As bright as a bright thing

So a few days ago, I decided I was going to dye my hair!

It's all Zaz's fault really; she's a woman with long dreadlocks from a website called Dreadlock Truth. Her locks are waist length and - due to her fascination with mermaids - she recently dyed her hair green. It looks A-MAZ-ING!

I knew I didn't want mine all one colour though and on a recent shopping trip to Southampton with Alex; I found what I was looking for!

So I roped Vicky (Matt's girlfriend - she started a Hair & Beauty course in September) in to help and we started off by dumping a load of bleach in my hair.

I will admit; I was absolutely terrified! I've put a lot of work into my dreads - I love them, they are getting solid and feel more dreadlockish. What if my hair all fell out, or the dye looked really shit? What if the bleaching process made my locs break? What if it set my scalp psoriasis off?

We sat and we waited and waited. After half an hour, I went and rinsed. A lot of the hair was still quite dark, but seemed to have survived intact. We decided to apply another load of bleach and wait another half an hour.

When I rinsed, this is what I got!

I duly posted a pic on twitter - some loved it, Claire hated it LOL

The next bit was going to be a bit more tricky as I was going to be applying 2 different colours and couldn't just slap it on as I was used to.

We started off by applying the colour to the roots - almost immediately it became obvious that this colour wasn't going to go very far and I started to panic - I didn't want a whole load of blonde hair underneath.

Then I remembered some dye I bought years and years ago and had never gotten around to trying.

When colour number 1 ran out, we added colour number 2 to the ends of the locks that had been partially dyed with colour number 1.

Once colour number 2 ran out we blanket dyed the remaining locs with the ancient dye I'd stashed in my bedroom - we had just enough!

I sat around with all that foil on my head, too scared to move in case something broke and all my hair fell out.

Vicky was exhausted and went to bed and I was left to sit and worry on my own - well, the teen boys were there, but you know what they're like!!

I waited about 40 minutes then went next door to use Mum's shower - no, I still haven't had an electrician in to wire up my fancy bath so I can get the shower attached!

I didn't look in the mirror until after I got out, but from the amount of colour that ran down my body - I knew it was going to be bright.

I had decided to hop into the shower and do it that way as colour 1 was a lot lighter than the other colours and I didn't want any bleeding effect going on.

Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared for colour 3 to do what it did!

So, first off, let me show you my hair!

Bright, isn't it?

Personally, I love it!!

Unfortunately, Mum's shower has now been stained blue - I used loads of cleaner on it and still couldn't get it back to white.

Then I saw my back - it was blue too. I could've cried!

I called Alex in and we scrubbed at it until we got most of it off. I got the hairdryer on my locs (it was gone 1am by this point) and dried them off.

Then I went to bed.

When I got up the next morning, the first thing I noticed was that my neck was blue again!

I couldn't believe it! I scrubbed again, I tried toothpaste, eye make up remover, handwash, perfume and T-Gel - I ended up with little more than a sore blue neck :(

We've come to the conclusion that this stuff is just going to leech onto my skin until it settles down, unfortunately this means I can't actually wear my hair down to show off the dye!

The first two colours - Flamingo Pink and Indigo Violet by Directions - are absolutely fine and I have had no problems with them at all. It's the Blue Velvet by Special Effects (the really dark bits) that's causing all the problems!

I'm going to go and wash it again in a minute then give it a good rinse in cold water with a bit of vinegar in to see if that helps at all.

Well....it works on fibre!

I felted a bucket and Fibreholics again!

A while ago, I decided to spin up all the samples I got from the Fibreholics and Phat Fiber boxes last year into one long single, then I spun up the fibre that I dyed months ago. I plied the dyed fibre with the single of samples until I got the yarn I mentioned in a previous post.

Then I got to knitting and I made a huge bag!

I threw it in the washing machine this morning and waited anxiously for it to finish spinning. This is what I pulled out!

It shrunk a lot more than I was expecting, but I've now got a wide bucket that will hold my fibre when I'm spinning!

See that bag? The plastic grey one in the laundry basket over there <--- huge, isn't it? It's stuffed full of samples for next months fibreholics boxes! I've enclosed sock yarn in the Sorbet colourway and fibre samples in a new colourway that I'll be calling Wysteria. It's very pretty and I'm very excited to be participating in the fibreholics fun as a dyer rather than a buyer! I also received an e-mail from the Ravelry PTB last week; they've approved my ad for the forums, so if you're on Rav, do keep an eye out for my banner across the bottom of the pages - thanks!

Frustration and Impatience

I am my own worst enemy! Well, anyone who knows me well knows that!

I have no patience at all. If I want something; I want it right now! If I can't do something, I get absolutely furious with myself and shout at everyone!

I get frustrated so easily too, which I guess ties it all in together.

Someone I follow on twitter summed it up perfectly, her twitter name is Bahtocancer and as you can guess she is currently going through chemotherapy. She said: 'It astonishes me that I can 'do' cancer but am reduced to tears by a problem setting up pages on my website.'.

I know exactly what she means for I'm that way myself. I can cope with injuries to the kids, pets, emergencies, whatever - but stupid things drive me absolutely WILD!

I started selling yarn this week. I spent a happy couple of afternoons throwing dye around and ended up with 19 skeins (two of which were a custom order from Kerry). It was great and I loved the results.

I then spent hours uploading everything to my Folksy shop (Folksy takes aaaaaaaaaages!) and announced that the shop was ready to the masses that were waiting - ok....not 'masses' exactly....more like Kerry, Diane and Rita! But they were there waiting on twitter and it was all sooooooooo exciting!

