12 Skeins, an Owl and 90,000
This was a busy week at Your Daily Fiber. I’ve been dyeing yarn for an April yarn festival. Judging by how much yarn I successfully dyed this past week, I will be finished dyeing enough yarn for the April festival in, oh, about October.
Oh, I dyed a bunch of yarn. I dyed the same two skeins of yarn twelve times.
Ivy sold a custom dye order to a woman that she had taught to knit. This lovely lady requested that I dye some dark blue yarn with a small amount of white to match a skein that we had in the store. It should have been a piece of cake. Why do people say “a piece of cake”? Cake has nothing to do with dyeing yarn. However, I could have baked this woman a cake, as I am an accomplished cook. In fact, I make some of the best salsa in the world. Sorry, these are yarn stories at Monner’s Mumblings. You can’t get recipes here.
Where was I? Oh yeah, I was dyeing yarn.
My instructions to dye this yarn were to use a silk blend yarn, use “midnight blue” dye, and leave a small amount of the yarn white. I’ve done it a thousand times.
I finished dyeing the yarn and Ivy called the customer to inform her the yarn was finished. The yarn was/is beautiful. Except the customer didn’t like it. It wasn’t dark enough and I had left too much white. This was not a big deal, just dye the yarn again.
Here is a dyeing lesson for everyone. If you are dyeing yarn to match another yarn, the yarn needs to be of the same or near to the same composition. After dyeing an entire bag of yarn, Ivy and I realized we were NEVER going to get the blue dark enough with the blend of yarn we were using.
Our customer allowed us to change the basic yarn and we nailed it. If anyone needs any blue and white (very pretty, not dark) silk blend yarn, we have it. Come in and see, Ivy. I probably should mention Ivy has already sold two skeins, I told you it was pretty.
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It’s been a tough winter for our bird flock at the ranch. Ivy allows her flock to “free range” during the day and locks them up in the coop at night. A while ago after arriving home after dark, Ivy noticed she was missing a duck. A few days later, she was missing another duck. A few more days, a guinea was gone. When I say gone, I mean gone. No feathers, no sign of an animal attack, nothing.
Last night, Elaine, Girl Twin and I arrived home from the store after dark . (Ivy took the day off from the store. Me? There are no days off for Ol’ Monner.) Anyway, sitting on the roof of the coop was an owl. A hungry owl. I think we have solved the missing fowl mystery.
We’re not really sure how we are going to solve the missing fowl problem. I guess the best solution is get our birds into the coop before the sun goes down, at least until the owl moves on.
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Monner’s Mumblings achieved a milestone in readership this week. The Mumblings have been read over 90,000 times. I realize most stories on the internet are read 90,000 times each day, but most of them are not written about the mumblings of a crazy family in Northern Colorado. Thanks guys!
Our crazy lives!
Monner