April 23, 2003
I Said, Green Light GO!
As promised in my last post, an example of Odd Things People Do:
In my city, some of the on-ramps have traffic lights that quickly alternate from red to green to red to ensure that only one car enters the highway at a time. Recently I witnessed a driver interpret the alternating lights oh-so-literally. When the light turned green, she inched forward; when the light turned red, she stopped. Then she did this again. And again. And again. Until f-i-n-a-l-ly she reached the Magic White Line that signaled the end of her strange little odyssey and sped off. Oy!
Frighteningly enough, this was not an isolated incident. Two weeks later, I saw someone else do exactly the same thing. Different ramp, different car, different person, same astonishing behavior. Is it just me?
Knitting Knews
Just finished this pair of baby socks in Stahl Hobby Kids “Kirsch” using a modified version of a the Basic Sock pattern from “How to Knit a Dozen Baby Socks.” Although I enjoy knitting baby socks, I am always plagued by voices of the chatters on the Net saying in a haunting, taunting way “Whyyyyyyy booooooooother? They woooooon’t staaaaaaaaay ooooooooooooon the baaaaaaaby aaannnyywaaaaaaaaaay. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.” I’ve seen a few patterns like this one that supposedly will make a pair of booties that will stay on the wee bairn’s feet but I say, what’s the point if you’re going to make the baby look like a miniature Frankenstein’s monster? My solution has been to make a sock with a firm-ish fold-down cuff. I’m hoping this will help keep the sock on and help quiet those voices in my head.
Dye Garden Dyegest – The Beginning
As promised in my last entry, here is the initial information on our wild and crazy project, the dye garden. Where to start? I suppose with our research and the plants we selected. After many evening hours huddled over books, we developed this list of criteria for the dye plants. They had to:
- Grow well in the Northwest.
- Not be a weed (although you can dye with dandelions, can you honestly see us voluntarily scattering dandelion seeds in a flower bed?)
- Not be a noxious weed (different from just a plain ol’ weed; these are the ones that the state government says are a no-no).
- Be something K might grow anyway since the dye garden is in her yard.
- Produce flowers in the first year (ended up with some exceptions to this).
- Produce flowers somewhat abundantly so that I wouldn’t leave a wasteland behind me when I removed the flowers for dyeing.
- Produce interesting colors (as opposed to light yellow, medium yellow, dark yellow, gold, golden yellow, yellowish gold, mustard, yellowish mustard, mustardy yellow, golden mustard, mustardy gold, yaddayaddayadda). We selected a few plants that produce yellow and the rest produced reds, pinks, purples, corals, greens and so on.
- Produce a relatively color-fast dye.
Our final list was (all links off-site):
- Calendula
- Cosmos
- Dahlias (my other passion)
- Goldenrod
- Hollyhock
- Madder
- Marigold
- Safflower
- Salal
- Yarrow