Wednesday - cleaning up in order to make a mess

Yesterday after knitting group I had to go to the wool shop and buy some wool.  This is in fact inevitable, I don't know why.  It does make knitting group slightly more expensive.  Anyway, I bought the wool for a vest top I've been meaning to knit abi for ages.  Because I am stuck on the now unloved shalom, but am trying to be disciplined and not undertake another major thing until its done, I've just been knitting random bits of crap.  So I decided to just accept that it is not shalom-time right now, and knit the thing I've been wanting (and needing tbh) to knit for abi.  A nice, simple raglan vest like this, except I am stingy so decided to just make it up and hope for the best.

And its chugging along nicely.  I started as soon as possible.  Cast on 40 as it seemed a likely number and is divisible by 4.  But those 40 did not look like they would easily fit over her head, so I cast on another 4 to add a little button placket.  This is the back

Anyway I was amazed at how fun it is to knit something new and necessary.  Its nice chunky wool/alpaca so its not hard to keep going.  And I knitted most of the evening, apart from when I was wasting time on the internet. 

Which meant that this morning there was a lot of washing up and cleaning to be done.  Oops.  And as I was washing up and contemplating the dishcloth

(its funny how a knitted dishcloth becomes more beloved the more abused it gets), I was reminded of the determination to knit some placemats and coasters etc.  (The idea for which I wasted an evening knitting a stranded mushroom which is now somewhere or other.)

Anyway I was thinking cotton like-this-discloth would be oh so much better.  But boring.  So I could dye the leftover cotton, oh yes I could.  In fact I could just grab some stuff around the kitchen and dye it RIGHT NOW.  because I've always wanted some funky knitting cotton, and am often tempted by the peaches and creme (sp?) stuff but its a bit lurid, and the colour changes are so frequent they all end up looking like a big splodge.  So I thought I would attempt dying it so that it would go from a nice shade of turmeric, to a nice shade of coffee, gradually.  So I grabbed the remainder of the dishcloth cotton and wound it around some chairs, all the time thinking 'I am crazy but this is fun, tra lalalala'

And then I did this...and then microwaved for a bit for good luck beacuse I haven't got a clue what you are supposed to do but I know turmeric stains everything so I wasn't too worried

And then...there was this!

The lighter shade is actually the coffee which made next to no difference in the end.  Weird.  But I think it is very beautiful, although possibly the beauty was in the process more than the product.  At any rate I shoved it in the airing cupboard and now have a wee small ball of orange creamy beigey cotton to play with sometime.