I was clipping off the spent amaryllis flowers to try to get a good photo of the ones on the stalk still going, and, as I often do, got red dripping onto my hands.

Staining my hands. It took some scrubbing to wash it off.

Hey.

Wait a minute.

Them’s protein fibers there, hon. Okay, I know you’re supposed to have so many pounds of natural dyestuffs per pound of fiber, but this is what I’ve got and I’m curious to see.

Which is how I found myself stirring at the stove, searching my stash, wishing I had just the right hank, and then checking my calendar: the 18th. Third Friday of the month. YES!!! Richard and I very quickly found ourselves (he’s a good sport) driving together over to Purlescence, where they were having their monthly late-night movie night: come bring your knitting and watch the show. I was telling him, “We’re having a yarn date!”

“If this is a yarn date, I get to have radio dates.” Okay, I’ve gone to a few of his ham radio meetings already, and I threatened to (again) bring my knitting to those if he said that. We called it a truce, and pulled up to the store.

I snuck in on tiptoes (while various friends waved silently hi) and whispered to Nathania, “I have a yarn emergency!” Okay, me whispering is a bit funny, because I can whisper but I can’t hear whispering back and I can only guess how I sound because I just plain am totally deaf to it. But I didn’t used to be, so I think I can guess reasonably okay. She was patient with me. They all were. I didn’t need words in answer anyway, just a nod that yes, it was okay to buy yarn on movie night. She laughed. Bottom cubby at the end, I knew, I went right to it.

I knew how much yardage I wanted, I knew what I wanted to make, and I knew I could never make it with anything thicker than laceweight–there just weren’t enough blossoms, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to break off any still in full splendor.

Not that I didn’t think about it. The Lady Jane looked right back at me and declared frantically, You don’t wear orange and you know it! …Okay, you’re fine.

And thus I had spent the afternoon boiling old flowers, checking Google–let’s see: the bulbs are poisonous. For cats. In large quantities. I decided I was leaving it in my dedicated dyepot to be safe, which ruled out various other methods of dyeing. I debated with Richard as we drove home from Purlescence with my prize, some baby alpaca/silk white Fino (they had one skein left! YES!!!) Do I soak the hank first, or let it dye “blotchily pretty?”

“Pretty and blotchy don’t normally go together.”

“Oh, but in a handpaint they can. But if I do that, people will think the blotches are from the amaryllis. But if I don’t–will more of the dye take up if I put it in dry? But whatever hits the water first will soak up most of it, thus the blotches.” He put up with my working it out out loud.

I decided I was going to have to wash the hank first anyway, just to make sure there was no leftover mill oil that might keep the dye off. So that means it would be wet and would take up color evenly. Fine.

We got home, and I fished all the flower parts out of the now-cool water and turned the heat back on under it. I put the Fino in and the yarn kind of put its hand on its hip and went oh, yeah? So what? Oh. Right. I fished it back out with my dye spoon, glugged some vinegar in while holding it aloft, swished it around a good one with my free hand tipping the pot back and forth, and put the hank back in.

Alright! That’s more like it!

It is bubbling away, and so am I. I’m having way too much fun.

Do NOT scratch your head or push your hair out of the way with dye on your hands. You are too young to be a blue-haired old lady.

Fifteen more minutes on the dyepot (and after picking up the blue, I chose the red anyway.)

So, having been successful with the niece’s sweater, I went back to the dyepot. There was a cashmere turtleneck the color of a dustbunny, so I threw some purple at it. This was the first try:

Now, can you just picture yourself bounding out of bed in the morning, eager to start a new day full of verve and vigor, glad the weather’s cooling because at last you get to wear that fabulous sweater?

Yeah, me neither.  Even the birds ignored it.  Try again.

Okay, that’s better.

Getting just the right color is a whole lot easier than it used to be. Fire up the dyepot, sprinkle a little dye, simmer briefly, and you’re done. Doing this in green brings back memories…

We were doing the VIP tour of the White House with our children, pre-911; my aunt, the wife of a Senator and daughter-in-law, years earlier, of another, brought us in. I don’t know if the regular tours had this, but for the VIP tours, a formally-dressed guide gave a well-rehearsed history speech in each room. We walked through George Washington’s dream, taking it all in in awe.

There was a bit of lag time before moving to the next room each time; we had to wait for the group ahead of us to clear out. As we stood in one, I was admiring a very old rug with an Eagle motif (believe me, that E was capitalized. Definitely!) that was set aside from where our feet might touch it. I mentioned to my aunt that the green color in it had most likely come from boiling moss to extract the dye. She thought that was very cool.

Stepping outside a moment in the Rose Garden, I looked out at the lawn and, when the guide was done talking about Jack Kennedy and the like, mentioned to him that President Johnson had thrown a party for the children and grandchildren of Senators on the White House lawn: there was a small ferris wheel brought in, pony rides, and an official-looking white pen with red and blue ink printed with the words “The White House” given to each child. I had been eight years old at the time. (There was no way I was going near that ferris wheel, but I could have stayed on the ponies forever.)

