a couple years ago, I took a beginning knitting class at Milwaukee Irish Fest’s summer school. I was planning on taking the advanced class this year, but alas. no knitting classes. (the nerve!)

on the other hand, they are offering a craft potpourri of one-day classes - Drop Spindle, Straw Weaving, Calligraphy and Sugan Weaving. there’s also a four-day class on Sugan weaving - this is the teacher’s website, and I think this is the project for the week. I think I want to take that one (and the drop spindle one, of course.)

quick announcement: Shelly is having a contest. you could win lace stuff. hand dyed, if you like.

I finally got around to working a bit on the MS3 - I think I’m on row 35. It’s slow going, but I haven’t made any major mistakes yet. (and yes, I did add a lifeline after looking at the next row and seeing the complexity increase a bit.)

Saturday I got together with some friends from dance and we had a bit of a Harry Potter movie marathon. We only made it through the first two though. I managed to get another k-chan mostly done. (I think k-chans are the new bib).

Sunday dh and I went and saw the new Harry Potter movie. I took my Sockapalooza pal’s sock with me and knit a few rounds until the lights went down for the previews. I tried finishing the row I was on in the semi-dark, but it was a big pain (it was a purl round, that may have something to do with it). Maybe knitting in the theatres is easier with plain ol stockinette? besides, I don’t think I could have knit during the movie anyway. too much going on.

it seems a lot of people lately have been taking the quiz on whether or not you could pass 8th grade science.

sour grapes, here, so I’ll show you the results of one of the other quizzes that site has to offer:
$4890.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

really, I think this is much more important to know than whether or not I can pass 8th grade science 15 years later.
(for the record, I barely passed. but I did pass)

in mouse news, I caught one in a snap trap Sunday morning. I felt rather clever - I set the trap (which tried to attack me. I don’t like this brand) on a sheet of newspaper in the pantry and closed the door (to keep kitty paws and whiskers safe). The theory being that I could just fold it up in the paper and be done with it. it worked pretty well (I found a second sheet of newspaper to cover it with to avoid the ew factor). sidenote: I’m all about being humane, but I live in the country. if I release them, they’ll just find their way back in since we don’t know where they’re coming in from anyway.

MS3 update
I finally started working on it on Sunday. I didn’t get very far because I was working off the chart on the computer screen, and once it got complicated (around row 13, I think. wherever that next bead placing row is and the stuff in the middle kicks in) I couldn’t mindlessly follow it. and then I never got around to grabbing the printed chart from downstairs. and then I got distracted by the sewing machine (I’m fighting with the bedroom curtains at the moment. I did something backwards, and have to do some seam ripping)

lime dragon asked about my dying plans - before or after I knit.
I’m thinking of dyeing afterwards. I don’t feel like unwinding all the yarn from the cone just to dye it. KnitPicks had a how-to of dying a finished lace shawl/stole, so I’ll use that as a guide. I also need to make sure that dying wouldn’t do anything weird to the beads. and who knows, maybe I won’t mind the pink.

Yesterday while choosing yarn for the Mystery Stole, I attempted the bleach test (mentioned in the Yarn Harlot’s Knitting Rules on page 42) to verify the fiber content of some mystery yarn:

the pink is the 2-ply wool I’m using for the stole, the grey is a 4-ply dk/sport weight ??? and the white is a 3-ply fingering weight acrylic.

I wanted to be sure that the pink was indeed wool, for blocking reasons. (and I’m not sure if I want a pink stole, so dyeablility was also a concern). The grey. well, there’s a lot of it (compared to the rest of the cones that were in the box. thrift shop score from last year. these are the three fullest cones). The white, well, you never know if somehow the wrong label got attached or if they reused a cone or something, so I figured I’d verify it.

I dropped a small snippet of each of these, as well as another yarn that is known to be wool into a bit of bleach to see what would happen. when I came back an hour or so later, only one strand remained. the white acrylic. I did poke at the grey a bit before it disappeared - it seems the process is that the bleach attacks the color, and then it attacks the fiber. (the known wool also seemed to follow that process.)

I was bored (and entertained. my new guilty secret? I like torturing yarn.) so thought I’d document the process to save other knitters from any terrible accidents in the laundry room.

I dropped a bit of the pink wool in around 1:50pm. this was taken at 1:51pm. the wool is the strand with all the bubbles around it. the other strand is the white acrylic that’d been sitting in the bleach for quite a while (before noon, I think) by this point.

1:57:20 pm - I had poked at the yarn to see how things were progressing and it bunched up. it’s in the collection of bubbles at the bottom.

1:57:44 pm - well, it would have been in that mass of bubbles. I pulled out the acrylic (you can see it hanging on the edge) and gave it a swirl. nothing left.

so there you have it. 2-ply laceweight wool in bleach = no yarn left after 8 minutes. lesson learned: keep the wool far far away from the bleach (unless you want to torture it.)

I suppose if you have a truly hideous piece of FUG made from natural fibers (the Harlot says this happens to silk and other animal fibers too), bleach would be a good way to destroy all evidence of it.