Well, the tea stained sox will occupy my mind and time no more. I did what I did, and am eager to go on to something else.

I got good information from folks on line, and then I chose actions based on the supplies easily available to me. I soaked them in Biz, washed, they were only slightly better. Soaked them in Bix again, pre-treated with a stain remover called Tech, which said it could get out cola and coffee (I was hoping that meant tea also), washed on hot in the washer, and they still came out as you see them here in the “before” picture.

I decided enough was enough. The next move is sort of amusing. I tried to overdye them with tea, the same tea as the stain came from. I made a nice big pan of tea (wasting two gorgeous teabags I would much rather have sipped than used for staining), and soaked them for almost an hour. And guess what: Almost no stain! Go figure! I had thought I could sort of even out the brown before overdyeing but it did not work at all.

So then, I got out my trusty acid dyes, mixed a little here and there for good luck, and overdyed the sox with the turquoise. If you are curious about overdyeing finished knit items, I highly recommend Sally Melville’s book “Styles” for a wonderful discussion on color and overdyeing. She likes much more subtle colors than I do (she loves brown, I am nearly allergic to brown) but her writing is clear and the concepts are wonderfully explained. She shows a sweater or two which were knit from odds and ends of truly clashing colors, and when the garment is overdyed it looks wonderful. She shows several samples of overdyeing with different colors, and it’s a great book just for that chapter alone. Sally is wonderful at bringing out creativity. If you ever get a chance to take a class from her, make sure you do it!

So, as you see, now I have sox which are just fine, and which barely show the stain. When they are slouched around my ankles, nobody will think it’s anything but a shadow making the colors look that way. And I think I’ll get plenty of wear out of the things, as I definitely needed more turquoise sox. Maybe since these are a bit more subdued, I may actually get a little more use out of them. That will just require time to determine, because I do tend to wear wild colors often.

I’m still babying an allergy headache so I’m off to take a long hot bath and have a nice bowl of soup. It is nice to have the sun shine for yet another day, and the temperature was almost 58 when Brian went to work today at about 10:30. So if I can put the headache to bed, it promises to be a fabulous day. In any case, I get to teach knitting to my CityKidz again!!!

OK, I gave in and made a blog button. I am sort of from the old school, where less is more… In other words, if it does not require a picture to get the point across, I don’t typically make a picture. But I visited Sarah Peasley, Handknitter and she has a list of ” Links to people I actually know.” Well, there are four buttons and then two of us with sad little text links. How can I compete with that? So here is my button: swipe it as you wish, and feel free to link to me.

I guess I had better get with the new generation of the web. When I first made web pages, some computers could not view .jpg files, and some did not display tables. OK, I’m giving away how long I’ve been a webgeek, but I try really hard to keep things low tech on my web sites, so that every possible visitor can have a quick experience. In these days with fast connections, I keep a phone modem to be sure my sites are not too slow for other modem users.

OK, and then I chose Moveable Type as my blog software, in part because other blog programs are controlled outside my own computer and web host, and I’m a control freak. Yet Moveable Type uses a feature called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Of course, CSS displays differently depending on what program you use to view it. And I don’t like how Internet Explorer displays it, but I can not find a way to make it behave (so frustrating for a visual artist). Yet I do not want to handle my search engine and archives/calendar by writing my own HTML code, so here I am. High tech/lack of control.

End of idealistic rant. Back to knitting…

I’m working on my 2nd pair of sox for my friend… the first pair are ready for toes but the feet are far too big. I’ve given in and asked her to measure her ball of foot so that I can rip them out and do them right. Meanwhile I’m knitting pair #2. It’s an interesting experiment, with two variegated yarns used together. I’m working top down and I’m on the heel flaps right now. These are taking longer than I expected, because I have not done much knitting this weekend.

Enjoy the rest of our waning spring weekend!

Well, I got the guts to try again on the tea stain. I soaked the sox in Biz one more time for 3 hours and there was no change in the tea color (although the soak water was a lovely turquoise). I dug through my laundry supplies that I never use… and I found a stain remover called Tech, that I got at one of those cool old-fashioned hardware stores that are dying out. In fact, this one has closed in the last year.

So I put Tech on the stain as directed (it says it gets out cola and coffee), let it stand for a few minutes, and then put it in the wash on hot for a long cycle. We will see, but I’m not too hopeful.

