Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

What is it with microwave popcorn?

Three times now, when I’ve been at my worst, microwave popcorn makes me feel better. Yesterday, I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it to my guitar lesson. I was actually thinking of quitting, because I was so horribly sick and had been for days. So in desperation, I used our last package of microwave popcorn (which I try to avoid eating because I think it’s toxic) and within about 15 to 20 minutes, the awful taste was gone from my mouth, and my sour stomach had sweetened considerably. I’m wondering if dairy is giving me the trouble? Today, the only thing that sounds good to me is a Kidd Valley cheeseburger. Maybe I’ll try a hamburger.

Anyway, I’m going to see if I get the same benefit from pan popped popcorn, which I don’t have issues with at all. Though it takes more time to make.

I didn’t knit a stitch yesterday, as I was running all over the place. And today, I’m planning to dye 2 ounces of baby camel top for the next little gift scarf. I probably shouldn’t dye 2 full ounces since the two ounces I spun for the current scarf is too much, but wouldn’t it totally suck if I ran out?

Oh, and to answer Jean’s question yesterday, knitting with beads isn’t hard at all. Though it can feel a bit tedious and time consuming. I’ve never tried pre-stringing beads onto the yarn before starting to knit, because 1). I never have the foggiest idea how many beads I’ll need, and 2). that sounds even more unbelievably tedious. So I use a tiny (size 11 I think) crochet hook and put each bead on the actual stitch it sits on right after I knit it. There are tutorials online. That’s how I learned how to do it a year or so ago when I was knitting the girls’ birthday shawls. It’s fun, and glass seed beads look gorgeous and delicate on laceweight.

I’m soaking a little bit of the tan yarn left over from Clark’s sweater to test colors on. I have a couple little balls of his yarn undyed that I used to test colors for his sweater. Since the naturally tan yarn is the same color as the camel top, it should give me a pretty good idea of how it will turn out.

The yarn is soaking in my breakfast blender right now. It was rinsed clean, and convenient. It still looks ridiculous so I took a picture, but Clark’s watching a movie on my computer with Photoshop so I’ll have to add it later.

I’m going to handpaint the yarn and top as opposed to kettle dyeing. I want to do multiple colors, and while I’ve read that you can do that in the kettle, my attempts have had dismal results.