decision made...mostly

The overwhelming opinion of the knitters on Wednesday night was to not rip. Hooray! So I have decided to move forward cautiously; I'm going to block the sweater gently and hope that the lumps calm down. A rather good sign, I think, is that every time I put the sweater on the bumpiness shows less and less. If, after blocking, it still is too lumpy for me, I plan on frogging the entire yoke, soaking and "unknitting" the yarn and then reknitting the yoke in a smaller size somehow. But I know that if I get to that stage, my beloved paper dolls sweater will sit in time out for quite a while before I work up the nerve to knit that yoke again!

I had a lot more trouble with it that I anticipated, struggling with the most comfortable way to hold the yarn while I knit. I found that holding one strand in each hand worked great for the two colour ribbing, but my tension was very loose when I knit continental, which gave me huge saggy spots! Also, what the heck are you supposed to do when you need to carry a colour along on the wrong side (which happens often with this pattern)?! I wasn't eager to drop both strands of yarn, twist and then pick up again! So in the end I went back to knitting with my right hand only...it was slow.

On a much happier note, the yarn I dyed the other day turned out great! I was quite worried about one skein of sock yarn in particular because it was for a friend. I had dyed it once already, but because the skein was so big (over 500 yards!) the dye just couldn't distribute evenly. So I boldly threw it into the dye pot again, intending to cover its light gray colour with pink to make a dusty mauve. Well, I apparently need to work on my ratios because I stuck in WAAY too much pink and had hot Barbie pink yarn on my hands. In a moment of panic I threw in a bunch of navy, which made the the most beautiful purple. So all was well in the end, and the yarn was very well received. I actually had to hide the yarn because folks at the shop were a bit too interested and I wanted to make sure that this lovely purple skein made its way back to its owner!





And here's a look at the sport weight Briggs and Little that I dyed to a lovely gold colour...





...I'm really happy with the colour, but I couldn't fit all three skeins into my little dyepot. So my plan is to dye up the third skein in a pretty pink (I'm in love with pink and orange lately) and I think I'll knit up a little stripey t-shirt with all three skeins!

I finished the first of the secret socks that I can't talk about, and I'm so happy with it (it's killing me to not take a picture!) but here's the yarn I used, it's Tanis Fiber Arts again, and the colour is called plum...