Mind you, if I were willing to run around town finding the two products most folks said helped them (Oxy Clean, Shout and fresh lemon juice), maybe I would have better luck. I just feel a little crazy running around spending money on what were supposed to be “bonus” sox made with leftover yarn.

I’ve been dyeing this weekend anyway. If the stain does not come out after the wash, I will overdye the pair in tea and then overdye again in my favorite turquoise dye. Why not? I might actually like them better overdyed than the original colors. I sure can wear them with more of my clothes if you can not see the spring green color popping through (I love that green, but I don’t have much in my closet that works with it).

Today I am enjoying an open front door, it is in the lower 60’s today. Birds are chirping and squirrels are running around with nuts, very happy. Brian and I walked to the diner in our neighborhood this morning , and it was lovely to not worry about staying warm on the walk.

I’ve been lazy today with a touch of a headache. I guess Sunday is a good day to nap, drink tea and read about knitting! Has anyone here read Nancy Bush’s Folk Knitting in Estonia? Wonderful book. I want to make Tiit’s Socks sometime.

Whew! I worked like crazy and got up two web pages about my ColorJoy Handpaints, in time for the midnight deadline on Socknitters. I have enough Handpainted fibers (yarn, rovings and silk scarves) for another page or two, so I will keep on plugging today and tomorrow to get those items up on the web.

I am set up basically to do art yarns, all one of a kind. I work alone and do my best to find great yarns to paint as they appear to me. Therefore, it is an eclectic mix, fun and fresh, and with no guarantee items will re-appear. This method keeps me interested (I remember trying to do production polymer clay Art Kazoos and it got old fast). I am hoping it works for others as well.

I am proud that my yarns do not pool when knitting. I work hard to apply dye in such a way that the colors do not make big blotches when you knit. It takes a lot longer to do this, but this is how I want yarns I buy to be dyed! I love Koigu because they basically do not pool, and as much as I love the feel of the Lorna’s Laces yarns, I just struggle to knit them in such a way that I enjoy how the colors display.

Wowie, I’m tired! (Three posts in one day, as well, whew!) See you tomorrow.

If you didn’t figure it out yet, I decided to stay home from SockFest. I just didn’t have it in me for several reasons, to drive all that way for two workshops and a social thing. Actually, the social stuff was why I wanted to go in the first place, people are everything to me. And with this wonderful Internet, I have so many friends and acquaintances who live nowhere near me. I could have met a handful of those folks today.

The good thing was that I have been running in circles for weeks, and this gave me a bit of connection with my beloved husband, Brian. We had a nice meal last night (homemade soup) and we took a nice walk around the block as the sun was still shining. It is around 50 degrees and sunny here, a real gift.

Last night I spent 4 hours in the dyeing studio making pretty rovings and yarns. I plan to spend the rest of the weekend doing more of the same. Today is ad day on Socknitters, but I doubt I’ll have my handpaint web page together by midnight! I’m not sure how I’ll handle that, but maybe I’ll just announce the sale here and on my private mailing list for yarns, and see how it goes. I won’t have lots of stock, but waiting until I have a warehouse full would mean I couldn’t do it for a long time.

A Small Dissertation on Different Ways to Think about Color

It is fun working with dyes. They are so different from polymer clay. Polymer is opaque color like paint. It is so simple to figure out… this color plus this color makes a third color that can be easily predicted, somewhere between the two beginning colors. If you go with the red/blue/yellow primary colors we were taught as children in school, you can come up with colors that are somewhat predictable.

I have done a lot with web/digital monitor-displayed art, where light is the medium. More color when you are working with light, makes a lighter color. Red plus blue plus green (red, blue and green are the primary colors when working with light) equals white! So medium blue plus red may make purple, but more blue and more red makes lighter colors, including a lighter purple, because it is more light. OK, that felt odd at first, but I got used to it.

Fortunately, I went to soft block printmaking before going directly to dyeing of wool. Some rubberstamp inks are called dye inks and they act a lot like wool dyes. If you add one color to another, you get a darker color, not one in between the two. (That is, unless in wooldyeing you also increase the amount of wool you are dyeing.) Dye inks use Cyan/Magenta/Yellow/Black as the primary colors, just like an inkjet printer you might have at home. It is transparent color, rather than the opaque of paint or polymer. Some people mix dyes while in the mindset of red/blue/yellow/opaque and I think this causes some frustrations in getting the transparent dye colors they wish to mix.

