HAPPY COLORS!

I am trying to save up $700-1000 of emergency money. I have tried so many things and when ever I feel we are making progress something pops up! The reason for needing this money is for car repairs, home repairs, and emergencies. Rob is good at investing money but when the car breaks, a pipe leaks, or an appliance quits we have to wait several days to move investment money over to our bank account. Today our furnace quit. At this rate I might never be able to shop again. So deciding to use what I had I went searching for some dye. I pulled out some neon food colors a friend gave me a long time ago. I had so much fun!!! I made some deep purple, green apple, apricot, and sky blue. I didn't plan on using this yarn for anything but a few swatches so I went color crazy!

I have to say I forgot how much fun dying roving is! Even more fun than dying it is spinning it into some wild combos! I don't get to do it often because I hear a lot of talk about dye lot and repeating patterns in yarns from knitters and I can't get that when I use this method. I understand that is how some knitters likes yarn but I love the colored singles with all the different color changes along the way. My son Travis took a look at it when I had this amount spun...



He said to me "I like that yarn you're making for Demi's socks." I at first looked at him like he had 2 heads but after taking another look at my sample yarn I could see socks for Demi. I never planed to do anything with it but odd socks would be fun for Demi. Below you can see more color changes in the yarn.


When I got this far I had socks on the brain for my colorful toddler so I quit and wrapped it on the niddy noddy and gave it a soak. It is dripping dry right now.
I have never made socks for children. I have only ever made 3 socks. My first one was about the size needed for a 4 year old. I guess I will use that to scale it to size. I will let you all know how it turns out. My plan is to make a pair for Demi then spin the rest of fiber I have colored like this and offer it to a friend who has 2 small girls. I only dyed a few oz but I think it is enough for 4 children's socks. It has lots of pink, purples, and peach so I think it says little girls. It might knit up ugly and I will have to can the project but I am crossing my fingers and going to give it a try. I have a sock on my needles already so I will not get around to trying this any time soon.

Trying to blog again.

I am going to try to get back to blogging here again. I had a much harder time recovering from delivery than I expected. I am still not myself. I still have a bit of pain from the rip in my bladder that happened from my C-section. Baby Zee has had reflux. I keep telling myself her reflux isn't bad (just mild) but I don't think that is true. She spits up all over everyone many times a day. On her best days we have well over an hour of straight crying. It does seem to be getting a bit better but she is still gets lots of tummy aches and heartburn. I always thought reflux only happened with formula fed babies. Boy was I wrong!!. Some nights she will sleep and not wake up screaming in pain (she and I can get up to 6 hours of sleep once and a while). BUT the nights that happens are the ones that I sleep sitting up on the couch with her laying propped up on my chest. I feel like I am always very tired but life with a baby is a happy kind of tired. KWIM?

I am not sure what I wrote about last. My wonderful hubby took me to our local fiber fest just before baby Zehira was born. He bought me 1 pound of merino, 8 oz of some nice blue fiber, and an angora bunny! I decided to split my merino in 1/2 to make birthday presents for 2 of my friends who knit. That took me until 2 weeks ago to finish up (4 months)! I think I finished the first 1/2 back around Oct. But the other 1/2 took much longer. I don't think that my life was so busy that it had to take me so long to finish it. I kind of think sometimes I take my time spinning my fiber up because I am worried I will run out. I would like to think that I am a person who cares so much about my friends that running out of fiber wouldn't cross my mind. BUT if that was true why did I stretch out my last project until my hubby gave me more for Christmas? I am going to try to keep focused on my friends more this year and not be worry about running out of wool to spin. OK that is easy for me to say now because I have a 1 pound ball of merino fiber sitting in front of me. LOL! See the Christmas gift my hubby gave me! I think I might be able to get another pound in March. I guess I have no worries about running out of fiber for now.

I need to sew up some new diapers for Zee. She is quickly outgrowing the ones I made up before she was born. I will get to that in the next couple weeks.

OH! BIG NEWS! I learned to knit and I made a pair of socks! I am so excited! I always thought knitting socks would be very hard to learn. My children gave me a set of size 3 double pointed needles for my birthday (end of Dec) . I didn't want to try using them because dpns looked scary to me but the excited voices and looks my 2 yo and 7 yo gave me saying mommy now you can make socks like grandma does! I felt like I had to at least try (couldn't let them down). I am so happy I gave it a try! I had so much fun making my first pair! I see many more socks in my future! I am still at the beginner level knitter and I might not ever advance any because my dream was to learn to knit socks. Now that I can knit socks I don't know that I will ever try to learn anything else. Below is my first pair of socks. I only made ankle socks beacuse I was worried I would run out of yarn.

Other than spinning up that pound of wool I got from the fiber fest. I made some small baby things. I made a couple soakers and a few baby booties. This is my favorite pair.

I didn't use a pattern I just did my own thing in a size to fit her foot. LOL! They work well she doesn't kick them off. My soakers still need buttons on them. I have been using them with a snappy. I will take pictures after I take the 5 minutes to put buttons on them (they don't look nice with the snappy on the front).

My husband and son have been using the computer a lot playing games so I have been having a hard time getting much computer time. I hope to set up our old computer sometime in the next couple weeks. The computer can't run the games my husband plays but it will work for me to blog (I think). I hope when that is set up I will be able to get more computer time!

OH! I joined Ravelry. I signed up to join before Zee was born. I waited for my invite but by the time I got it I was either giving birth or recovering. Then the holidays hit and things got very busy. I went to accept my invitation and I had lost it!! I was happy to get another invitation right away and this time I accepted it as soon as I got it. I am a bit confused about what it is and how to use it. I am putting my projects in it. I think it is so nice being able to put a list on the computer of things I am working on. I think it will help me remember what I have planned. I have a bad habit of forgetting what I am working on. Things get busy and I often put things in a bag and tuck in a closet and forget about them. I then start something new a few weeks later. I think this is the perfect solution for me to keep on track! I don't have any patterns or friends on it yet. I don't belong to any groups. I hope to figure it out as I get some computer time to read and explore. I hope to run across a spinner and find out how they use it. I am not sure how to list my projects because often they are yarn. Not knitting just yarn for friends. KWIM? I signed up with the name schoolnsuch because I wanted to be able to remember my name. LOL

Well my baby is no longer happy being rocked in this office chair. I need to go walk her to sleep. I hope to be back soon.