Why this gal's sittin'out the swap

So--I was all excited and geared up to join Scout's Dye-O-Rama extravanganza... That is, until last Thursday, when I brought some not-so-Kool-Aid home, and proceeded to have one of the most disappointing afternoons on record (and made a drippy, smelly mess of my kitchen...)

Here goes the sad tale...




It started out nicely enough. Unless you've been impervious to all the dyeing excitement, you'll easily understand how excited I was at the outset of this venture. Let me add also that I have this kinda-sorta notion that, maybe one day, I can spin, dye & sell yarn like some of my heroines (even if I'm too poor to buy yer stuff doesn't mean I'm not a huge fan of y'all!) So here I was in my kitchen, plastic baggies on my hands, about to embark on my glorious dyeing destiny.

Well, hm. This is what happened. Judge for yourselves the magnitude of my dismay.


I guarantee you that a washed-out box of crayons had nothing to do with my original vision for this yarn--my head was full of Fleece Artist--but nevertheless, this was what I produced. I was trying to take deep, slow breaths to keep my cool (not by any stretch an easy feat in a kitchen full of noxious Kool-Aid fumes), which led me to the realization that the Fleece Artist most emphatically does not use Kool-Aid to dye her glorious colourways, and that I shouldn't try to make Kool-Aid do what it decidedly could not, would not do. I should embrace its essence instead--listen to the Kool-Aid, and the Kool-Aid will tell you what to do. (This sounds all peaceful and Zen-like--it was not. It was me choking back sobs and screams while mopping up all the nasty runoff that was dripping all over the kitchen, scaring the cats and, possibly, even my calm & loving husband.) I had a packet of orange and a packet of Spiderman raspberry left. I did the only reasonable thing a desperate gal could do--I over-dyed. Here's the yarn's sorry, drippy ass hanging out in the yard:






Here's its sorry, tangled ass mid-wind (because of course it turned a completely different but oh-so-potent brand of evil on me when I started to wind it, so I left it to fend for its own, because who wants to spent a whole evening swearing at and being beat-the-crap-out-of by some yarn that they don't even like?)





(You'll notice that, left to its own devices, the yarn did not wind itself into a ball.)


I do not like this yarn. It may be tolerable if it didn't stink of acid candy and wasn't a bitter reminder of utter and total failure, but things being what they are, I don't like it. The twisty, sorry mess is destined for the garbage pail. (Or, maybe, someone out there's got a hamster who'd like it for its litter? Maybe you need something to stuff a cushion with? I'll happily mail it to Austria, wherever--just say the word.) The ball I may keep--the way Cate Blanchett keeps Joseph Fiennes around at the end of Elizabeth: to remind herself how close she came to danger. But it will never, ever be knit into anything. And here's why: in a final attempt to make peace with this nasty piece of yarn, I took it into my lap, along with a pair of size 3 circs, and decided to see what I could do about a tiny little swatch, and as I pulled the strand to cast on the bitch snapped right at the center of the ball.
(And no, the hypothesis that maybe I wound it too tight is not acceptable--this yarn's out to get me.)


But you haven't heard the worst: I'm not entirely dissuated from bringing Kool-Aid into this house again. What can I say--I'm poor, I have a dream, and a huge hank of Knitpicks dye-yer-own laceweight kicking around. Call me crazy.

No, really, please--call me crazy, so I don't put myself through this again.





PS: Oh yeah, I finished the ballet T from Lood-d-loop. Doesn't it look nice, hanging on the wooden hanger? That's good, since you'll never see me wearing it: it makes me look like a bloated rain barrel. That's okay! I enjoyed knitting it, and learned a valuable lesson about knitting close-fitting garments in chuky yarn--i.e., don't do it. But here's a question: what do I do with the blasted thing now? I still have a ton of that yarn and no wish to knit with it again soon, so no point frogging it. Chair-back cozy, maybe?