Today’s Fortune: Your flair for the creative takes an important place in your life.

I guess Confucious is right about that, but I think my flair for fun takes a more important place in my life. I wish Confucious would start giving me some fortunes about fun instead of creativity. We have been creative enough for a while.

Last week, Mom was finishing up projects for Ravelympics. She got some nice yarn from our friend Galeu for Christmas. Galeu is my Auntie Gale, and she lives in California. A lot of my Aunties live in California. I hope I can go see them someday, and get to meet all those happy cows, too. Auntie Gale sent Mom some Lorna’s Laces Swirl DK, which is merino wool wrapped with silk. Mom decided she wanted to dye it for the Downhill Dying event in Ravelympics. This is what it looked like before she started:

Me and Dharma wanted to help. We like winning gold medals. Mom said we could be in the before and after pictures, and we could help choose colors, but we could not dye the yarn, because dye is permanent. She said not even Woolite would get dye out. She said she would have to use bleach if we got some on us.

We have a geezer monkey here at our house who is named Bleach. That is because we think he got bleached a long time ago, before he came to live with us. Mom makes him the “chaperone” when she has to work. That means he is the boss of me and Dharma. Dad took a picture of Bleach a while back. We think the reason he is so cranky is probably because of the bleach. We don’t want to look like Bleach, so we did not have a problem staying away from the dye.

Mom uses some stuff called “acid dyes” for dying her yarns.  She mixes them up in a big stainless steel pot on the stove, and adds vinegar to the dye water. This is called “vat dying” or “kettle dying.”  Dad does not like it when Mom is dying yarn.  He says that it makes the house smell like pickled sheep.

Me and Dharma chose a mix of two colors called Russet and Crimson for these skeins.  It turned out very nice.  We are calling the color “Candy Girl.”   Dharma likes these a lot.  Mom says she hopes Dharma will give them back, because Mom likes them too.

While we were at it, we decided to dye some Blue Sky Alpaca yarn to send as a birthday present to one of my Ravelry Aunties. This yarn is very, very soft. It is like the yarn we got when we had our visit to the alpaca farm. It was so soft, I wanted to keep it, but Mom said it was a gift, so I had to be content with winning a Ravelympics medal for it.

Me and Dharma chose a mix of Spruce and Teal for these skeins.  They turned out to be a very nice dark green!  We decided to call this color “Juniper.”

Mom got other yarn for Christmas that needed dying, too.  Auntie Pam sent her some things called “flats.”  That is where the yarn is already knitted into a big rectangle, and you dye it by painting a picture on it with the dye.  Mom decided to try two different mountain scenes.  The first one was called “Mountain Sunset.”

It didn’t look much like mountains.  It mostly just looked like uneven wobbly stripes.  Mom decided to try it again, and added some gelatin to the dye to keep it from bleeding.  This one was called “Mountain Twilight.”  It didn’t look much like mountains, either.  Mom decided she was much better at painting murals on walls with paint than painting mountains on yarn with dye.

We weren’t too crazy about either one of those until Mom let us wind them into cakes, but when she did, we thought they were great!!  They will knit into awesome socks with really long stripey color changes.  They turned out so good, we decided to send them as birthday presents to some of our other Aunties!!

Me and Dharma decided to rename them, too.  One of the Aunties will be getting the “Sunset Sushi!”

And another Auntie will be getting the “Twilight Sushi!”  We mailed all of the birthday presents this morning.  We hope they like them!

Me and Dharma had a fine time helping Mom with Ravelympics, but we are glad that it is over, because we are ready to have some real fun.

I sure hope Confucious gets the hint.

Today’s Vocabulary Words: Chaperone, acid dyes, vat dying, kettle dying, flats