Craziness.

So, I had a great birthday. I partied with my friends, and my family sent me cool things. My mom sent me an Eddie Bauer gift cert which I'll probably spend on Friday, and my aunt sent me an Amazon gift cert, with which I have ordered: Spin It : Making Yarn from Scratch, Yarns to Dye For : Creating Self-Patterning Yarns for Knitting, and World of Knitted Toys. They're on their way.

I've ordered some 'dye-your-own' from knitpicks, and some acid dyes from Dharma... I've been encouraged by the girls in my knit group to dye yarn, so... I guess I will. I already dye cotton & silk with fiber-reactive dyes. I want to dye yarn anyway, so if I have a built-in market, all the better. :)

I made some progress yesterday with Ben's monster feet (from snbn), and finished the first one. I'm still not sure I did it right, but I figure as long as I'm consistantly wrong, they'll turn out similarly. Basically, the instructions were for short rows wrap & turns, but they worked too many stitches. ie, you start at one side of your work, work 28 sts, w&t, then slip one, and work 28 sts. um... your instructions for w&t show putting the stitch back on the lefthand needle. That means the instructions for that short row are either wrong (because it works 29 sts when you only have 28) or your w&t instructions are wrong (and you wrap, turn, and slip the first st when you work the next row). Ugh. And the errata for that pattern wasn't any help with that, either. Although it did include 'oh yeah, you need to k all the way across to the other side before starting this other bit', which WAS useful.

So I cast on for the other monster foot last night, and worked a few rows. And grumbled about the twist being worked into the Lamb's Pride Bulky. I have to spin the ball of yarn every row. I probably should've wound it again, but LPB comes with the easy-to-find center-pull end. I thought it would play nice, like the green one did, but oh no. Yes, Ben's monster feet are green and purple. Purple soles with green tops with green Fizz. I kinda like using GIANT BULKY yarn with the itty-bitty Fizz. Even if the monster feet look like I could put my dog in them now.

Speaking of the dog, everyone seemed to enjoy her company on Friday night. She was very entertaining, and she loves people. Although she did keep trying to drink Anne's mudslide, and the reaction to my telling her NO in my "bad dog" voice was kinda funny. Shibas are the small dog for people who don't like small dogs. Although almost everyone else in the knit group has big dogs (GSD's, Huskies, Samoyeds, larger mutts), they all fawned over Miss PrancyPants. :)