I remember coming home and telling my mom that President Johnson was a really nice man, and I hoped he ran for re-election. (I wanted to ride the ponies again.) She about died.

Meantime, the guide, thrown off his routine, stopped, looked at me, and demanded in all seriousness, “Which President Johnson?”

Lisa tagged me, and I’ll be lazy and refer over to the Dec. 16th post–but add one more item: spring break, 11 years ago, my brother-in-law was getting married near San Diego; we got tons of books to keep the four kids happy and headed on down the freeway. All is quiet on the west coast front. In the middle of the Central Valley, we passed a flock of obviously just-sheared sheep; I’m quietly looking at them, thinking, I bet you’re cold!, when this little voice from our youngest pipes up from the back seat: “We’re not STOPPPPPPPPPPPPPingggggggggggggg, Mommmmmmmmm………….”

Said in the perfect whiny voice of bored little kids everywhere. I thought his eight-year-old nose was totally in his book, but no. It so totally cracked us up that it’s been a family line ever since.

Meantime, it’s a bit darker so far in real life, but the periwinkling is on its way.

This is Chloe, aka C., one of the co-owners of Purlescence, where we had our knitting group meeting tonight (and where I was really, really, really hoping she’d show up. Funny, that.) One of the regulars was exclaiming, “She picked out the yarn last Friday?!” Well. Yeah. I didn’t offer her before that, so how was she going to do it sooner?

And this is tomorrow’s baby alpaca project in periwinkle.

(Picture: Michelle Reilly’s Lincoln lamb fleece bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool a few years ago by my parents, who watched it being sheared and bought it on the spot, plied with mohair.)

I followed my stat links to discover a comment I’d left on someone else’s blog two years ago. I offer it here with a few tweaks for clarification, since it’s out of context, and with additions to the original.

One comment for people who’d like one of my favorite shortcuts: I’ve found that if I spin separately and then ply together two different fibers–merino and mohair, or even two different breeds of sheep–and then dye the plied skeins, each of the fibers will take up the color at a different rate from the other, and you get a mild barbershop-pole effect, knitting up into a heathery look. Silk takes up dye quite a bit more slowly than animal fibers; I was given some Kidsilk Haze that needed to be a deeper, brighter color than the original dusty lilac, and when I overdyed it, the silk just sparkled in the background, being quite a bit lighter than the mohair fuzz. Much prettier than the original unicolor yarn.

I have since then bought silk/animal fiber blend yarns in light colors a number of times simply for the joy of experimenting with them.

After our remodel, we had a long bare spot in front of the windows along the front walkway. I bought a packet of silver dollar flower seeds on impulse, and scattered them along there and told them basically to fend for themselves, while trying to figure out what to really put there.

Never buy flowering bushes when they’re not actually flowering: the pink azaleas we followed that up with there? Regardless of the tags on the plants, the one on the end turned out to be white, like when a dyer ties the knots too tight on a hank before throwing it in the dyepot. (Guess who learned that lesson?…) Maybe that’s why we never took the white one back out. It fits, somehow.

Meantime, the silver dollars established themselves here and there among the azaleas, particularly here on the corner, with the white azalea behind them, hanging out with the oddball. Their name comes from what their seed pod looks like after the flowers are gone; they’re biennials, coming back year after year. They’re also called Honesty plant. Never knew honesty was a color. And a majestically purple one at that. Curious.

I remember reading once that the color royal purple was, anciently, derived from mollusks, and that it took something like 10,000 of them to produce a pound’s worth of dye; hence, the only people who could afford it was royalty. We, in our day, being able to buy clothing of any color whatsoever, have no idea how privileged we are. I’m sure one could overdye indigo on top of brick-red madder root–and I have seen ancient Egyptian cloth that still had a touch of madder redness to it, thousands of years later–and get a brownish-tinged variant. But a true purple would have been vanishingly rare. (There are natural dyers out there who know far more on the whole subject than I.)

There are artisans in South America who still go to the shore, gather sea snails, squeeze the purple out of them, and then put them back. It washes out of their cloth to a soft lavendar over time, I am told.

At Stitches West a year ago, I bought a half pound hank of Lisa Souza’s handdyed alpaca laceweight dyed in Shade Garden, a soft purple/green/blue mix. I dyed some Misti baby alpaca laceweight in lilac last fall and knitted the two strands together into Kristine’s shawl; recently I took some light blue merino lace yarn to the rest of the hank and made the second one shown here.

I put it on, after blocking it, and felt like royalty indeed wearing Lisa’s work.

He wasn’t supposed to happen.

I had major problems getting our third child here. We got her here safe and sound in the end, to everybody’s profound relief, but the doctor sure didn’t want me to risk that again. My blood pressure had been so low. This was years before my dysautonomia was diagnosed, and he thought it was specific to pregnancy–which it seemed to be, at the time–but, whatever, never again!

But we just strongly felt we were supposed to have one more child. We did what we do: we prayed hard about it. And then we went ahead and did what we felt was right for us personally, and we had our son John. Easiest pregnancy of all my pregnancies, piece of cake, and what we got for it! The nicest kid you could ever ask for. How many teenage boys drive their moms to yarn stores and cheerfully hang out with her friends?

