The list goes on and on

6.


Yes, I know. These are not normal "Maggie colors", but these two skeins were dyed entirely from things that grew in my own yard. The brown was made using the hulls of black walnuts from my tree. When we moved in a couple of years ago, it was hard to tell whether it was a tree or a weed, and this was the first year that it produced fruit (the nuts are a fruit. The hull is the actual fruit, which dries and gets removed before we crack open the shell of the pit and eat the meat of the seed). And boy did it ever produce some fruit. After this project, I still had two quarts of dark brown dye, and I only used about a quarter of the nuts I collected, so there could be more brown to come. The pink comes from the berries of the poke weed. Interestingly enough, these weeds could also be confused with trees in my yard. I've been waging a war against them in both the front flower bed and near the back fence. I concede defeat. I cannot kill these weeds. I've tried everything. Attempting to pull them out only ends in a bruised tail bone. I've poured boiling water and salt on them, which did seem to stunt them for a while, but they only grew back thicker. I've cut them down, and my neighbor was even so kind as to pour pesticide on them, despite my loud disapproval of such chemicals anywhere, but especially so close to a rather troubled waterway. I've decided that the only sane thing to do at this point is to embrace them and put them to good use. You'll notice that the two skeins took the dye very differently because of their different fiber contents. I'm curious to see how a small amount of alpaca I have lying around will take it. Any ideas on what to do with half a skein of hot pink alpaca?

(Also notice the bowl the skeins are in... it's made from a limb of my grandma's black walnut tree. In particular the limb that she tried to cut down last winter. The neighbors called my uncle, "Mary's in the tree again." He pulled her out of the tree, finished the job, and made this bowl to show her just how big the limb was. It was a failed attempt at teaching her that 82 year old women cannot cut down trees in the snow. She proceeded to give the bowl to me this summer as part of her constant decluttering lunacy.)

7. There's a ham bone in my freezer. After all the Thanksgiving drama about the ham, it was actually very good, and the ham-bringer left me the bone so that I can make soup this weekend.

8. I'm making a moebius! After much discussion about whether a shawl/wrap/scarf thing is actually a good Christmas gift for my brother's girlfriend, I decided that I don't really care. I found yarn for a really good price, well within the per person budget that I declared while screaming at the brothers about how $600 was out of the question. Both the color and texture of the yarn are lovely. The color is called "Lake Ice" and is a light silvery gray blue. Plus I like saying moebius and the fact that it is a dorktacular mathematical idea.