The Ugliest Thing I Have Made Since Third Grade

This is it.  The absolute ugliest thing (or things) I have made since third grade.  Maybe even second.  And yet, I must be truthful with you.  The picture just doesn't do them justice.  They were much uglier in person.  The photograph makes them look a little pinker than they actually were. 

They somehow reminded me of Ellie's little "brothers" in Ice Age 2.  Charlotte said they looked like the Cheshire cat in Disney's Alice in Wonderland.  At any rate, they were just plain ugly.

This is how they came about:

I had a little bit of chocolate angora yarn from Tootsie, and a little bit of white yarn from Snowball.  Enough for maybe one mitten each.  (I used every last inch of yarn.  In fact, if you look closely at the thumbs, you can see that I ran out of brown at the very end and that I had to use white instead.)  For some totally inexplicable reason, I somehow thought dyeing the yarn a very light pink would have a desirable effect.  Please note the effect was not in any way, shape or form desirable.  In person, the effect was more like vomitous. 

I have been creating various things for many years, and in my experience, often something that I think would look hideous turns out really well.  And sometimes it doesn't.  And that's ok.  Sometimes we then get inspiration for something else.  And then there is this other weird phenomenon.    See, many moons ago, I used to do craft fairs.  I mostly sold kits for people to make their own crafts, but I also had some unique jewelry and gift bags.  And for some completely unfathomable reason, people would buy the ugliest pins, or necklaces, or bags first.  I still cannot figure out why. 

I told Charlotte about this, and she could not believe that this would be true.  She had been knitting some tiny bunnies to sell at her 4-H shows, and she had some bunnies that were truly ugly.  Of course, she was embarrassed that they were so ugly and didn't want to take them.  I told her of my experience and suggested that she take the ugly bunnies to sell along with the nicer-looking ones. 

All the ugly bunnies sold first.

But I digress.  These mittens are truly ugly.  Horrendously ugly.  I figured nothing could fix them.

But they were angora.  I couldn't just waste them. 

So I figured, what the heck.  I'll try dyeing them another color. 

I decided to use royal blue liquid paste food coloring.  I stirred the food coloring into the water very well and then added the mittens and some vinegar.  I microwaved for two minutes, let sit for ten minutes, and then repeated. 

I know I took pictures, but it must have been on a different memory card or whatever those things are called.  And now I can't find it.  But they turned out really well.  Well enough to serve as an emergency gift on Christmas.