Mustard Seed Yarn Lab

May has been the busiest month ever!! Where do I start?

My little man turned 5 years old on May 12th and we had a small party for him. Here he is the morning of his birthday. A brand new 5 year old! (He loves randomly wearing gardening gloves. He thinks they make him look extra cool.)

He got some really great presents, but one of his favorites is this:

The next day was Mother’s Day, and we had a great dinner at Nana and Grandpa’s house. It was a gorgeous weekend, weather-wise, and a perfect Mother’s Day.

The next day I started my new full time job. I really like it! It’s complicated and harder than I had thought it would be, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it and work with really nice people. PATIENT people. It’s a good atmosphere. But I’m still having a hard time getting used to having a job outside of the house again. The days feel so much shorter, and life feels so much busier. I was only there 4 days before we took off and went to FL to see my mom and go to Epcot for Emmet’s birthday. The best part was that my brother Ricky, his wife and grandkids all came too…from CALIFORNIA! Every day was nothing but fun.

Emmet with Grandma:

The little cousins together…it’s hard to believe my brother is a GRANDPA!

And here’s my brother and mom waiting in line with the kids at Epcot:

Hope and Emmet struck up a special friendship. Emmet says he’s going to marry her someday.

Ricky, Sheree, and Emily and Hope…in Morocco!

We got a wheelchair for my mom while at Epcot, because she was worried she wouldn’t be able to handle all the walking. The kids LOVED it. My mom got to use the wheelchair maybe 30% of the time, and the kids took it over the rest of the day. Here we are at the end of the day…notice who’s in the wheelchair?

And this is us on our last morning at the Caribbean Beach Resort. Emmet took this picture:

The next weekend was a long weekend. Do you know why? Are you guessing Memorial Day? Nope! It was my birthday weekend. Some people think they get Monday off because of the national holiday, but it’s really because of my birthday. You’re welcome.

I threw myself a small BBQ and was joined by a few of my favorite people.

Here are Cooper and Emmet riding Emmet’s Gator. Cooper and Emmet were born one day apart.

My second night in the hospital, Mike went into the hospital kitchen to get me something, and came back and told me that there was some dude in there looking for a corkscrew because he’d just had a baby and he and his wife had a bottle of wine to open. I was very jealous, and joked around with Mike about finding their room and asking them to share their wine with us.  We met them again a few days later at the pediatrician’s office, when we were taking the boys for their first checkups. After a few more chance meetings, I finally asked for their phone number and made a date to hang out. It was the boys’ first playdate ever! 5 years later, the boys are still great buddies and love playing together.

Here is Tim and Maiya, Cooper’s dad and mom:

They also had another baby 2 years ago, and he’s the happiest, cutest little man I know. His name is Bode:

Wendy, Melissa and Evan were also in attendance at my gathering. They are not only my friends, they are my family. I have the greatest friends in the world.

Tomorrow I celebrate 7 years of being married to the love of my life. I hope for many more years with this wonderful guy:

It’s kind of a weird looking picture of both of us, but I like this one anyway. In real life, we’re each much more super-model-ish.  😉

I will post again soon, as I have many yarny things to show you AND something yarny-exciting to tell you! You’ll have to wait though…this is like a cliff hanger.

 

 

 

 

So, I had last Friday off, and I promised some pictures of what I did all day. I started off by unwrapping a pound of Alpaca/Merino wool.

Then I weighed it……

….separating it into 4oz balls:

Then I soaked it in a water/citric acid mix for 30 minutes:

And layed it out over Saran Wrap over a tupperware top:

The above picture is both of those balls you saw. So it’s 8oz layed out evenly, waiting for dye.

I squirt the dye onto the roving with squirt bottles or a syringe. Here it is half done…..

This Aplaca roving is about a quarter of the thickness of the usual roving I dye, and it was sooo much easier to get the dye spread evenly throughout the fiber.

After I apply about 2 colors, I have to drain the excess water into the sink, hence putting everything on top of a movable tupperware cover. For the one above, I wanted a mixture of earthy colors. It easily takes me an hour or more just applying dye….this thin roving went quickly as I didn’t have to struggle so badly to get the dye soaked through.   When complete, I pull up the Saran Wrap from the edges and just wrap it into a tube-like shape, place in a colander and steam it for 30 minutes in a large pot. Below you can see it cooling off outside:

The roving is wrapped in the colander at the bottom of the picture. The pot at the top contains different roving I dyed that same day in a different way.

I have a sad story about the roving at the top. But first, would you like to see how the Alpaca turned out?

The two on the left are the ones you have been looking at pictures of. You may be thinking it looks quite different than you expected…..me too! I am always surprised to see how different roving looks when it dries. It’s so much darker when wet, and misleading. But this time, I’m happy with the final product. I dyed the blueish-gray one the next day and I love them both. The Alpaca is super soft and fluffy, and I’m itching to spin them into yarn myself.

So, remember how I said I had a sad story about the other roving? Well, it started out a beautiful mix of Merino and silk…like melted butter. So soft and slippery and wonderful I think it was more fun to rub against your face than to actually spin. I’ve dyed it many times before, always in the way I showed you….laying it out, squirting the dye onto it, steaming it…but this time I had a better idea. This time I decided I might get more even distribution of color if I kettle dyed it, like I do the yarn.

I soaked it:

And then I dyed it in the pot, making mostly 2 different colors for this one:

Then I took the pot outside to completely cool down before rinsing:

Same thing with the other, which I decided to dye 3 different colorways, first starting with red and yellow/beige:

Then adding green and letting cool down:

And when they were done, I was extremely happy with the results. Squeaky, jump up and down happy with the results. I must embarrassingly admit, there was some patting myself on the back when I saw how beautiful these came out. Strong color, evenly spread throughout the thick roving….I really thought I had this down.

Lovely, no?

Well, I’m not completely sure, and I’ll be sure to bring them to my knitting group tonight to have the spinning experts check them out, but I’m pretty sure I felted them. MAYBE not the blue/green one, but I’m fairly sure the red/green one is useless. How? I don’t know!! I was so careful. I handle them gently. I don’t let them touch water colder than they are. I wait for them to completely cool down in their dyebath before I even think about rinsing. What went wrong??  I’ve never had this happen when I steam the roving. My bright idea didn’t turn out to be such a good idea after all. For now, I will go back to painting the roving and steaming it. I might try kettle dyeing it again sometime, but maybe not with such expensive roving.

I have more yarn to show you, including a couple specially requested skeins I dyed for an old friend, but this post is pretty long, so I’ll save that for another time.

 

 

 

 

Howdy everyone! Wanna see something soooo cool? Remember this?

This was the third roving I dyed. It’s a Merino and Silk mix and it was named Age of Aquarium, (a great name suggestion by Breida with a B). Well, one of the knitting/spinning geniuses I knit with on Sunday night, Deb, bought it from me and spun it into gorgeous yarn.

Isn’t that COOL!!?? I’m in love with it!

You too could spin yarn as lovely as this! Just go to my shop and buy some and spin it! See? Isn’t that easy? (Ok, maybe right at the moment is not the right time to be pushing roving sales, as I only have one left in the shop right now as I type this, but there are more coming soon. I promise! And the one that IS there is super fun.)