Last night

I didn't get as much accomplished last night as I wanted to. It took forever at the nail salon for my fill because I chose to get nail art. I opted for one of the new fall colors, Russian Navy from OPI. It's a really deep dark blue. It's not one of the colors I would normally choose, but it looked really awesome, and I have to have dark colors because one of the dogs (no, not Chancey or Robbie-do) bit me in the thumb in August (AUGUST, mind you) and I have a bruise underneath my thumbnail. Which they tell me will take two months or so more to grow out. BUMMER. So I am stuck wearing dark colors til at least January because this bruise is nasty. But then again, I like this blue because i can have a snowman painted over it or a snowflake and it would make a killer French Manicure. Anyway . . . so it took a while to get that done. I got home and realized I needed cat litter, so I had to go back out and get that, then ended up stuck at Jerry's picking up dinner for 30 minutes. That annoyed me.

So it was 9 before I got to sit and stitch, but I did good in two hours. I actually started on the Horseman's cape, and the horse has a tail. Yay! I also have to report, I decided yesterday at work to wash the WDW floss I had bought for the project. So, because I was bored, had nothing to do, and, frankly, because no one told me I couldn't, I went in the bathroom and started rinsing. I got a couple raised eyebrows from some women who saw me do it, but they know I am slightly wierd anyway, so opted to disregard it. It was a wise choice, somehow, it never comes out right to say, "Well, I am rinsing the special floss because it can't get wet. I don't want it to run onto my other threads that didn't need to be washed."

I know Weeks runs like an athlete when it's wet, so I wanted to get the excess dye out of this bunch in order to use it. It was an interesting experiment. Pewter, Indian Summer and Eggplant bled all over the paper towels. I was drying them on. When I saw "bled", I mean BLED. Carrot bled some, but not as much. There was very little on Honeysuckle and London Fog. I am glad I did this because I can see, given the size of this, it's not gonna be a two week project so it's gonna get dirty. But it makes me wonder about some of these thread companies. I've used all kinds of overdyeds, hand-dyeds, whatever you call them. Why is it so hard to make them color fast? Caron does it--I've washed Waterlilies often. Needle Necessities is pretty much colorfast--I rinsed the threads for the Winter bellpull and very little color came off. Why can't the others do the same. You can't tell me it's not possible. For a large batch dyer or a small batch dyer--DMC is colorfast, and I've figured out how to make both the fabric and thread I do set. IT'S NOT THAT HARD. You don't even need to do the vinegar deal. I just rinse my fabric in hot water til it runs clear. The thread is a little harder, but you can steam set the color. The threads I did at CATS have held their color and not run. Sorry to sound like a butt about this, but it's 2007, we can set color without using chemicals stronger than vinegar and H20.