The post with all the pictures.

As promised, a picture of the half-completed shawl in action. (Pardon the quality - this is a carefully cropped close-up from a larger picture. The original wasn't aiming to be a FO picture. Also, it had my face in it.) In the picture it's still about thirty rows from completion. It's now only around ten rows from completion, which means an actual FO post will probably be next.

While I was in the Boston area, I stopped by my old LYS, Mind's Eye Yarns, twice. The first time I went with Kay (of last year's inter-state yarn trip), and it happened to be on the Saturday of the annual Red Line Yarn Crawl. So when I bought a skein of the owner's hand-dyed sock yarn, I got a 10% discount card for my next purchase. I didn't anticipate being in the area again before the card expired, so I took some time on Monday to drop by again while visiting with Shoshana. Shoshana is one of the few remaining friends from college I'm still in touch with, and the one who got me onto Ravelry and inspired me to start knitting more adventurous things. She also introduced me to Mind's Eye, so it was not very difficult to suggest that we hang out there.

While looking around for the perfect thing to use my discount on, my eye naturally fell on the cones of undyed yarn above the merchandise shelves. They weren't exactly for sale. I bought one anyway. I feel kind of bad about it - did my asking about it pressure the very nice employee to come up with a price on the spot? and should I not have asked about using the discount card on top of that? - but I don't think I was pushy or rude about it at all, and would easily have taken no for an answer. In any case, a pound of lovely laceweight for under $30 goes a long way towards making me feel better. (I did some research later and I'm pretty sure it's this yarn.)

(As a side note to anyone in the Boston area, Lucy, the owner of Mind's Eye Yarns, is looking to sell her store this month, for reasons more fully explained on the shop site linked above. If it isn't sold by the end of April, the store will probably close. This would be a very sad thing for everyone in the area who's enjoyed the hospitality and warmth of the store over the years, so do check it out.)

So on Friday I went to Down Cellar again while hanging out with Pickle. This place has pretty much turned into my LYS away from home, and I'm always pleasantly astonished when I walk in after several months and the employees still remember so much about me. Almost immediately I found something that tugged at my heartstrings.

Two skeins of Plymouth DyeForMe Suri Alpaca Merino Glow.

There were exactly two of them on the shelf, and I knew then that I had to have both or none at all. I tried to convince myself of the superiority of the "none at all" plan by walking around the rest of the store for distraction. Pickle posed a compelling argument for the "both" option, by slipping twenty bucks into my coat pocket. You can see what the result was.

(This was the second time in a week that he's reverse pickpocketed me without my noticing. Watch your pockets around him.)

Then yesterday, after coming back to Colorado, I met up with Shannon and Alexis for a yarn-dyeing day. I'd ordered a cone of sock yarn, and wound up full skeins for both of them and two little mini-skeins for me.

While I taught them to kettle-dye their skeins in the conventional way, I dyed my mini-skeins all twisted up into hanks. This resulted in an orangey-red dye on the outside of the hank, while the inside remained white. After they're dry, untwisted and wound up into cakes, you can see that the dye patterned up into extremely short color changes. Shannon dyed the bright blue skein in the photo, which is now sitting on my table in a beautiful, slightly variegated cake that I might be tempted to keep if I were of lesser moral fiber. Alexis produced a lovely skein that reminded me of peaches, golden-yellow in some areas and red-orange in others. She declined my ball-winding services, saying that she should learn how to wind yarn the hard way first. Good luck, Alexis. We've all been there, and I for one don't ever want to be there again, especially with 400 yards of sock yarn.

Shawl update.

I did not finish the Nouveau Beaded shawl in time for what I wanted it for.

I wore it anyway. I cut the working yarn, draped the circ around my shoulders and tucked the needles down my neckline. Later on I rejoined the cut end to the ball and started knitting on it again, at a much less frenetic pace.

I blocked and seamed the Jo's Pride shawl, and wrapped it up along with a set of Game of Thrones shot glasses for Kathy. She seemed to like her gift a lot, and the shawl even came in handy when a dress that was part of a costume ended up less warm than expected. My donated shawl-knitting services were eventually auctioned off for $60, and I'm waiting to hear back from the winner so that we can start discussing details.

Now I'm lying low for a week at my parents' place. Once I get back, I'll fill in with lots of pictures of the shawl and of the things I got while visiting my old LYS. Hopefully I'll also get lots of pictures of the yarn-dyeing workshop I've promised to give my local knitting friends, which I'm very much looking forward to.

This shawl.

This shawl.

There are seven days until I need this shawl to be complete, and seventy rows to go.

This would be fine if each row was, say, sock row sized. They are not. Each row is still well over 400 stitches, some of them incredibly fiddly.

Anyone else who might have seen pictures of this shawl and been lured to your doom: do not start this shawl with a two-month deadline looming. Between time, sanity, and a finished shawl, you can only pick two.

Me, I'm still holding out hope for one last sustained deranged effort.

Shawldown.

When I decided to try to finish two beaded lace shawls by the 22nd, I thought I might be a little bit crazy. When I agreed to volunteer my services knitting another one for a charity auction, I knew I was crazy. (You may notice that I was careful not to promise any concrete deadline!)

I'm still cautiously optimistic about finishing the current two on time. Jo's Pride is practically done - all that's left is the blocking and seaming for the top of the hood.

I gave in and ordered blocking mats and wires the other day, so this can rest until they arrive.

The Nouveau Beaded Capelet, on the other hand, is... giving me some issues. Does this look like where you want to be a month into a shawl, with ten days to go?

To be fair, I'm actually more or less halfway done with it, since it starts out very large and the rows get smaller and smaller as you progress. Still, I calculated a while back that in order to finish on time, I'd have to knit six rows a day. At this point I'm finding it difficult to manage even three a day.

I'm still quite in love with the design though. The lotus-like pattern at the bottom of each scallop looks so elegant, and even if all of these beads and horizontal bar yarnovers are a pain to manage, there's no denying they look wonderful.

(note to self: clean my sofa immediately after these shawls are done.)

Dyeing adventures.

A week or so ago, I tried my hand at dyeing some yarn.

I started out by doing a lot of reading up on the subject; this three-part tutorial on stovetop dyeing is what I eventually decided to emulate. I got some pretty cheap yarn and some Easter egg dye tablets, collected the necessary containers and such, and warned Bandit that his apartment was going to smell like vinegar for a few days.

I wound yarn while he played Halo, and dyed a few skeins while we watched the Oscars. It was obvious to me even then that I was hooked.

I offloaded all of the orangey-pink skeins onto Amy, and got some better yarn and some food coloring. (The problem with Easter egg dye tablets is that, well, they produce Easter egg-y colors.) I took requests from Amy and Luna, and experimented with mixing different shades.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to stop.