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Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Picture-Palooza!!!

Our two gold snails.... and our black one

These guys obviously need to be supervised because we now have about 10 little tiny snails crawling around the tank. Should we be dropping birth control into the water with the fish food each morning?


This little guy is a source of pride for us. He was born in the tank (we didn't even know we were pregnant!) and every morning we would look to see if we could find him. He grew so quickly, and is almost as big as some of our tetras (he's a baby Fancy Mollie) so we no longer worry about him being eaten. He's about 8 months old.


This is a lousy shot of some gorgeous stitch markers Planet Joni RAOKed me!
And onto the dying escapade:

Handspun Manx Loghtan/Angora blend

It's a pretty wheat-y kind of color, but I wanted a dark green.
And so I dyed it in the sink!

I used Rit dye, "Dark Green" and followed instructions...

Does this look "Dark Green" to you???


Here's the not-really-Dark-Green hat -
I cast on at the beginning of Knit Knite and this is what I had at the end!

What looked like this at noon Sunday,
Looked like this as the clock ran out on the Superbowl!
You can't really see it there, but I'm not crazy with the heel. I did a reverse Dutch Heel, which is one that I generally like, but in the self striping yarn I felt it really threw the whole stripey-pattern off... I'll probably end up ripping all the way back and doing an afterthought heel, but I wanted to show my knitting students the difference between self-striping yarn and varigated, so no ripping before Saturday!
(lousy shot on the colors, sorry, it was the best the camera would do... here's a better look... for me, that ball is all about the green)

As Picture-Palooza comes to a close, we finish with some shots of one of the loves of my life:

"hmm.... I could play Olive Bowl, or I could play Chase The Tail"

If you look very closely, you can see the tongue hanging out. I'm not sure why it amuses me so much when cats forget to pull their tongues back in, but there you have it. It does.

9 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

At least it *is* green...

I love seeing the tip of that little pink tongue, too. It's always so cute to see a cat with his tongue out. :)

Judy H.

3:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think RIT dye only works on plant fibers (like cotton).
Natalie

3:22 PM  
Blogger Thermalgal said...

Gold snails! My tank at work has a gold snail in it. I call him Speedy. He lives with my angel fish, Killer and some humungo aquatic plants that I've been growing from bulbs I got at Wal-mart.

3:26 PM  
Blogger Carolyn said...

Hmm... brown + dark green = light grey? Now that's interesting. How did it end up being lighter than it started out? It's pretty, though.

3:52 PM  
Blogger Amie said...

I have no idea how it happened! It's a nice grey (Judy - it looks green to you? I want your monitor! It's very blue-steel grey!) but it's certainly not green!

4:37 PM  
Blogger vi said...

Calpurrnia does that tongue hanging out thing.... it makes them look like kittens!!!
I am so happy to see your fish tank Amie, we used to have one and I loved it.
now for the green
get some Wiltons paste colors and vinegar
disolve the color in the vinegar... put the colored vinegar in a large gallon pickle jar
put the yarn in the vinegar.....
now heat it all up
(in the oven started cold) I heat it to 175, leave it an hour, turn OFF the oven.....
the house stinks of vinegar and wet sheep but leave it to cool over night.....
by that time the vinegar should be clear again
the yarn having taken up all the color
wash the yarn and you should be ok
vi

7:21 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

As to the Manx Loughton and Angora! Is it really soft and if so...is it just because of the Angora? I've spun some ML without blending it with anything else and found it to be rather scratchy although I've seen it advertised as soft. Just trying to figure out if my sample was perhaps unusual for the ML...don't want to give it a bad name etc.

Loved the cat, I get that look after a Mocho MooLatte.

4:03 AM  
Blogger Carol said...

So which way did he go -- Olive Bowl or Chase-the-Tail? Our cats do the tongue thing too. What's just as funny (IMHO) is when they get the upper lip stuck on a tooth and have that James Dean sneer thing going.

9:37 AM  
Blogger CrazyFiberLady said...

I too love seeing the kitty tongue sticking out. I had one cat that did this all the time.

As for RIT? Interesting results. I wouldn't have expected the lighter color overdying on a grey yarn, but yes because it is grey you do get a color beyond the dye color. Actually RIT is designed with two parts. One part is for the protein fibers (wool,mohair) and the other is for the cellulose fibers (cotton, flax). Unless you are dyeing both types of fibers with the same batch of dye, you'll never completely exhaust the color. Half will get washed down the drain. Nice results though!

8:46 PM  

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