 The Color Genius Billionaire Playboy Philanthropist is as fantastic as it's namesake, bright sporty red with hints of Gold on a flashy, silky, luxurious yarn.

Buena Suerte is by the way a kick ass dyer and a fun and mouthy nerd. It's her first yarn club and I hope it's as successful for her as this yarn is gorgeous.

Ripened

 It's been crazy hot recently, ninety degree days and the lot (this has inspired my mom to send me for the seventh or eighth time since I showed it to her years ago, to mail me an article on how they discovered that the world was actually hotter around the Middle Ages than it was for a while afterward.)
 Our garden is doing fabulous, which is fun. Our Corn is right on track and the strawberry plants are doing well... now we'd be doing fabulous if the goddamn Chipmunk would stop stealing the strawberries. Oh I mean the poooor little cute rodent, it's not like there's not wild strawberries, an apple tree we don't eat from, or any other food for him... OH WAIT. THERE TOTALLY ARE. GET OUT OF MY STRAWBERRIES YOU LITTLE SHIT.

 Bean has been enjoying the fruit season, though particularly he's enjoying his share of nice cold fruit from the fridge stuffed in a little strainer bag so he can nom it up without choking himself. It's kind of hilarious watching him cover himself with blueberry juice, and he enjoys chomping frozen mango chunks as a tasty version of a teether. Mango does unfortunately seem to give him super powers...

 Well anyway it makes him wired.

 Otherwise things have been fairly normal. The spot where I brilliantly managed to step on a bee, barefoot is healing fine ((other than deciding to send me into a frenzy of trying to make it stop itching this morning, but that's settled. I just need to leave it alone.))

 Otherwise the other thing I need to play leave-it-alone on is parenting groups. sometimes I find them useful, but it seems more often than not they tend to be a judgy, preachy lot, half of whom I want to smack with something, even on Ravelry and I love hanging out on Ravelry.

 I'm sorry but I just don't see it as a sign of the end times or bad parenting to use:

 1: Disposable diapers over cloth
 2: Strollers instead of Slings ((especially with larger munchkins who have reached spine damaging weights.))
 3: Formula
 4: Food that was not 100% organic with no sugar, salt, or the given OMGBADTHINGOFTHEHOUR.

 Especially number four. One lady was loosing it because day care let her (no allergy or sensitivity) kid have an frozen juice bar. ((Juice, not sugar water.)), another was loosing it because her kid might have ingested -sugar- in a fruit smoothie... one of them was raging because their kid ate a gold fish cracker... another melting down because their kid ate some Jiff instead of freshly-ground-no-salt-no-sugar-no-flavor Peanutbutter...

 I mean lets face it. Sooner or later, we're all going to eat something that's not a green veggie or drippy yogurt that comes in the flavor of 'sour and kind of gross'. Like as not we'll eat a processed hamburger or french fry at least once in our life. We'll consume meat we weren't accustomed to giving the odd carrot to, and god help us, we will probably LIKE the taste of salt, sugar, and fat in our food.

 The world will not end. We will not suffer a instant stroke, we will probably not develop diabetes, or pack on a few stone for sighing longingly at a candy bar. Hell, a few seconds research will tell us that lots of people with weight issues aren't helped much, if at all, by totally cutting everything out and that dieting just makes a vicious cycle. We're learning a lot about people's predisposition toward heaviness and how much of it is genetic and not just food.

 This doesn't make the desire to eat healthy bad, not at all, but at the point where you're creating an virtual religious rage filled inquisition over other people choosing to eat, and let their kids eat, the occasional McMeal, you've crossed a fucking line.
 If you are accusing a mom of feeding her kid poison because they're drinking formula or eating a chicken nugget, YOU HAVE CROSSED A LINE.
 If you are comparing using a stroller or eating a piece of chocolate to neglect and abuse: YOU HAVE CROSSED THE LINE.

 All around us women are wondering why we can't seem to get ahead or manage to get together to do something about politics that keep cropping up with interesting ways to attack women's rights, or to stop abuse, and I can't help think that it Sure as fuck couldn't hurt if we gave ourselves a good hard smack in the head and stop fighting ourselves. How are we supposed to get ahead as a whole if we're so obsessed and filled with righteous rage over try to out superior each other over really stupid shit?

 Also I'm going to change my password now because APPARENTLY Someone got into this account. I think I know who. HI! I CHANGED MY PASSWORD!

Yarn Enabler

 My husband is a total knitting enabler... which is a wonderful thing I think. Better that than being married to someone who goes up a tree at the word 'yarn' or 'knitting'.
 We actually got to go by the yarn store today (no kids along to keep out of everything), and he's wandering around behind me making recommendations "I'd go with that green rather than those colors..." nudging me toward books "See anything you like?" and making suggestions. "You should check out these outdoor knitters chairs."
 Me: "Aren't they just fold out chairs?"
 Him: "No see they've got all these storage things on the side and this thing here..." (points to little fold out tray to set your knitting on.)
 Me: ooohhhhhh.
 Him: *laughs*

And he was even cool with me getting a project bag. I saw some with sheep that I thought were cute, but not 'gotta have', then realized they had one with a ram on it on nice neutral fabric and was just crazy cute.

Me: Ooh, I like him... and I think he's the only one...
Me: ... semi-jokingly cuddles bag.
Him: ^_^ Get it!

