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.