Coffee Stained Rainbow

I'm so close to the finish line on this rainbow whatsit project I can practically taste it. Could that be why my subconscious somehow felt the need to add flavor to it?

This morning I returned to the room with my full mug of coffee and half-and-half planning to settle in to watch a movie while I drank it and then pick up my crochet hook. I was raring to go because I'd lost several hours yesterday when my morning began with a nearly three hour hunt for the crochet hook which finally turned up the fourth time I shook out the wadded up fleece sheet.

I do not have a safe place to set my coffee down so I very seldom do. I make sure when I leave the room to go after it that I can get back into position without setting it down. This morning I'd forgotten to put food in Merlin's bowl and I knew he would be a pest until I did and wanted to drink my morning coffee and watch my movie in peace.

So...



Yes that's my 20 oz coffee mug sitting on top of my netbook!!!!!!

What happened was....

*blush* *hang head* *cringe*

...by the time I had filled the cat bowl and crawled up into position I had entirely forgotten the coffee cup. So I reached for the corner of the netbook and pulled it toward me, lifting a bit as it slid. The cup toppled and fell against my hip which was right beside the folded rainbow panel of my project which lay atop the bag containing six of the 18 separate balls of thread involved in the project.

Coffee splashed against my leg from hip to ankle but I barely noticed as I reached to grab the cup up in one hand and crawl out of bed to shake my PJ leg to cool it. It wasn't until I was standing at the foot of the bed looking back that I realized the rainbow project had been in the line of fire--or should I say gurgle--and as soon as I reached out and touched the folded rainbow I knew it was bad as it was soaked.

Coffee and milk!



I grabbed up the bag and rushed to the kitchen where Ed was on his laptop. After some discussion and examining of all the thread, the panel and the 'bowl' we decided to roll the latter two up in towels and put them under weight--Urm under the mattress I would be sitting on--for an hour or two and then spread them in front of the fan to air dry for another hour or until dry. The balls of thread were set out to air dry immediately.

Ed suggested too that I finish the panel before I wash it as the risk otherwise is that the thread from before the washing will look too different from the thread after. Then there is the fact that some of that thread will have the stain on it as well. Once I'm sure neither the panel nor the bowl need more rows I'll hand wash them and thoroughly air dry them again. I have five stripes or ten rows to do which I hope to have done in the next 48 hours. Then I will see if the bowl needs any more rows added.

None of the balls of thread were seriously soaked. Just splashed a bit. The coffee had apparently run through the rainbow and down the inside of the bag to pool in the bottom where the 'bowl' was folded up awaiting its attachment to the finished rainbow panel.

It wasn't until after I pulled the 'bowl' and rainbow panel out from under the mattress and unwrapped them from the towels that I thought to get pictures. So these were all taken hours after it happened. The cup you see in the picture has been long empty. I had repacked the washed and dried bag. And then unpacked it to spread out the damp items in front of the fan so:



It should be obvious by now that the rainbow whatsit is going to be a tote so I should probably just go ahead and call it that now. When I first started I wasn't sure what I was going to make with the rainbow panel nor how big I would make it.

I have five more stripes to finish the forth iteration of the sixteen colors. Then I believe it will be ready to attach to the bowl which is its bottom. I'm still unsure exactly how I'm finishing off the top section to create a drawstring closing.

Anyone who might have been following this project from the beginning might be wondering what happened to the circlets that showed up in pictures accompanying previous project reports.



I am wondering why I didn't start wondering about them until I was processing the pictures from the photo shoot. They should have been in the bag. If they were they were probably soaked. Did they fall out onto the floor in the kitchen as I pulled stuff out when I showed the damage to Ed? Did the dog eat them or bury them in the yard?

Well, I spent another hour at least before and after dinner looking for them. In a panic. They represented 30 to 50 hours of work. They could be tearing up Bruiser's insides like the towel my sister's dog ate had done. All Ed would do was tell me to breathe. I had to sit through dinner still frantic about them.

By the time I got done eating I had decided to go on the theory that they had never been in the bag for some reason. What then? The most likely scenario was that Ed had moved them to some logical (only to him) place when he helped clear my projects off his side of the bed last night. So I made a quick sweep of the likely areas and eventually found them on the floor at the far side of the chest of drawers containing my thread that now serves as my desk.

I try to tell myself how much worse it could have been. The whole cup could have spilled instead of less than a quarter of it. As it would have if there had been no lid. My leg could have been scalded. The spill could have spread to the project in the bag under the rainbow tote project or into the open drawers of the chest.