Reflections on hiking at Three Lakes Park

Did you miss me?  I don't know what happened to yesterday's TBT post.  I had one scheduled, but it disappeared.  I guess that will teach me to schedule posts in advance instead of blogging live.  Oops.

I don't have much knitting to show you.  I decided to go hiking instead of spending my time off this week knitting.  I've been wanting to get into hiking.  Damn Pinterest!  While looking for examples of hats, I came across pictures of hikers and it looked like fun.  And something I could do.  Hiking is just walking, right?

Of course, my daughter is laughing at me for wanting to become a hiker.  She knows I'm just in it for the shoes.  (And a cool backpack.  She doesn't know me as well as she thinks she does.  There's just something I love about an awesome looking, well worn backpack.)  Sarah also laughs at the idea of me hiking because she knows how I feel about going for a walk around the block.  It's just way too much effort.

But the idea of hiking through nature.... wearing cool, well worn and well fitting boots and toting that special backpack....  Of course my backpack only contains water & the camera.  Even in fantasy land, I don't think I'm ready for overnight hiking.

Anyway... Sarah & I packed up our cameras & water bottles (minus the cool boots & backpack.  I need to go shopping.) and 'hiked' around Three Lakes Park.

We saw lots of pretty reflections on the water.

Lots of creepy vines.  And poison  ivy.  And frequently, the creepy vines were surrounded by poison ivy so I'm wondering if the creepy vines are in fact poison ivy vines.  Probably.  What else would create such a deadly looking vine?  Ick.  Makes me itch just to think about it.

We saw lots of geese and one followed us for the longest time.  I imagine they think humans mean food.

And we saw a  heron.

 And Mr. & Mrs. Mallard feeding in a leaf & pollen strewn swampy area.

And some pretty flowers.

And this bridge.  I was fascinated by the lines of the bridge.

And thousands of turtles.  Well, maybe not thousands, but many, many turtles.  Turtles of all shapes and sizes and colors.

And lots of big fish that creeped Sarah out.  She doesn't like the way fish "just hang there in the water with their eyes bugging out, looking at you."  And as you can tell from that photo, it's spring in Virginia.  Lots and lots of pollen floating on the water.

After our hike, I came home and played with yarn and food coloring.  I'm proud to say that I did not dye my hands a weird color this time.

I turned boring white yarn into

burn your retinas, day-glow orange yarn.

Hmmm...  I just noticed - the new orange yarn is almost the same color as the turtle.  How cool is that?

A weekend in review

I learned something about myself over the weekend.  Apparently, I thrive on drama.  Let's review.

Moments before leaving the house to go to work on Saturday, I received a Facebook notice that a favorited band that used to play at most of my high school dances was having a reunion next month at a local bar & grille.  The notice had just been posted but already several friends had replied that they intended to go.  Now, understand that my high school was tiny.  Teeny tiny.  Actually, eentsie, weentsie tiny.  Tiny as in, there were 13 people in my graduating class.  So, getting four or five of us together at one time counts as a high school reunion.  I was psyched.  A high school reunion, a high school reunion that does not include a rubber chicken entree but does include a live band that will bring back so many fun memories.  Like I said, I was psyched.  And I went in to work all smiles & giggles & "Hey, how ya doing?" to everyone I passed.

I walked into work & discovered that all Hell was breaking loose.  Actually, that's probably a slightly exaggerated description but things were going wrong and some manual adjustments were being made that would cause some slight confusion and a bit more effort.  While the panic set in, I continued to tell myself that it would be fine.  We'd deal with it.  And we did.  But as days like that go, things continued to tank.  It was one of those Murphy's Law days that would leave even Murphy quaking in fear & confusion.  Everything that could possibly go wrong did.  And then things that couldn't possibly go wrong went wrong.  The theme park's slogan is about the customers having their 'best day ever' and occasionally when an employee is having a bad day, you'll hear them joking about it being their 'best day ever.'  Well, Saturday was so bad that almost every employee I encountered either asked me if I was having my best day ever or informed me that they were having their best day ever in that weird, giggly, a nervous breakdown is about to occur voice.  It was just one of those days.

And then I came home to one dog growling at the dining room door and the other dog doing her 'there's something wrong' bark rather than her 'Oh, goodie!  You're home!' bark.   My first thought was that a opossum or raccoon had gotten in through the dog door.  But no.  No such luck.

Big spider

After the day I'd had, I really should not have expected anything less.  It was a spider.  A spider so big, the dog was growling at it.  Normally, I kill bugs with Windex but this guy looked like he probably drank Windex for breakfast.  My solution was to put that 2-cup coffee cup over it (while the dog distracted it) and leave it for my dear sweet husband to deal with.  And if you're wondering, that's his sized 12 shoe.  Look how freaking big that spider is!  Holy Moly!

Somehow, I managed to get a little bit of sleep between dreams of monster spiders.  Sunday, I got up & did it all over again.  Things were still going wrong at work but I did at least have a working computer so it wasn't quite as dramatic as the previous day.  The biggest problem was the rain.

It didn't just rain.  It monsooned!  Actually, that's not correct either.  It rained so hard it made a monsoon look like a light mist.  And of course, my rain coat was a mile away in the car.  By the time I got to the car, even my underwear were wet.  And then I had to stop for gas and got even wetter if that's possible.  I was so wet the gas station gave me a free slice of pizza when I went in to pay.  Because of course their pay-at-the-pump thing was broken.

