Big Fat Hairy Surprise

Every single ball of yarn I have ever seen, purchased, oogled, or heard of has a band, tag or other packaging.  The sole job of that ball band (other than to remind me who made it) is to remind me of one simple fact:  Dye Lots Vary.  Like Gravity, this is not just a good idea; it's a LAW.  Its truth is verifiable and incontrovertible.  Not Kidding:  If you get one skein of yarn from one pot of dye, and another from a different pot of dye, even if they are allegedly the same color, the hue of the two skeins WILL differ.  Mathematically certain.  Everyone, from the most experienced yarn dyers in the world (some of whom, I actually even know), to my neighbor's cat, understands this unyielding law of the universe. 

So of course, I figured it didn't really apply to me, personally.

It all started when my friend gave me this sorry, bedraggled old sweater.  She had rescued it from a thrift store, where she'd found it languishing, with a big hole right in its chest.  Recognizing its handknit wool yarn as an authentic Aran tweed, she couldn't leave it there, unloved.  Time passed, though, and she never quite got around to frogging the poor thing out of its misery.  So she offered it to me, as a possible rehab project.  It was really a specimen that only a mother could love, but something told me the poor old beast deserved my attention.  I decided that if I couldn't help it to be reborn, I would at least give it a decent burial.  So frog it, I did:

Another pal of mine sat with me, patiently picking out its seams, while I pulled out all 1,560 yards of cables and moss.  Pretty satisfying, actually.  Funny how easy it is to gut a sweater that's not your knitting.  And once it was washed, it leapt back to life, as all great yarn will, ready for its reincarnation.

News to nobody: I'm not a fan of earth tones.  This Butterscotch, or Toffee Beige, or whatever 1970s back-to-nature slice of hell you wanna call it, was not my idea of the color it should remain.  Not to worry, I thought, I own a dyepot!

And it's true.  I do.  A dyepot of ample size to tint, say, 700 yards of yarn at once.  Not 1560.  Let me reiterate:  I KNOW BETTER than to attempt what I did next.  The only explanation is that I found the perfect pattern for this yarn while it was drying after its bath, and the resulting fit of Start-its clouded my judgement.  Yeah, let's go with that. 

I decided to dye it in two (2) batches.

I was SO precise!  I was SO careful!  I measured.  I timed.  I was clinical in my obsessive concern to treat both batches of yarn EXACTLY the same.

Dumbass.

Yep.  Two completely different colors.  Both lovely, and neither one enough to make that perfect sweater pattern I now have my heart set upon.

So I'm gonna knock on the door of a friend of mine who has BIG dyepots, as soon as I can get up the nerve to admit to my foolhardy ways.  I'm lucky to have some friends that are both smarter, and better-equipped than I am.  I'm hoping they will know the right sort of magic for this situation.

And in the meantime, I'm taking comfort in this undisputable fact:  There are things in this world upon which we can absolutely count:  Babies are born.  The Tax Man gets paid.  Politicians and gauge swatches lie.  And in case you ever wondered (though I know you never did) I've proven it once and for all:  Dye Lots Vary.  Duh.
 

Duck and Cover

So there I was, minding my own business, winding 655 little skeins of yarn.  I've been doing it all week, and I think I'm getting pretty good at it.  Like ditch-digging, or sod-busting, skein-winding is an activity whose learning curve we may not fully appreciate until it's too late.  And by "too late", I mean that if you find yourself actually doing any of these things, it's clear that you have not planned your life properly.  But I was winding anyway, with the speed and confidence borne of practice.  And that's when I heard it:  POPSMASH!

I looked into the hallway whence came the noise:

What you are looking at (and it took me a full minute to figure it out, myself) is the remains of one of these:

They are builder-grade ($1.95 per 100) ceiling light fixtures.  They are everywhere in my house, and probably in yours, too.  Look up and see if I'm not right. 

And it EXPLODED. 

The bulbs inside are still intact, and happily lighting the hallway.  Just the glass shade simultaneously blew up.  And I'm picking shards of glass out of everything in a 10-foot radius, including the carpet, the coat closet, and if I'm not careful, my hands.

Now I have lived happily beneath my collection of builder-grade ceiling fixtures for upward of six years in this house.  Before that, I had similar ones in two other homes.  And at NO TIME did it ever occur to me that I should worry about them EXPLODING into a rain of glass shards.  I'm really happy to report that no Smallies or pets were harmed, but I can't help but wonder if we're all on borrowed time here.

And the bigger picture also makes me anxious:  I like to think I keep my mind open to the signs the universe is sending me.  I believe that information about what we are supposed to be doing and thinking in this life is all around us, in the form of positive and/or negative input resulting from our actions.  God/Nature/The Universe has subtle ways of letting us know when we are on (or off) the right track in our decisions.  So what, Gentle Readers, am I supposed to make of this weird-ass development?  Really?  Broken GLASS.  Raining down from the sky.  I'd have to be blind (and deaf, and shard-resistant) not to notice it as some kind of signal.  But of what?

A moment of reflection spent in relative safety under the dining room table produced the following possible interpretations:

1.    I'm not supposed to be winding yarn right now.  God wants me to investigate the many possibilities of track lighting, instead.

2.    I should be paying more attention to lights being left on in areas where people are not.  That's just good environmental stewardship, but apparently at my house, it's also self-preservation.

3.    My weird-filled week has reached its inevitable crescendo, and I can relax in the knowledge that things are bound to settle down now (Insert Lightning Strike Here).

Which do you think it is?  Or is there a larger message here that I've completely missed?  

If anybody needs me, I'll be under the dining room table.

Actual Size

I'm home from my wanderings.  My husband emphasized to me that my actual time away was "ELEVEN WHOLE DAYS".  He also has discovered that he is "Only ONE Person!" (not sure what his count was before this).  In my absence, Mount Washmore, the active Laundry-cano in our home, erupted.  I think more than once.  Objects in mirror are closer than they appear:

And no, in case you were going to give my family credit for at least sorting it into these baskets, they didn't.  In fact, it even gets better:  In the laundry room, I have installed one of those plastic grocery bag storage devices you get from Ikea.  I use it to hold orphaned socks until their mates can be located, or I lose the will to search, whichever comes first.  While I was gone, this happened to it:

That's right.  Every single sock that came out of the dryer for eleven days was placed in it.  Which means that my family is unaware that the pairing up of clean socks is a MANUAL PROCESS.  They actually think this device will do it for them.   

I'm calling it Soxidermy.  A realistically preserved, wall-mounted head, made entirely of abandoned hosiery.  Its eyes follow me around the room.  Creepy.

Once I get to the bottom of this, I'll mount an assault on Mount e-mail, the active correspondence-cano.  Then I'll start winding yarn for the KAL.  I don't love this order of operations, but the clean underwear-o-meter went into the red around here sometime last Tuesday, so desperate times call for desperate measures.  We who are about to fluff and fold salute you.