It's Hard to Be Hoppy When You're A Toddler

Man. Easter is such a rough holiday, it seems. It doesn't help that once again the weather has thumbed its nose at us, and prevented us from doing something lovely and spring-like (and free! and open 365 days a year!) like going out for a nice walk or playing at a park or flying kites or something.

Still though, something about the combination of toddlers and a day that kicks off with a sugar bonanza
just spells disaster, even if there are no heartbreaks or other traumas in the course of the day.

But when Grammy and Grampy are here for a visit, and the boys are just smitten-in-love with Grampy,

and then Grampy has to go away again, and we won't see him for probably another month at least... well, suffice to say the three-and-a-half hours between his departure and the time we got the kids to bed were almost full-time crying. I've never seen these kids this messed up before, seriously.

At least there's good news on the yarn front.

These eggs that I dyed last night (I'm a terrible mother, and will spend eternity in Mommy Hell - instead of dyeing eggs with the kiddos, Caz and I took shameless advantage of the free grandparental babysitting and went to see The Host yesterday afternoon, but then I dyed eggs anyway, because I'm kind of a nutbar like that),


turned out to be such great colors, that I knew what I had to do. I grabbed up a half-pound hank of Henry's Attic Kona Superwash, soaked it in a 3:1 water/vinegar bath for... gosh, probably an hour - we were busy getting stuff ready for today, too. Then I laid it out on a bunch of plastic wrap and Caz and I sat across from each other at the kitchen table and flicked Easter egg dye on it with forks. I should have taken a picture of it in process, because it was cool, but it was like 1 a.m. I totally was not on my blogging game at that point.

Anyway, nuked on high 2 minutes, let rest for 2 minutes, nuked on high another 2 minutes, then rinsed in warm water, squeezed a bunch of the water out (so nice working with superwash yarn for a change! I took a ridiculous amount of flauting the rules and wringing to my heart's content) and hung it in the bathroom to dry. See?


The pink didn't turn out as nicely on the yarn as it did on the eggs. The egg dye kit I used (a Sesame Street version, of all things) instructed not to put vinegar in the pink dye, but to put vinegar in the other four colors. Well, when it came time to dye the yarn, I hemmed and hawed and ultimately decided to add about the same amount of vinegar to the pink that had been added to the other colors. I'd figured the instruction not to add vinegar was because the pink was so fierce to begin with, adding vinegar would just make it too insta-stick for the average home user, but I think I was wrong. I think the vinegar washed out the color somehow - broke it down or something. I'll know better for next time.

I think I might drag the kids to Target tomorrow to see if there's any more of these kits on sale, because these colors really do kick hoop. I'm thinking maybe something in a self-striping for whenever I do this next.

In the meantime, I'm waiting for the Easter egg yarn to dry the rest of the way, and then I'll wind it and see what sounds good to do with it. Part of me is thinking knee socks, the other part of me is thinking that since it's like 250 grams of yarn, I could easily make socks for me, plus have enough left to sell/gift to someone else. We shall see.

Anyway. I've got like three or four entries backlogged here, that have been just awaiting pictures. I finally got a bunch uploaded and will go through and get the posts sorted soon - I'm hoping to get caught up by the end of this week. Though I will be busy - I'll be going to Madison Knitters' Guild tomorrow evening, and out to dinner with a friend on Wednesday evening, and I'm considering going to see Anne Lamott at a local bookstore on Thursday, but we'll see if the week really supports that kind of thing.

"Gosh, Thorny, you're going out a lot for a mother of toddlers married to a man who works second shift. What gives?" Ah ha ha ha, gentle reader - as of Friday my husband no longer works second shift! New job, new possibilities for, y'know, a life and shit! I'm pretty excited about it.

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!!