Before the trip

On a friday two weeks ago I made a trip to the pharmacy. That is the place where you get all sorts of weird stuff that nobody wants (or is allowed) to sell. I wanted food coloring and apparently it’s not sold in supermarkets here in Finland. After searching around with no luck I asked the sales lady if she spoke english and in true Finnish fashion she said “very badly”. They often say that even though it’s not at all true. I asked her about the food coloring but she just stared at me with no expression of understanding in her face, so I took the risk and said “ruokaväri?” which is literally “food color” in Finnish. Well, that’s what it’s called in Icelandic and English, so why not Finnish as well? She looked at me blankly for what felt like a really long time and I was getting really embarrassed. Then she walked slowly to a cupboard and took out a box full of tiny plastic containers and indeed it was da stuff. This she did without saying a word. That’s another thing they sometimes do here, they don’t haste and don’t necessarily have the need to communicate in words if they have understood you. She just gave it some quiet thought, reached a conclusion and acted. Very elegant but very uncomfortable for me who needs verbal verification. Now I know that its proper name in Finnish is karamelliväri.

So I got da stuff and it was expensive I tell you. One bottle of each color, each about 5 euros although the red was nearer to 6 euros for some obscure reason I don’t understand. They naturally expect that you’ll be using one grain of the powder each time so that it’s going to last you a lifetime, in which case 5 euros is definitely not that much. When you’re planning to dye some yarn though, one bottle per skein is about what you need!

So, what does a single girl do on a friday night? Exciting yarn dyeing of course.

and what does an obsessive compulsive personality do the next day? Some more dyeing… “just a little bit… even though I really should be packing for my trip tomorrow.”

This expensive red color was a total fraud as you can see. The plan was a gradation from bright red to light orange, but the red turned out PINK! And it’s twice as long as the other color sections. Oh well, you live you learn or however that goes.

I’m still rather happy with the results and I’m so going to do this again – it really is alot of fun. Maybe I’ll wait though, until I go to the States where I can buy some cool Kool-Aid. I bet it’s much less expensive than these snobby food colors. I did check supermarkets in Aachen, but all the food coloring there contained sugar so that was a no go unfortunately.

The green balls are some extra létt-Lopi I had lying around. I can see them turning into gloves. The freakish pink and orange ones are Lanett and they will definitely end up as Jaywalkers.