We could go further, and talk about the Munsell color system, where he studied how the eyes see color, not considering at all what the medium was and/or how to mix the color. Munsell found five primaries (red, yellow, green, blue, purple) as far as how the eye interprets colors once we mix them by whichever method is appropriate for our chosen medium.

Munsell defines color by hue (red/green, etc), value (dark/light), and chroma (saturation or intensity- mauve is low chroma and magenta is high chroma, even if the hue of either is red-purple). I would argue that in most media we also deal with whether a color is matte or shiny (think cotton versus mohair, or glaze on ceramics), and whether it is opaque or transparent (this last issue was very important for me when working with polymer clay). But now I’m going on and on too long on a pet subject, and I should stop before you all stop reading.

End of dissertation!

OK, so wool is my newest artful venture. So I have a learning curve with a new set of primary colors. Add to that the differences between superwash yarns and regular wool yarns/rovings. And the difference moisture content makes, and the percentage of acid and/or detergent added to the soak water and/or the dye. And how you steam, and the brand of dye you use, and… and… and…

Yet even with all the variables, I am loving wooldyeing. I’m going to sign off right now, to go rinse the fibers I steamed last night and let them start drying… then I’ll start again on a new batch of yarns/rovings to dye.

Sarah Peasley wrote to let me know she has a new blog! She has been considering it for a while, I knew she couldn’t resist much longer. It’s called Handknitter. Check it out!

I am grateful that I am feeling better today. It is helpful for me to listen to music with an uplifting message, to get a sort of attitude adjustment. Today I’m listening to James Taylor’s Live album. Here are lyrics to a very wonderful poem that he wrote and set to music (the liner notes don’t have written lyrics so I am guessing at the way he might lay out the stanzas):

The Secret of Life copyright James Taylor
Well, the Secret of Life is enjoying the passage of time.
Any fool can do it,
There ain’t nothin’ to it.
Nobody knows how we got to the top of the hill.
But since we’re on our way down, we might as well enjoy the ride.

The Secret of Love is in opening up your heart.
It’s OK to feel afraid,
But don’t let it stand in your way, no… now,
‘Cuz everyone knows that love is the only road.

And since we’re only here for a while, yeah,
We might as well show some style.
Give us a smile, now,
Isn’t it a lovely ride?

Sliding down and gliding down,
Try not to try too hard,
It’s just a lovely ride.

Now, the thing about time is that time isn’t really real.
It’s all on your point of view,
How does it feel for you in there?
Einstein said that he never could understand it all.

Planets spinning through space,
The smile upon your face,
Welcome to the human race, yeah.
Isn’t that a lovely ride? Oh, yeah.

Sliding down and gliding down,
And try to not try too hard it’s just a lovely ride.

Isn’t that a lovely ride, oh, my, my, yes,
See me sliding and gliding down,
And try not to try too hard it’s just a lovely ride

Now the Secret of Life is enjoying the passage of time…
————–

May you feel some of the calm I am feeling today. The sun is shining in Lansing, it is 50 degrees F, my hubby loves me, and maybe I’ll go to SockFest. Life is good.

What a day! I stayed up too late getting ready for my tax accounting appointment today, and then I was so tired I had a fender bender in my sweet, ‘98 New Beetle, Joy. She has an “owie” on her front bumper now, boo hoo. I know better than to drive when I’m sad or tired. I just don’t focus well.

Right now my stained sox are soaking in Biz. I had so many suggestions, and the vast majority vouched for Oxy Clean but when I went to my huge store that usually has everything, they didn’t have that product where I could find it. Biz is an enzyme cleaner (great for protein stains but not necessarily tea) and an oxygen bleach, so I thought it in the ballpark. And one person wrote she had good luck with it on wool. Lots of folks wrote me, but very few had “Tea-on-Wool” experience. There were a lot of very good suggestions.

The sock is looking somewhat better but still has a brown spot. Also, the water the sox are soaking in has turned a bit blue, so the oxygen bleach is taking its toll on all the colors. You can’t really tell, though. I’m still optimistic that when I put the sox in the wash, the rest of the stain will come out. That was the experience of the person who wrote… it went in with a bit of a stain but the wash did the trick. Cross your fingers for me, OK???

Tomorrow I am supposed to leave town for a few days to attend SockFest in Bloomington, Illinois. I will have to see how I feel tomorrow, because I do not want to drive if I still feel tired. It’s a long drive, and I can not afford to be alone and tired on a trip like that. I love driving alone cross country, but it does require focus and stamina.