I once upon a time stumbled across Robin and Russ (now defunct) selling baby alpaca at a dollar a ball on closeout; the undyed brown in fingering weight just hadn’t sold well. I bought enough to knit it triple-stranded into big, warm afghans for each one of my children. Some of it, I dyed.

Three years ago, I was knitting up the balls I’d dyed in crimson, and John across the room put down his book, came over, grabbed the bottom of that afghan, and started rubbing it against his cheek, enjoying (ed. note: I wrote “swooning at” and he read that and exclaimed, “MOMMMM!!!! Swooning? SWOONING?? On your BLOG!??” and retyped it as “enjoying”) the softness. That particular afghan instantly became his.

So today’s his birthday, the day he’s officially old enough to have his papers in to go be a Mormon missionary for two years–first, though, he’s having shoulder surgery tomorrow and will need a bit of downtime afterwards. But meantime, today is a day for me to reflect again at my great good fortune that he made it into this world, and how much he blesses our lives every day. He’s a good one. I’ve already knitted that afghan, so I don’t know how to say it any more powerfully than this, but–John. I love you.

And I admire you, too.

Blogger has finally fixed whatever bug they had and I can come show you what I’ve been talking about. It was rainy and dark yesterday, and I was thinking I wouldn’t be able to get a good shot of the colors of my cashmere I’d plied and dyed, as I spread Robert’s medicine blanket out under a skylight and snapped this picture. Uh, didn’t do too bad, I’d say. But the funny thing is, the second I looked through my viewfinder, I knew. Those oranges–out. Definitely. Out. (And I think I’m going to dye those background skeins after all.)

I once snagged quite a few pounds of an undyed light brown cashmere at $15/lb from a wholesaler I knew. The catch was that it was extremely thin and single-ply and too fragile to knit up even as lace; it had to be plied on a spinning wheel. Well, guess what I have. Hey. Ply, dye, felt the hanks with some merino, perhaps, for a little extra strength–I can manage all that.

I have made three afghans with it so far. My mother knitted some into an exceedingly elegant aran sweater. And I have five pounds, half of it dyed into all these colors (we are still working on the camera thing), all waiting to be made up into the next afghan; I’m picturing a windowpane quilting pattern or some such, the undyed skeins framing the blocks of color.

But it’s been sitting in the closet, ready to go, for several years. I’ve been thinking lately that I’m going to Stitches in a couple of weeks, that the new stuff tends to push the old stash further back in the lineup, and I’d really like to see this yarn finally grow up. So. I pulled it out and looked it over.

It stopped me, just like it has every time since I dyed it. Some of the colors came out brighter than the others. Swatch swatch swatch, and yet, I don’t believe I can really know how they’ll all play together as a whole until I’ve gotten a piece done that’s way bigger than a swatch. If it were an even balance of bright and subdued, but it’s not. It’s odd; I mean, they’re all overdyed on top of this same light brown, you’d think…

So the past few days, I’ve been thinking: my hearing loss makes it so I don’t hear some things, but, I notice things that other people sometimes miss, because they’re too busy hearing the whole words while I’m focusing on the nonverbal aspects of the conversation. So. I wonder… I have a friend a few blocks away whose husband is colorblind. The walls in her family room are yellow. I wonder, if I took that stack of balls over to them, if he could tell me better than I can see how the color tones/values mesh? Since he’s missing the distraction of the reds and greens, akin to the consonants I tend to miss. I wonder if it would be clearer to me myself, if I put them in the context of the yellow walls? Or if I put it on top of her white grand piano with the white living room walls as a backdrop and looked across at them rather than down. Curious.

The yellow is what I started out with for all of these. And now you see why, when we bought a new car several years ago, it frustrated part of me that, not really loving any of the colors it was available in, I couldn’t just dunk it in a pot with some simmering water and fix that. I prefer being in control of the colors that represent what I like.

Sorry for the delay on pictures there; Picasa, the picture arm of Blogger, just wasn’t behaving for me and was waiting for the resident expert to come play with it. Hey, Richard, Picasa es su casa.

*WIP=Work in Progress. You know, one of those highly technical knitting terms.

I had knitted everything I was going to knit from that mothy box of yellow angora. I thought. I only had a few rolled-up balls left that had anything more than just a yard or two, and why bother with the stuff anymore, when knitting it had been so demanding: it was like a two-year-old. I couldn’t take my eyes off it for a second, or a broken ply would sail through my fingers. I should just toss the leftovers, quick, before anything hatches from it and infests my stash, I was thinking.

But today was a day where I came home from the doctor, eyed that yarn, and needed to create something positive out of–everything. The yarn, the day, everything. The doctor had been warm and kind, for which I am very grateful. Time to go make something warm for the sake of kindness myself.

It wasn’t much, it wasn’t big, it wasn’t the right color–but it’s the right color now. Boiled. Bugfree. Exquisitely soft. And tomorrow it will be ready to go make somebody happy. I look forward to finding out who.

Didn’t turn out too camo-green in the end, I’d say.