Yarn! + My Trader Joe's Addiction

Go away, I'm sleeping.

I swear, Mozzie was sleeping like this almost all day today. He was like this when I left this morning to go help Lauria, he was like this when I got home, and he went back to this as soon as he was finished with veg.

Not to be derailed by cute piggies, today we dyed some more yarn for the "Year at the Farm" Sock Club and packaged up all the dry yarn we had died yesterday. This was our dye set-up:

Silly sun ruined the photo.

In the pot on the left was some yarn we died for Julie since we had some extra dye we couldn't use for the sock yarn. Like I mentioned yesterday, dying yarn reminded me a lot of dying eggs. You get your water and add some vinegar to get the pH balance correct. Different colors of dye need different pHs. Lauria said that normally you want to start with cold water and heat it up slowly with the yarn in it for the best result. We wanted something a bit different for the sock club yarn, though, so we actually started with warm water. Before the yarn goes into the dye, you have to soak it. It helps the dye saturate more evenly. We then measured exactly how much dye we put in so that we could make sure each dye lot was fairly consistent. Once the yarn is in, you slowly bring it to almost a boil. Then, depending on the color, you may need to let it cool in order to finish soaking up all the dye. Once it's done, you pull it out and gently squeeze the water out of it. We used the washer to get some more water out before hanging it to dry. All in all, though a process to be sure, it was actually fairly simple. I can't tell you anything specific about how it turned out, but it was LOVELY! I really am proud of both the colors we've done so far. 

When we ran out of yarn to dye and package up, I helped Lauria with some other Juniper Moon Farm related stuff. I got to help her name three of the fall yarn lines. It was really fun but also really hard. There were some colors we just stared at forever and had no idea what to call them. That's usually when we called in Julie to help us.

After playing with yarn (okay, for some of us it was work, but it felt like play) I ran up to Nashua to pick up my new glasses and popped into Trader Joe's. Mike and I may have a teensy weensy Trader Joe's obsession. There's a few things that we really love getting there. One of them is almonds. Specifically, the Dark Chocolate Almond Bits. They are AMAZING. If you have a Trader Joe's by you, then you MUST go out and buy some of these stat!

Food of the gods. Crunchy, chocolaty, and delicious.

Another thing we've been getting a lot of at Trader Joe's is salsa. We go through a lot of salsa. Mostly for nachos, but also on other Mexican food. Today I picked up three different kinds of salsa:

My favorite in the middle :)

On the left is one that Mike really likes, the Double Roasted Salsa. It's very tomato-y, but not chunky, and fairly hot. The middle one, the Corn and Chile Tomato-less Salsa, is my favorite. It's very sweet, but with a nice bite. The one on the right is a new one for us to try. It's supposed to be medium to mild.

I also impulse bought these at the register:

A big wallop of ginger for your taste buds.

Every time I go into Trader Joe's I think about buying these. Today, I finally did. And I'm so glad I did! They're the size and shape of Altoids, but they're not minty at all. They're just delightfully spicy and gingery. I love ginger, which is part of the reason I got them, but I'm also hoping they'll help settle my stomach on the T. I have ginger chews that I usually eat on the train, but it seems silly sometimes to eat them on the T, or they're too hard to get to. So these seem like they might be perfect. Even if they don't work for that, they're really tasty.