Beets Me

I had the good sense to take a bunch of Mondays off from work this summer. I usually save up vacation time for full weeks that coincide with school vacations, but I needed a little break in the routine this year.

Overall, with the exception of a few crap days a year, I enjoy working. My job is not exciting but I am good at it and I make a living. I decided that on these vacation days I wouldn't just catch up on cleaning and laundry and food shopping but that I would try to make some fun for myself, or devote some day light hours to thinking about knitting in a different way.

I started the morning by putting an Imperious Curse on my husband to keep him home from work too so that I could have someone to discuss every wrong theory I had as I finished up that Harry Potter book. Surely you have all read it by now if you are going to read it, so I ask you: if given the chance, wouldn't you have wanted to knit some Slytherin socks for Severus Snape? If he went to my high school, well, things would have been different.

After I finished the book, I caught up on the cleaning and laundry and did the food shopping.

At Whole Paycheck, I bought some very pretty red and yellow beets. Again. This summer is all about beets for some reason. Instead of eating them, though, I boiled them up in separate pots, then boiled down the liquid until there was about a cup of each, and I dyed some undyed merino boucle and silk that I got in the Habu Textiles bargain bin (true: you need to literally stuff yourself into a crawl space to get at it, but there is a bargain bin at Habu Textiles).

Surprisingly the yellow beets gave a much richer color than the red beets. I did try something new for me, and set the dye by steaming the yarn in my microwave using the best thing I ever bought. After it dries, I plan to spin it together and...and...and... hide it in the stash box...

Tomorrow I'll put the Crucatious Curse on my guy until he agrees to take some pictures of all this knitting that is piling up in this house.