Post 161-Indigo, Stars, and the Big O

That title says a lot eh? So sit down, this is going to be a long post.

Starting in reverse order, my new addiction is green! How I love the color green now, where have you been all my life? I remember now, when I was young in the 80's you were neon lime, ick, and in the 90's you were drab olive, ugh, but now you are emerald and celery and all goodness in between. A couple of years ago I noticed that the green colors being used in fashion were starting to look good on me, but I have to say with the Pine colored Rowan Felted Tweed yarn I bought and that is in my Ravelypics project I have admitted I am addicted. It's the buttons you see, I bought these faceted dark celery green glass buttons and I must have more. I just won a vintage lot of buttons on e-bay that might also do, I'm wearing my favorite green t-shirt right now that everyone is sick of seeing me in, and my favorite head band is green silk.

The buttons from ebay, possibly for the Tangled Yoke sweater.

Last night I have a very sad and disturbing dream about some relatives of mine and throughout the dream I was carrying around with me an emerald green silk dress while trying to buy a matching long green crystal necklace. Yea I'm weird. After this post I might have to go to the bead store and see if I can recreate the necklace because I must have it and like long beaded necklaces that you can wrap around your neck 3 times.

The big O is not what you're thinking, dirty dirty, it's Oprah! Yes, I have finally procured some tickets, what luck. A couple of days ago I was on her website and remembered they sometimes take your info if you're interested in last minute tickets, and low and behold, they called me! It's been 12 years since I was last in the audience, 16 years since my aunt and uncle were on the panel during a show, so I'm thinking it's about time.

The three lucky people I will be taking with me are the only people who were nice enough to answer my phone when I called them, they are are John the wonder-neighbor, Valerie my star seeking companion and Shannon the roommate who just had a birthday(what a gift she gets this year!)

So the week we had the yearly visit of the Perseid meteor shower, and considering that next year's visit will basically suck and the fact that every year that I've remembered to look up it's been cloudy, a road trip was in order as suggested by Valerie.

Not my picture, my camera is a cheap little digital and could never capture a meteor shower.

Trying to keep a grasp on my youth and remembering that in the past I used to take impromptu little trips I said yes. The basic idea was to go out to the country, and while Chicago is the US's third largest city, cornfields can be found just over an hours drive out. With map in hand, strawberries, chips and ice coffee in tow we headed out and found ourselves going through a maze of highway construction and found ourselves on Tollway 88 heading east, past Dekalb. We kept looking looking for clear sky, I though Valerie was joking when she suggested we just drive due west until we reached Iowa (I would have taken a nap that afternoon if I had known) but I persuaded her to turn onto highway 95 that goes north to Rockford, we turned onto route 64 and found ourselves a little bit of cornfield (ala Children of the Corn if you ask me), copped a squat and stared at the sky looking for shooting stars, which we found.

Children of the Corn could have been filmed here.

Amateur stargazer hard at work.
The view still wasn't the best, but it was cool and everyone one spotted got a squeal of delight from me. Later on we found another brief viewing spot, made out way east on 64 back toward the city and if we wanted to could have taken all the way home. Valerie perfected her coasting skills, the speed limit was obeyed and besides being pulled over in St. Charles for going too slow and admiring the vintage architecture we found the best donuts at Bosa Donuts and made it home before the sun rose. I was tired after that and poor roommate had to deal with a new dog that missed her master and paced the apartment the whole night waiting for me, ahh. I need to admit something about that little road trip, I stole 4 ears of corn and don't even know if it's human corn or animal corn, and I peed in my first cornfield, I'm sorry.

And now the Indigo part of my post. Rachael and I made a pilgrimage to The Fold in Marengo. What a beautiful day it was, and while it did rain why we were in the workshop it was nice before and after. Knitting and the fiber world is a small place, it turns out there was a lady in my workshop that knows some people I used to work with a long time ago at a Saudi Museum Collection, I find these connections pop up every once in awhile. I brought with me three skeins of yarn to dye and each was a little bit different from the next. I dyed a skein of Treenway silks lace weight, a skein of Knitpicks bare sock yarn, and about 1200 yards of mystery silk/wool lace weight that I paid 1 buck for a cone that contained over 3600 yards. This was a good study on how different fibers take dye differently.

Boil, Boil, Toil and Trouble...., a good pot of indigo this one was, it has the perfect blue scum on the top and soupy green liquid underneath.


All dyed and ready to sit for 24 hours before washing.

All dried and re skeined, looks store bought to me.

Finished product. I highly recommend Toni's dye workshops, they are so much fun and you don't have to worry about making a mess in your kitchen or on your floors.