Crochet Bowls, Again

Simply, I cannot get enough kale crisps, cashews, chocolate bites, or crochet bowls.  Luckily, the bowls have no calories, albeit they are addictive once one gets cotton yarns in hand. These bowls I make all the time from a pattern similar to this one on Ravelry, holding contrasting colors of yarns together while doing a single crochet.

Seed packets from friend Carol, who encourages good gardening habits for Mesa Manor.

Mr. Bear, above, was a gift from Auntie to Julie while in hospital.

Several have been given away, and did not have the opportunity to display themselves to my camera before going off to new homes.

These were made in February of this year:

Hand Dying Wool

Remember that gorgeous hand spun wool John sent me from Australia? We played Scrabble online the other day and he said he had dyed some of his wool.  He was kind enough to forward me a web site he had used in dying wool.  The instructions were easy to decipher, so I decided to dye up some of the wool he sent using food coloring.

Basically, this is it: Soak wool in 1 quart water per100 grams wool, and a solution of vinegar water: 4 Tbsp. vinegar to one quart water, and soak for an hour.  While soaking, I mixed up colors to dye the wool teal and lime green.

For Teal: 2 TBSP Green food coloring, 4 TBSP Blue food coloring

For Lime Green: 3 TBSP Yellow food coloring, 1 TBSP Green food coloring

Website Australian Organic Wool says:

Soak skein in tepid water with 4 Tbsp of vinegar per quart of water for an hour before dyeing. 

Mix up your colors then add the water and the dyeing solution to the pot. Add the yarn and heat until it is just below boiling point – steam will be coming off the surface of the dye bath.  Continue to simmer and stir gently until all the color in the pot has been absorbed by the wool and the remaining water is clear. This will take less than 10 minutes.

Trouble shooting tip: If your yarn will not take the dye you may be using wool that is too coarse. Coarse wools only absorb small amounts of color. The best wool for dying is fine and superfine classes of wool.  

Allow to cool then pour yarn into colander and rinse with tap water until all residue colour has run out. Dry out of direct sunlight.

 So... Here is the first attempt at dyeing a lime green along with a darker green, hand painted on plastic by the "pour method;" I liked it.

Then on to dyeing a second skein of wool. This one I wanted a teal color, but the first attempt at achieving teal blue resulted in too light a shade, and looked a little muddy; note the right hand skein of sickly blue:

Back to the dye pot it went, and simmered for 40 minutes, not the original ten minutes that was suggested in the instructions.  This is the resulting color blue, which in my humble estimation is much prettier, and more vibrant:

Now I am anxious to knit these two colors into a striped shawl.  It might take a while, but as my brother says, "what's time to a hog or a  (insert your favorite word here)?"  Here, here, what's time to a hog or a knitter?

Red Letter Day - NuMotion

Today is a Big Adventure for Julie. At 10 AM a new semi-electric wheelchair will be delivered to her at Mesa Manor.  It is to have wheels powered by an electrical battery that will give acceleration when pushed, with both low and high settings.  Even for a bariatric person, it should be able to go up inclines with a manual wheel turn.  It is a NuMotion chair, sold and fitted to her by a fellow who worked at the Para Olympics in prior times, pairing para athletes with specially adapted wheelchairs. A picture of the new electric blue chair will be included later. It costs as much as a small used car, a kings' ransom in my mind, but all for the cause to help Julie have a more functioning life. Her borrowed chair is unwieldy.

And speaking of Julie, I have set up a blog for her, As The Wheels Turn.  She is not enthused about this endeavor, but I will continue pushing for her to write about things that interest her.  She did manage to dictate her own "profile" for the blog.  When she sends me an email about a topic that piques her interest, that will be the clue for a new post.  I would dearly love to see if she gets any traffic to her site, but sitemeter has been down for over a month, and visits cannot be tracked through them.  Does anyone know of any gizmo that will track blog visit sites by location?  Please comment, if so.  Google only tracks visits by number in their stats.

Every morning, Julie and I stay outdoors at the facility, and she often eats her lunch on a tray alfresco before I leave for home.  So far, no other resident has been at the gazebo table, as one-to-one staff attendance is mandated outdoors.  And our lack of other patient visits to the gazebo may be because we are calling the gazebo our own, and I spread out all my doings on the tabletop.

A few weeks ago I was cutting down the front bushes at the nursing home and was told to cease and desist because of liability reasons; that incident must have come up in their weekly staff meeting since the summarial dismissal to QUIT making the facility more attractive was reversed.  Several days ago I was told by The Powers That Be that I could officially be a volunteer at the Genesis owned facility.  Official in their corporate minds must include coming under the umbrella of their liability insurance policy.  So, I duly underwent the first of two tuberculosis tests, and was deemed negative for the dread disease yesterday, but still they need to inject me for a second screening at the end of the week. It is a good thing they are allowing me to volunteer, because Saturday I planted several containers with geraniums and petunias, watered all the plants in cement containers, and weeded. Yesterday I painted one of the geranium boxes red because it looked like it had not had any attention in ten years. Surely the Powers are grateful for all this gardening attention?

This evening the husband and I are hosting a writers' class pot luck with fellow students from Sandy Dorr's spring writing group here in Grand Junction.  I am making sangria, red, for the festive occasion.  Pictures tomorrow if I remember to take snapshots.  The weather has been cloudy and rainy and since this is to be an outdoor soiree, we may have to be indoors, defeating the purpose of the outdoor summertime theme.

Post Script: the party did take place outside, although we received more rain while eating and the six of us scurried under cover so our combined sweetness did not dissolve into sugar.