Well, they each bought something - thank you, ladies, loves ya! - and I packaged it all up for posting this morning.

Then today, I decided I really should create a spreadsheet detailing my incoming and outgoing where the shop is concerned. I fought with the damn thing for two hours! Everytime I entered in the SUM formula thingy, I just got a red triangle!

I went and yelled at everyone on twitter and the troops rallied and we eventually got it sorted, but the fact that I swear I entered that stupid forumla countless times and it didn't work for two hours enraged me!

So, this afternoon, I sat down and did some spinning to relax. That all went well, then the announcement came out that advertising slots were available on Ravelry. I thought that would be a really good idea so went along to have a look.

I had to register for advertising and then upload my banner - it refused my banner because it was the incorrect size. I've finally managed to adjust it to a different size, but it didn't load as I was looking at it - I just had a box with grey and white stripes!

My banner is naff anyway. I can't design for toffee and I just don't understand how to manipulate the image for different websites - why the hell can't the sites just change the banner automatically for you? I can't even get the Folksy one to not look all warped and stretched!

I'd love to have my own site - but last time I even considered it, I got so angry at all the technical babble the 'build your own sites' sites threw at me, that I gave up with a pounding headache!

Someone said 'go to college and learn what you want to know' but it doesn't stay in my head! The kids think I'm hysterical; I'll sit and play a game on the x-box and I'll spend an hour going round in circles totally oblivious to the fact that I'm actually lost!

If I don't write it down, I forget it! Everything goes into my phone with an alarm to remind me. I've been known to look at my diary at 10am, see there's an appointment at midday and then promptly forget about the appointment.

I'm clumsy and I knock things over all the time!

But I get soooo frustrated at myself and my limitations!

It's taken me over a week to get over Wonderwool. I was so exhausted, then I had the vertigo attack and fell on the stairs. I finally recovered and got on with the dyeing. I spent a couple of hours at a time in the kitchen, but it still made my back ache!

Yesterday, I sat down to reskein the yarn. Unfortunately, Mum's skeiner didn't want to play and everything kept tightening as I turned it, so I gave up with that and decided to wind the yarn around the legs of my largest table from my nest of tables.

I wound 17 of the skeins. It took all day and by the end of it, I was exhausted and my back was in agony.

Some of the muscles under my shoulders are still in spasm today.

That's not right. None of it!

I'm 34 years old! Not 68 like my Mum (who is probably more physically able than I am!), I shouldn't have to rest for a couple of hours after running the vacuum around downstairs. I shouldn't suffer pain from standing for more than ten minutes.

I shouldn't spend a week or more recovering from being on my feet for a couple of days!

I'm amazed I remember how to breathe!

A painful few days & A New Beginning

On Thursday I came down with a migraine. It was quite a bad one and I, stupidly, ate dinner after taking a pain killer.

Dinner added nausea and a general feeling of bleurgh to the whole migraine experience.

On Friday I felt absolutely awful and I actually spent the entire day lying on the sofa under a blanket (much to the delight of Isis) snoozing. I then went to bed and slept for 8 hours that night!

I felt slightly better on Saturday and actually managed to get some knitting done - not a great deal, but a little bit.

Sunday, I woke up with a chronic pain in my shoulder. There was a central pain in my right shoulder which travelled across the top of my shoulders, down the right side of my back and down my right arm. This lasted all day and I just couldn't get comfortable!

I spent most of the day zoned out on painkillers with a hot water bottle pressed to my shoulder and slept fitfully Sunday night.

On Monday, Alex had an appointment and afterwards I took him for lunch in KFC. We have a ritual we do everytime we go; tear the end off the straw wrapping, put the straw in your mouth and blow hard so that the other end of the wrapping flies off and hits the person sitting opposite you. Of course, I completely forgot about this and jumped about a foot when this piece of plastic hit me square on the nose.

Christ that hurt!!!

But afterwards on the drive home, I had barely any pain at all!

I went off to our fibre craft meet as usual on Monday evening, but by the time that had finished I was in agony with pain all over the place!

I rested yesterday and shopped today and I'm still in agony, there's a band of pain going right across the middle of my back and I just can't get comfortable!

Naturally, I have a billion and one things to do. I want to tidy up as Helen is coming to visit this weekend. I've got cakes to bake as Jess turns 15 on Saturday and Alex 14 on Sunday.

This is even affecting my knitting as I need to keep moving, fidgeting, shifting position, refilling my hot water bottle, etc and I don't think I'm going to get my Olympic knitting finished in time :(

I can't wait until I finish this shawl as I really want to spin! I have the gorgeous Thunderstorm batts that I carded and several other glitzy batts that I've purchased recently and I want to spin now!!!

In good news; I have purchased 20 kilos of BFL, dyes in blue, yellow and red, squeezy bottles, vinegar and clingfilm! I'm all ready to get dyeing! I'm going to start looking at sites to sell through soon and I should hopefully have a full shop to open by the end of March!

My first attempt

A few weeks ago, we went to the New Forest, on the way home we went to Queen Elizabeth Country Park and Wingham Wool was there. I bought loads of cashmere and some dye.

Because I don't want to wreck my cashmere, I thought I'd experiment with some English Wool Blend first that Karen gave me when I told her about it.

Karen gave me this:

I added some of this:

It did this:

And I ended up with this:

Gorgeous colour! I'm dyeing some more right now, more fibre, more dye for a longer time - just as an experiment.

I've ordered a drop spindle and I'm going to practice using this.