Work has been a nightmare ball of stress. It’s no fun to think about let alone write about, but these past few weeks have just been putting one fire after another out, trying to keep others’ morale up, and hoping I’m not forgetting anything terribly important. I feel like I can’t even plan things, because I have no idea when the higher-ups are going to immediately need me to drop everything and do this other thing.
On Monday, I was at the gynecologist, just sitting on the table, naked except for a paper robe, and I started thinking about work shit, which caused me to kind of sit there in a frazzled daze, so much so that when the doctor came in to do the exam, she scared the shit out of me. Like, how do you lose track of being naked in an office building and that means that someone is going to come into the room?
But I had.
Anyway, last night, I put the tea-dyed yarn I didn’t like in a mordant bath. My first time using mordant. Everything went fine. The alum didn’t make some toxic fume that immediately gave me black lung. The pot that my dad found for me is really easy to heat up slowly and it holds heat really well, which is great and pretty much the definition of what you need a pot to do for dyeing.
I don’t really know how to tell if it worked. But everything seemed to happen like the books say it should.
So, I’m planning on solar dying these little skeins, just going out this weekend and finding various things in the yard (or up on Lloyd, due to the mowing of my road), stuffing them and the yarn in a jar, and letting the sun work on it.
Plus, I want to do some Queen Anne’s Lace this weekend, because, if they are going to start mowing regularly (getting a city councilperson has done wonders for improving city services out here), I might not get another shot at it.
And I am ready to move on the poke berries the instant they go black.
So, I’m working on the afghan, thinking about all this stuff and I started feeling this weird flipping in my belly. My first thought was “Have I forgotten something?” and then “Am I having a heart attack?” Then, finally, no, I realize, I’m excited.
I’m feeling pleasant excitement and anticipation about this wool dyeing project.
And it’s been so long that I didn’t recognize the feeling.
Tiny Cat Pants 
I really love that purple one.
It’s super easy! I learned it from the Chemknits woman on YouTube, but you just take four packets of grape Kool-aid and put them in a pot of water. You bring the water up to a simmer and then you push a skein of dry wool into the bath. I don’t understand why it doesn’t felt, but it doesn’t. But the red dye in the Kool-aid has an easier time striking on the wool so it strikes first and then, by the time you convince all of the yarn to get in the water, only the blue is left in the bath. And since it’s Kool-aid and it’s in super hot water, even the blue strikes fairly quickly. I would say this skein was in the bath less than five minutes before the bath water was clear. I left it in there to cool, but I don’t think that did anything but make it easier for me to handle.
That’s awesome. I think I can guess why no felting… wool felts not just from heat, but also (mostly) from agitation. And some, like BFL, doesn’t like felting then…you have to shock it by dropping it onto a hard surface. You’re totally right that fiber arts stuff is witchy.