Yesterday, Becky came over to visit.

If you look closely, you can see the cat in the window.

I say that so casually! We’ve actually been planning this since March – and I had been trying to think of a good reason to invite her over for much longer than that. In my head “come sit on the porch and knit and maybe we’ll have some lunch” wasn’t a good enough reason. I came up with “Soon I will be in the midst of the SYAC and sad about my lack of new sock yarn*, so whaddya think about coming up to dye some with me?” She said yes! So yesterday, Becky came over to visit.**

Becky is my first knitblogger to turn from Imaginary Friend into Live-and-in-Person Friend. I warned her about the driveway and about the stacks of bricks (you know where YOU can go Brick Man) and about how I Cleverly Crop my house picture so that no one can see the Terrors of the Yard, lack of furniture etc. etc. I did not warn her that I am flaky, babble/am shy in turns and in general have no awareness of my surroundings most of the time. I thought I would save that for a surprise.

In case anyone is wondering, Becky is NOT a “troll masqurading as a fat, grey haired knitblogger”. She is cute, sweet, fun to hang out with, has a great laugh and really isn’t all that grey haired! If I were making Song of Hiawatha, I would have grey hair, too. The parts of it that I hadn’t torn out.

I’ll spare you Dyeing Details, you can google for those if you want to try it yourselves.*** We mixed our dyes and then used squirt bottles and sponge brishes to apply them to the yarn.**** After one hank of that nonsense, we switched to the soak-each-end-in-two-colors method. Then we wrapped them up in plastic wrap and stuck them in microwave for 6 minutes. The results?

From front to back: mine, Becky’s, Becky’s, mine.

Our conclusions? We are very happy that there are many many other people who hand-dye yarn and are willing to sell it to us for the low low price of $20. Dyeing is hard work!

Becky has also ruined my Granmother (What? Of course Great Gran was there). All Great Gran wants to talk about is the Flower Basket Shawl that Becky brought for show and tell (the purple one that she dyed with Kool-Aide). Luckily Becky has some great pattern notes to help us get through this thing. I have to order the yarn so that we have it when my Mom is here next and start collecting Kool-Aide packets to be sure we have enough. I guess I know what our next KAL is. I haven’t even finished a hand towel.

I know that I have left a TON of stuff out! But I am late for my haircut so I will have to update later. Becky, thanks so much for coming and for saying “the next time we do this” several times while you were here! There should absolutely be a Next Time – just give me a call.

Becky has a much better account of the day over here. I can’t believe I didn’t show her any of my knitting and completely forgot lettuce for the sandwiches!

*I ordered the dye-your-own before April 1!
**Some hand-dyed yarn for Great Gran (she’s taken it home – I haven’t got a picture) and a felted box (a la MDK) for me! How cool is THAT?!
***I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I planned…I’m so sorry, Esther!
****I heart superwash. You can do all kinds of bad things to it and it still looks like yarn.