Pencil Roving Dye Job

I mentioned that I'd tried my hand at dying pencil roving. I am really not too pleased with the result, but hopefully the spun yarn will look better. I am going to spin a bulky yarn and plan to use it as part of the cuff on some felted slippers.

Here is the first bat. Notice that the dye didn't disperse evenly through the bat. I am guessing this is probably normal. The first picture is the top of the bat (to which the dye was applied) and the second picture is the bottom. I used Gaywool and Cushings dyes.



Here is the second bat, and again, the top of the bat is shown in the first picture and the bottom of the bat in the second picture.



I knitted a bit on the Little Shells socks last night. Progress is slow on them. The pattern is very easy. It is a 4 row repeat with three of those rows being plain knit stitches. I love how the colors are working up with the Twinkletoes Sunrise colorway.

I'm anxiously waiting for the mail to come today! Some of us at the Knitty Coffeeshop set up a yarn exchange a few months ago, and the exchange box is on its way to my house! What fun. Someone referred to the exchange box as either a yard sale in a box or a flea market in a box or something equally humorous! I need to decide what of my stash can go into the trade box.

Someone asked about the bread machine I use. It's a West Bend machine, nothing fancy. It works well and is easy to use. You put the ingredients in the pan, press a few buttons, and voila!

My daughter has to do some science projects for school this year, She has decided on a project called "The Microbes we Eat" and it will consist of two parts--bread making and yogurt making. The teacher thinks this will be an exciting project. Daughter is going to do a report on yeast that is used in bread and acidophilus used in yogurt. She's going to take pictures throughout the process and use these to illustrate her report and will also take in samples of her home made bread and yogurt. She loves cooking, so this should be a fun project for her.