I also picked up some food coloring to maybe try dying yarn with. I debated putting it back after dyeing the potential color combos on the back of the packages, because I don't HAVE yarn to color, and had further conversation with him.
 "They had undyed yarn at (The Yarn Store). I thought you weren't interested."
 Me: Ooh, no actually I just didn't see it.
 Him: Well get the dye, it'll keep. ^_^


I LOVE THIS GUY. He's amazing in so many ways. Also I think he's secretly and sneakily trying to make me feel less guilty about enjoying my hobby.

 ...I might be side eyeing some bare yarn on knit-picks even as we speak.

Bean

Bean is getting bigger whether or not I care to admit it, and this does involve leaning to feed himself...

Yeah, tell me you didn't see that coming.

((EDIT: Updated: Actually Ravelry has over 2,000,000 members. I checked after I wrote.))

 There was some rather exciting drama unfolding over at Ravelry recently after the General Council of the United States Olympic Committee sent a snarky note to the owners of Rav a note saying that the people of Ravelry were not allowed to refer to the non profit, Olympic support knit along as "Ravelymics"

 This particular event has been going on yearly for some time, and consists of people getting together to watch the Olympics, support the athletes, and do their own version of going that extra mile by trying to say, knit a whole sweater in two weeks, or similar intense projects. It's always been in good fun and a way for people to try and get into the spirit of things, but apparently that was an issue this year since the General Council sent that note, which included this very well thought out turn of phrase.

 "We believe using the name “Ravelympics” for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work." 

Yeah. Yeah they said that.   I thought it was classy too. This is almost on par with them deciding that they could pull the carpet on the group who got permission to hand sew pillows for the athletes, put in the work and man hours, then got told OOP. SORRY. WE CHANGED OUR MINDS. NO CAN DO. HANDMADE STUFF IS JUST SO TACKY IT CHEAPENS THE EXPERIENCE. ((And the McDonalds sponsorship makes it just look so cool.))


 They took a lot of egg on the face for that too, so you'd have thought they'd have started running their choices through a few more filters, but apparently not. Nope, they decided that a craft a long, which has brought people to watch who otherwise had no interest in the Olympics, was not only theoretically copyright infringement and 'diluting the brand' but actually insulting.

 Is this a good time to mention that Ravelry has something like five million members at this point? And that a majority of them got REALLY. REALLY FUCKING MAD?

 Anyway. The Council issued another statement, which I think boiled down to "Oops, sorry." And it sounds like the Ravelympics will continue as planned, along with an entirely half assed apology. Here it is folks. 


“As a follow-up to our previous statement on this subject, we would again like to apologize to the members of the Ravelry community. While we stand by our obligation to protect the marks and terms associated with the Olympic and Paralympic Movements in the United States, we sincerely regret the use of insensitive terms in relation to the actions of a group that was clearly not intending to denigrate or disrespect the Olympic Movement. We hope you’ll accept this apology and continue to support the Olympic Games.”

 Apparently also the original statement was over the signature of someone who was supposedly an intern... so apparently they're trying to say that they just let their interns send out rude statements willy nilly. That seems a bit bogus since letting an person in training send out LEGAL DOCUMENTS without reviewing them is just BEGGING for a world of self inflicted pain. That's like swinging a baseball bat at your knee just to see what will happen. The answer is pretty much always 'something bad'. In this case it's a few million still really annoyed knitters, many of which have now been left with a big nasty taste in their mouth and a lack of desire to have anything to do with the actual Olympics.

 Personally I'm just damned impressed that this is the second time that these guys have taken a big PR hit and apparently haven't learned much. Maybe we'll see something a bit classier down the road... but I think my money is on "Gigantic PR train wreck and the McLympic Burger with bacon and extra cheese."

A Wild Pixiemama visits!

 We had a visitor yesterday! Well technically we've been planning it for a little while, though I kind of half wonder if Tilmani actually noticed since he always forgets I write almost everything down on the calendar, which he never looks at in spite of it being on the wall at head height and huge.  Apparently he's not the only person in the universe who does this, but it is kind of funny.

 Anyway, PixieMama is a friend from college, who I pretty much haven't seen since her daughter was about Beans age. Her daughter is now... 12 I think? I'm probably getting that wrong.

 We've talked since then, just not gotten together, so we finally arranged for her to drop in on her way back from jumping through hoops in the Surrogacy Circus. ((She's getting ready to be a Surrogate mom for the second time, which is totally badass of her and you can check her out in my sidebar links under Adventures in Surrogacy.))

 But yeah, she visited and it was a blast! I spent far too much time apologizing, which for me is kind of normal but I'm working on it, we had take out pizza, and the kids thought she was AMAZING.
 She even put up with me yarn geeking. ((I did refrain from displaying the ENTIRE stash... just a significant chunk of it.)) and she picked some yarn she liked for a cowl that I'm going to make her. She picked out the "Hologram Moth" colorway from Sanguine Gryphon, and we found some cool sort of earthy browny-purpley-bronzy beads that actually look really good with it, since the yarn while mostly green has hints of a similar browny-purply-bronze. All in all great because I wasn't actually sure what to do with either, until we arrived at that project and they just sorta clicked. Sometimes going with your gut on craft stuff just works out.

PixieMama's future Cowl

 On an equally exciting note: Bean is now mobile, so batten down the hatches everyone! He's not officially crawling but he's scooting all over the place, and will occasionally pause and heft himself mostly into the crawl position, then decide that this is too frustrating and go back to scooting along. I'm watching him belly-scoot around and check out his brothers big plastic blocks, which is sorta funny, because MiniMonster is checking out Bean's play seat and spinning the rattles and mirrors, so basically they're both playing with each others toys. The grass is always greener and all that!

 PixieMama: the kids thought you were cooler than ice cream, and we'd love to see you any time!