Just the same, I was really looking forward to my class with Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer of Heartstrings Fiberarts. She is from near New Orleans, so I won’t get a chance to meet her often, and we have had such lovely correspondences from time to time. (Picture is of her Mixed Jelly Beans beaded sox, pattern and/or kit available on her website.)

I also can meet some internet friends, including one of my blog readers. It could be fun. We will see how things feel tomorrow after I am done taking care of my client in the morning.

I am overwhelmed with the response to my tea stain story. I posted it to my blog here, and to my Socknitters, Knitlist, and Knit Design email lists. My inbox is overflowing with the encouragement and wisdom of my knitting friends! My problem now will be deciding what to do, as there are many good possible solutions.

I have to wait a little longer, however, because tomorrow morning is my appointment with my Tax Accountant, and of course I am still cranking trying to get all my numbers in order for her. I did a better job this year keeping records, but I’m not very good at paperwork as a whole. I guess if I keep getting a little better each year, it will become a non-issue before long.

I rinsed out the sox again to keep them fresh and moist. Tomorrow I will attack the problem, some way. Right now, Plan A is to find a way to remove the tea stain without destroying the fibers. Plan B is to overdye the sox with more tea to even out the discoloring, then overdye again with dark turquoise acid dye (the sox are Regia turquoise/blue/green jacquard).

I’ll report back when I have news.

I can’t believe it! I spilled tea on a pair of sox I have never worn. They were still in the “show and tell” phase and now they are stained. I ran hot water over them (these are washable) and then put them in a plastic bag to keep them moist until I can figure out what to do.

I understand that wool can not handle being bleached. In my long years of being a tea drinker, I’ve not found anything *except* bleach that has made tea stains go away. Yes, I could overdye the whole pair with tea, but I don’t like soft, subtle colors. I like “retina-damage” colors.

I am soliciting any assistance any of you can provide! Help?

I am just weary of winter today. Lately I am so cold and so tired, I just want to be warm for a while! Fortunately, the bulky alpaca slippersox/bedsox I finished earlier this week, are really helping my feet stay warmer when I am at home.

I got grumpy today at work when I first got there, and am not proud of it. Fortunately, I soon had eleven kids keeping me company in the computer lab for two hours. Those kids can turn my day around very quickly. I adore our children! When it was time to officially close my computer lab, I announced that I was in a good mood and so was going to stay open an extra 5 minutes. One of my knitting girls who was there playing computer games said: “You are in a good mood because you are knitting!” She was somewhat right, because I had found a chance to sit for a few minutes and cast on for a second sock as a gift. But she did not know how much her own presence was part of my attitude adjustment.

Brian took me to dinner tonight. It was such a treat! We had a gift certificate to an Indian restaurant nearby, and so we went there. It was so quiet and peaceful, even though there were a handful of others also dining. We tried a few foods we had not tried before. I feel so grateful that I am now able to eat some foods I have avoided for over six months, in small doses, infrequently. The meal was lovely and I enjoyed every bite!

For your entertainment, the picture is of me in my Burger King uniform, circa Thanksgiving 1976, around my 18th birthday. What an artform that hat was! We put cardboard crowns in them to keep them puffed up that high. The uniform was 100% polyester doubleknit. Keeping those yellow stripes clean was an art, I assure you! Fortunately, I only worked for BK (a friend calls them “Burger Thing” which I find amusing) for about six months.

I am perhaps ready to decrease for toes on the gift pair of sox I mentioned a few days ago. I am waiting to hear how long the socks need to be. I’m praying that I have enough yarn! It is pretty close, but since I”m using contrasting color for heels/toes/”rib,” I may have just enough. If I don’t have enough, I need to either take a trip to Ann Arbor or have them mail me another skein. I hate to buy a skein of yarn for $3.99 and then pay more to ship it, but I may have to do that. I keep thinking I will be going to Ann Arbor soon, but in reality it may not be again until the first week in April and that is too long!

Sunday I taught knitting to my Working Women Artists group. Two women had never knit at all, some needed to learn a new technique (knitting on circular needles, especially how to join without twisting… and new methods to cast on). One woman knows how to knit but needed help understanding how to read a pattern she wanted to try. All of us wanted to pet the different yarns folks had brought with them, and several brought items to show off. It was fun.

Then today (Monday) my CityKidz Knit! program had 11 children and one adult volunteer. I would say that was a success! Two girls are starting the backpack in Melanie Falick’s “Kids Knitting” book, and are quite excited about that.

