It’s pretty,

but I want it darker, so I’m going to re-dye the alpaca. It’s light, and much lighter when I open it up, there are even white spots. It’s amazing how things lighten when they dry. Even the wool wasn’t as dark as it looked like it was going to be. I’m not complaining there. Just observing.

Hayden is coming to visit on Monday. We’re all very excited.

Update-

Ok, ok. Now that I’m thinking about it, and looking at the photo, if I dye the silks really dark colors, like navy and superdark purple, that could have some nice contrast. With maybe a bit of a lighter blue.

What to do? What to do?

Still wet, but really pretty. I made the alpaca lighter on purpose. There’s more dye if needed, to darken it. Here’s a mediocre picture of my drying rack under fluorescent lights.

What colors would you add for tweed? I have some blues. Greens could also be nice. Multiple colors?

I thought Clark was all better, then he woke me up at 2 am to tell me that he’d thrown up again. We went to the doctor this morning, and he said that in kids Clark’s age, a stomach bug can increase lactose sensitivity until they build back their enzymes. Or something.

So my son who prefers cheese to any other food on the planet has to go lactose free for a week. This is NOT going to be fun. When we had to take Abby lactose free at age 3 1/2, she was very aware of the fact that some foods made her stomach hurt really bad and you couldn’t have force fed her things like ice cream, cake, pizza… She was almost scared of it.

Clark isn’t going to be so reasonable. So I’m gearing up for being screamed at a lot this week. Even more than I normally am, having a 2 year old. I’m feeling dour.

I keep saying that today is the day I will dye. And it keeps not happening.

I’m really going to try to dye a big pot of purple things today. Once it’s dyed and I see what shade I ended up with, I’ll decide on colors for the tweedy bits that’ll go into it.

Perhaps, since this is a very boring post, and since I don’t have any pictures, I’ll update this post throughout the day with dye progress and photos. That’ll get me going. I’m off to weigh and soak fibers.

1st update-

So here we are soaking 2 1/2 pounds of fibers

and I really don’t know how it’s going to turn out. I’m using a dye that I haven’t sampled, but being completely tired of sampling, I’m just going for it. It’s difficult to commit my beautiful, hand selected, aligned and washed locks of wool to something. As ridiculous as it sounds, I’d be more comfortable just hoarding it in all its fleecy goodness and never doing anything with it. At this point, the point of dyeing, I have so much time and care into my wool already… it’s…. just hard to do something that could completely mess it up, and further, leave me with less wool. Which just means I could go and get more, and that certainly has appeal.

I just have to get over myself. I’m a lunatic.

Moving on, here’s a paper towel with some dye dripped on it.

My wool will not be that dark, most likely. I was going to add some red to it, but it looked a bit reddish already so I’ll leave it alone for now. I can overdye if need be. Perhaps we’ll want it a little more blue?

Update #2-

Here I am in my dye apron, waiting for my wool to soak, and for the laundry to be ready to rotate, practicing my scales. The camera is balanced on my music stand and I think this is the first time I’ve used the timer.

Oh, and in looking at the photo, I must say that the words all over the apron ARE cooking words that I see now were unfortunately placed. That’s kind of embarrassing.

Update #3-

Here we are, not up to full heat yet.

I put it on 3 and went downstairs to exercise for an hour, since Clark was asleep. It barely got warm, so I’ve turned it up.

And look! It’s three freaking different colors! I’m cursed. But still think it’ll card up nicely. It had better.

Update #4-

As usual, the alpaca dyed up much nicer.

I used too much dye on the wool I think. It’ll be interesting to see how it looks washed and dry.

And that’s it for me today. The kids are home now and are in costume, dancing around to the Fantasia soundtrack. I need to corral them into homework and figure out dinner.

I’m so sick. I’ve been caring for kids with a stomach bug since Tuesday, and it finally got me. I have serious tummy cramps, back pain, a headache, and no energy at all. I can’t even sit up unsupported.

I want to die.

BUT, I’ve been looking forward to posting Health Group, so here I am.

I’m kind of stuck between two philosophies. My sister says to eat as little as possible and exercise as much as possible. It’s worked great for her, she feels good and has dropped a lot of weight. Calorie King says to eat 1550 calories per day plus whatever I burn exercising. My nurse practitioner sister-in-law that works in a medical weight loss clinic says to make sure I’m netting at least 1200-1500 calories per day. I’m glad Nate read the email too, because I didn’t pick up on the “netting” part. He brought it up.

An hour of elliptical according to both my elliptical and Calorie King burns 600 calories. I’ve been netting around 1000-1100 calories all week. I did an hour of elliptical on Tuesday, 2 hours on Wednesday (one in the morning, one in the evening), an hour each on Thursday and Friday.

So I’ve burned 3000 calories in exercise this week! Woo-hoo. I WOULD be on it again today, but with this flu, there’s no way. I’m lucky I got yesterday in.

Let me sing the praises of the elliptical for a bit. I’ve probably already done that here, but I’m not over it yet. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it! It’s no impact, so my ankle, knee, and hip are fine, unlike on the treadmill. It burns twice as many calories as I’m able to on the treadmill. I have to be careful not to overdo it on the elliptical. It’s easy to. I’m getting into a rhythm finally, but at first I really had to keep track of my heartrate because I was working too hard without feeling it ’til I’d suddenly get really dizzy.