After a few scary hydroplaning episodes, I finally surfed my car home, stripped my soaking wet clothes off, put on some dry ones & fell into bed with soaking wet hair.  I woke up this morning looking like

Only curlier.

But the point of all that is.... all that drama was kind of fun.  Well, maybe not 'fun' but it was certainly exciting and made the work hours pass by quickly.  I never got any knitting done at work though.

But, I did finish a few WIP's (works in progress) in the mornings before work.  I already showed you these, but here are the Outlander fingerless gloves on a hand model and a hat I finished.

Faux cabled hat & Outlander fingerless gloves

I really like that cable pattern.  "That" being both the faux cable on the hat and the cable on the fingerless gloves.  The gloves look much more complicated than they are, as long as you don't forget how to count to three.  It's surprising how many times I failed to correctly count to three.  I'm blaming it on the spider.

blue faux cabled hat

I finished a blue faux cabled hat as well.

hand dyed fingerless gloves

And I dyed these fingerless gloves.  Actually, I dyed them late Friday night.  And that was a whole other bit of drama.  It was late, late Friday night when I was dying them and I'm blaming it on the hour.... but I stupidly stuck my hands into the dye bath without putting on gloves.  My hands instantly turned a nice bright magenta color.  And then I proceeded to get the dye on one side of my face as well.  So when I bounced into work on Saturday, not only was I grinning & saying "Hey, how ya doing?" to strangers, I was also a lovely shade of red that made me look like I had extreme blood pressure issues.  Like I said, Saturday was definitely a 'best day ever' said in the most sarcastic voice possible kind of day.

Anyway...  I was excited about the dye job though.  And it could have been worse.  I was using black dye so I could have ended up with gray hands instead of bright pink ones.

Anyway....  I turned this

brown and white tweed

into this

hand dyed fingerless gloves

And yes, it's sort of a mahogany reddish brown, not black.  Black is really made up of a whole lot of blue plus a little bit of red.  I'd been warned that black dye would most likely separate and I wouldn't end up with black fingerless gloves.  And I was cool with that.  I didn't really want black gloves.  I also didn't want those brown & white tweed gloves.  As you can see, the black dye did separate.  I have no idea where all the blue went but I ended up with reddish gloves and magenta hands.  I'm happy with the way the gloves turned out though and with all the drama & nervous sweating that went on on Saturday, by Sunday, my hands & face were back to their normal color.

And last but not least, I managed to knit a few more rounds on this slouchy hat.

#todayonmyneedles

And yes.  As you can see in the backgrounds of these photos, my desk is still the disaster zone it was last Monday.  In fact, it's even worse.  I have the feeling it will be November before I can call it truly organized and clean again.  It's just another bit of drama we'll have to learn to deal with.

Daylight Savings

Daylight Savings got the best of me, or at least that's my excuse.  I totally forgot to post a Sunday hat pattern yesterday.  Since I also forgot to even plan the Sunday hats post, I quickly grabbed a pattern off Etsy.  So, a day late, last week's Sunday hat pattern can be found here.

It's an adorable owl hat pattern, created by Meridian Made.  If you follow the link & click through the photos, you'll see examples of several different color-ways.  I don't normally knit fancy kid's hats because, well, mainly because my kids always seemed to loose their hats before they'd even made it out of the house.  But this hat is so cute, I may have to knit a few for all the little ones I know.

Back to Daylight Savings....  What a strange & glorious day.  Actually, it was pretty typical for March in Virginia.  Remember the eight inches of snow we got Thursday?  Well, it was still all over the ground when it came time to change the clocks.  It felt so wrong to be changing the clocks with that much snow on the ground, but the time change must have been the kick in the butt Mother Nature needed because Sunday turned out to be the most beautiful day ever.  The sun was shining & it warmed up to 64 degrees!  So there I was, wearing snow boots because our yard & driveway still had several inches of  mushy snow, yet riding down the interstate with the car windows open & the music blasting.  It was wonderful!

Another thing that distracted me & made me forget to post the Sunday hat pattern yesterday was that I discovered dying yarn myself.  The results weren't great, but considering the effort that I put into the project and the lessons learned, I'm counting it as a success.

First, while I was out yesterday, I stumbled across some boring, Ecru wool on clearance.  I brought it home and unwound it onto the swift.

While putting the yarn onto the swift & tying it up, I watched a couple of YouTube videos on how to dye yarn with Kool Aid &/or food coloring.

Next, I soaked the yarn in water & vinegar.

I used apple cider vinegar instead of white because it's all we had.  I'm not sure if that had any affect or not.  Next, I added food coloring.

Then I microwaved it for a few minutes and let it cool.  It took a lot of rinsing to get out the tiny globs of dye that were caught in the yarn.  Perhaps I shouldn't have used gel food coloring.  Or maybe I just didn't dissolve it well enough.  What ever.  I had tiny globs of color stuck in the yarn, and if you look closely enough, on the edge of the Pyrex baking dish.  After a thorough rinsing, I ended up with

and a slightly pinkish baking dish.  Tonight, I will ask my knitting group's resident dye expert what went wrong then I'll try again.  But even though I ended up with variegated pink & blue yarn instead of the intended dark purple, and the yarn felted slightly, I still had fun.  And I can knit fun pot holders or something with it once it completely dries.