One girl came in later than the rest of the pack. She has knit before, off and on. She is good at it, but has not been that excited about the process. However, today I had spent many hours before they arrived, re-arranging my computer/knitting room and the yarns folks have donated for us (thanks to Socknitters and Lansing Knitting Guild for the goodies). She spotted a variegated yarn in purples, blues, emerald green and magenta. She was in love!

This 14-year-old girl sat there for a good hour exclaiming how much she loved the yarn. That her mother surely would have to force her to go to bed tonight, because she would rather knit this lovely yarn than sleep. I am so happy for her, she had genuine joy. I told her I understood entirely, that yarn does that to me as well.

My friend Tony and I made our monthly trek to Spinners Flock in Chelsea, Michigan, today. He is such a breath of fresh air! I just count my blessings that the drive is over an hour one way, so we get time to chat. The Spinners Flock is such a huge group, often over 100 people at the meetings, and we socialize with others when we get there. I saw all sorts of folks I enjoy, it was really fun.

There are vendors at every meeting, two who specialize in books. Tony knows that I used to do a lot of Polymer clay, and he noticed a book on the table about the subject. He said, “Lynn, look at this book!” thinking I would be interested in the subject. I got all excited, because it was the book Polymer Clay: Creating Functional and Decorative Objects by Jacqueline Gikow which has two photos of my work. There is a pic of a sculpture I did, called “Spirit Feast,” (picture on my Hershberger Designs web page, bottom of page) and a picture of four Hershberger Art Kazoos tm with matching stands, that I made. I got to show Tony and another interested bystander.

It was pretty exciting, as if I got my 15 minutes of fame! It was exciting to reflect back and remember (after the excitement of having my sock pattern published in Heels and Toes Gazette) that I have been published now in three different media: Polymer, Soft Block printmaking, and knitting. Not bad for someone who didn’t take art classes in college… at least not the first time I went away to school!

I had to rush back to work the computer lab at the community center, and with rainy and cold weather I had only two kids to watch. I got a bit of knitting done on some sox I started yesterday. They will be a gift, so I am not going to say too much about them other than they are Cleckheaton washable yarn (either DK or light worsted) and they are turning out well, I think. I love fat yarn!!! In fact, I’m wearing a pair made of the same stuff right now, since it’s so cold here.

After work I went to my friend Ulyana’s house. She needed a tiny bit of tweaking on her computer so I did that while she made us some lovely Japanese Genmaicha tea (the kind with toasted rice). Yum. We had a nice chat for a good long while. We had not seen each other in almost two months. Too long, for someone I love so much and who lives so close. I could ride my bike to her house if it were nice weather!

It has been fun to show-and-tell my recent finished projects. I seem to finish them and then I take forever to let myself actually wear them, because the showing is even more fun than the wearing! I’m sort of funny.

I realize I had a wonderful Friday that I didn’t even write about, but it was sooo long (had 4.5 hours of sleep and then was gone from about 9:00 am to 10:30 pm) that now I’m wiped out and not feeling well, and I will have to write about it another time.

I made up a new recipe and it turned out really well!!! I had some applesauce and the only recipes I could find called for dry breakfast cereal or other ingredients I either didn’t have or can’t eat. In the end, I figured out what I *did* have, and made up a recipe.

Miracle: they are fabulous. The texture is a little springy. There is a sort of eggy texture inside (without using eggs), and they have a nice sort of crust on the outside. Enjoy!

LynnH Applesauce Oat Bran Muffins
1 c whole wheat pastry flour
   (or all-purpose flour, but don’t use regular whole wheat bread flour)
1/2 c buckwheat flour (can probably sub. oat flour or more wheat flour)
1/2 c oat bran
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 c honey
1/2 c soy milk or water (or dairy milk)
1-1/4c unsweetened applesauce
1/2 c chopped nuts (optional)
1tsp cinnamon (optional)
1Tbsp good Mexican vanilla (or 1-1/2 tsp regular vanilla)

1. Preheat to 350F
2. Mix all dry ingredients in large bowl
3. Add honey and soy milk/water, mix until moistened.
4. Add applesauce, vanilla and nuts, mix gently only until blended.
5. Fill 12 greased and floured muffin cups almost full
6. Bake 15 minutes, or until toothpick pulls out with just slight honey stickiness but no raw batter.

Yum!!! Just see if you can leave a few until later. It’s not too likely they will last long.