On my Octane, I’m working on Level 4 at a speed of 35-40. It claims I’m traveling 7 miles in an hour (I have a hard time believing that). I tried to bump it up to Level 5 (there are 20 levels of resistance) but that bothered my knee a little bit, and I really don’t want to injure myself.

So, I’ve lost 4 pounds since Wednesday. It’s possible that being sick has contributed, but really, I just got sick late last night, I haven’t lost any fluids, and I haven’t missed a meal yet, so I really don’t think that’s it.

I’m making sure to get my vitamins, fish oil, and glucosamine daily, and I’m trying to make sure I get enough protein (that’s really hard if you don’t like eating meat every meal. Even WITH the protein powder). I’m drinking a ton of water to flush stuff out. So I’m trying to be healthy and not stupid.

Still 4 pounds in 3 days is a LOT. We’ll see how it goes. I feel optimistic.

Christmas has been coming down in stages. A lot of it came down the day after Christmas, but the tree and garlands, bows, nutcrackers, and a few other things remained. Clark and I spend this morning de-ornamenting the tree.

The beaded scarf is coming along swimmingly. I’m 3/4 done with it, and like it a lot.

It feels really, really, really good around my neck, being alpaca and having the weight of the glass beads. Very luxurious.

Clark was my available model today for mom’s shawl.

It’s very pretty. Angel Lace Shawl by Evelyn Clark. Size 5 bamboo needle. 1 ball + of Misti Alpaca laceweight yarn. 15 pattern repeats. Copper core, iridescent seed beads in champagne and light blue for the edging. I have a good portion of the second ball left, so I’m making a little neck scarf with lots of colorful beads.

I’m basing the pattern off of the Bejeweled Cats Paw shrug in A Gathering Of Lace (book). I had to monkey with it a little bit. First of all, there’s an errata for the chart online, and I’m not knitting it in the round, and I’m not pre-stringing the beads, and I didn’t like how they were falling in the pattern (probably because I wasn’t pre-stringing. I bet that changes the look) so I moved them over a stitch.

The knit on icord selvedge is nice and tidy and the whole thing will look really, really pretty when blocked and open. It’s a fun little knit. The thought of having a partial skein of yellow laceweight in my stash for the rest of eternity was getting to me, and I thought that if I didn’t use up it now, I never would.

We sort of (well, totally) skipped 4 weeks of Health Group. But, it’s January now! It’s cliche time for fitness goals. And here we are! Woo hoo!

I worked out on my elliptical 3 times this past week. Twice for an hour and once for 45 minutes because I was squeezing it into a busy day. I love that thing. I’m very excited about it, and it’s going to be great!

How ’bout you? Any goals? Ready to conquer?

A few years ago my friend Katie and I were shooting for 50 pounds lost in a year. I don’t remember if it was Katie or Nate who suggested that when we lose 50 pounds, we can go on a cruise. I neither lost it nor cruised, but that could be a fun thing to shoot for again.

I feel really good about it. I think I can get into shape and be healthy this year. Why not? My body is aching and paining in random places and it makes me feel old. I’m gonna kick it in the butt.

How’s that for cliche January speak? I’m game. Anyone else?

Living somewhere as temperate as Seattle makes snow a novelty, particularly snow that sticks around for more than half a day. So taking pictures of it didn’t get old, even when being snowed in did.

Nate and the kids built a 6 foot wall of snow bricks.

and this is our entryway (see the purple and orange I’ve talked about? It has to go at some point, but I don’t have any color ideas), full of boots and coats.

So, I mentioned yesterday that I was doing some last minute Christmas knitting. I’d decided to make use of the pretty yellow Misti Alpaca laceweight purchased for my mom a year or so ago, and started an Angle Lace Shawl like the one I knit for Abby this spring. Well, it takes a LOT longer to knit than the Flower Basket, I now know. I’ve knit a Flower Basket in 16 hours, and while I thought the Angel would take longer, I also thought I’d have a shot at getting it done before Christmas.

Mom’s home now, and her shawl isn’t. But I’m starting the edging now, and we’ve chosen the beads.

That’s my pond, mostly iced over and having evidence of a visit from the raccoons.

Well, it was a busy week. We were snowed in Saturday to Saturday, and with my mom and brother visiting it was a lot of bodies/noise/activity in the house but a lot of fun. Here’s a collection of pictures from Christmas Eve. Under normal circumstances, we’d have been at my in-laws for a large re-enactment of the Christmas Story, but the snow kept us in for a very pleasant, low-key evening that started with some naps.

There was also some pretend napping

but that didn’t last long.

After dinner, we played Apples to Apples, a really fun party game while watching cars try unsuccessfully to climb the hill in front of our house.

After the kids were nestled, all snug in their beds, Nate and Sam watched Fred Claus in the basement while mom and I made bean bags for my juggling brother for Christmas. It was a last minute idea that came together really well with that fantastic flannel I bought last year.

To top it all off, it seems we were good this year because Santa came.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday/week. I’ve been knitting close to non-stop in an attempt to finish my mom’s Christmas gift. (I’m so close. I’ll post more tomorrow). I’m anxious to get Christmas all wrapped up and cleaned up and posted because I’m SO ready to move on to the new year and conquer!