I just can't give it up!

The blog, that is! It's just plain ol' good clean fun to have a place that's all mine to talk about my stuff. And, I got a very nice comment asking me to please not stop. Even if you're the only one reading this, that's enough for me. Thank you so very very much!

Plus, I can't talk about dyeing yarn on Ravelry. At least not how I'd like to.

Today was busy. Heck, I've been busy for about 3 weeks. All 3 kids are in school now, 2 in soccer, and other little odd things too numerous to count. Work has been coming at me full speed too. Instead of my regular morning hours, I was spending most of every day at the computer working. I think every sock we own collectively as a family of 5 was in my room unfolded. Half the room was covered in clean laundry. I finally bit the bullet a couple days ago and COMPLETELY CAUGHT UP. Yes, you heard right. Go ahead and hate me. I'm caught up on laundry.

If it makes you feel any better, I'll have 5 loads to do by tomorrow evening. That's usually how it goes around here.

Work today got so irritating that I decided to dump out all my Wiltons Icing Dyes and throw some yarn in a pot. I crashed the stash and came up with one of the 6 skeins of Patons Classic Wool in Natural Marl that I've have for nearly a year and one lone skein of Winter White. So I went for it.



There wasn't much science involved here. I was hoping for brown with bits of burgundy. I ended up with something very similar to a result I've acheived before.



But I like it. The marl gives it an effect that I really like and the fact that I did not stir the yarn left areas with less dye. I like that too. Plus, one can never miss an opportunity to embarrass the middle school daughter when she comes home from school!



My second attempt with the Winter White is not achieving anything near the results I was hoping for. I wanted to make a medium-ish brown with bits of purple and teal. The brown diluted and the purple and teal both spread and diluted. I added more brown, then added more purple and teal. Then I gave up and started randomly dotting the surface with regular dropper style food coloring. Who knows what this one will look like, but I still have fun with the process. This is pretty accurate to what I'm seeing in the pot right now.



This is with the flash. Oh boy.



I think I've added so much dye that it isn't really going to exhaust anymore. I turned it off. I might turn it back on for a little bit more. Whatev'

I find the process of dyeing my own yarn mind-clearing and creative-juice-flow inducing. I like it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

I lost my ground beef!

I'm convinced I'm losing my mind. Perhaps it's just a delayed Monday reaction.

I started out by getting my last Amy's Tofu Scrambles Pocket Sandwich out of the big freezer. Love those! Got the toaster oven ready and thought I might as well give it 5 minutes to preheat. Left the frozen pocket on the counter and sat back down at my desk.

I'm working away like a busy little bee and reading a couple Ravelry posts to kill some dead network time. One gal mentioned that she'd been waiting a half hour for her coffee to brew and realized she'd never hit the button. OH MY GOSH!!!

My pocket sandwich was glistening and I was sheepish. I stuck it in the oven and set the timer lest I forget again. At the end, I gave it "5 more minutes" at a higher temp to get the crust really crispy. Who needs a timer for 5 minutes? Me. I got my brown and extremely crispy pocket out about 15 minutes later. After burning my tongue once, I had a completely delicious breakfast.

Then I lost my ground beef. No wait, first I found Stephanie O'Dea's fantastic blog: A Year of Crockpotting. This thing is a gold mine! Before I knew it, I'd exhausted a complete hour and the rest of my printer ink. I am inspired and excited.

THEN, I lost my ground beef. I was so excited about the recipes that I went searching for a pound to thaw. I looked everywhere. How many places could 10 pounds of hamburger from the giant Sam's Club sausage-roll of 90% lean really hide? Apparently the ice cream bucket hides many a forgotten frozen item. I also found a few cartons of some 10 month old Rich Whip. I hope it's still good. That's one of those things that I hadn't seen before in real life and when I did, I grabbed about a dozen cartons.

Another thing I can't find in real life anymore? Sorghum flour. At least not within 30 miles of my house and with gas prices this high, I'll pay the shipping to order it online. That's been my most heavily used flour since starting to use all of Carol Fenster's mixes and wouldn't you know it, when I start using it more, all the stores around me stop carrying it. Crud.

I'm thinking of - take that back, I'm going to take a new direction with my blog. For one thing, I don't think there were many people reading it anyway and for another, Ravelry completely satisfies my need to talk about and share pictures of my knitting and crocheting. I believe I'd like to turn my blog into more of a GFCF in Real Life kind of place where I can discuss my sucesses and failures with being a GFCF family and hopefully help others who might be just starting out. I may change this one, or I may abandon this one entirely and create a new one. That's probably what I'll do, but stay tuned.

That said, I hope you all have a wonderful day!