too fast...

A couple of nights of sitting on the couch and watching movies (long movies, mind you, we were watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy), and MIL's scarf was done:
(in it's unblocked form here)

Even the Husband commented that you knit that pretty fast, didn't you! Yup. And the reason? It is TI-NY!! About the size of a cub scouts neckerchief! And the pattern? It says 80 cm top to bottom, I have maybe 40. Here's my (medium sized) hand for scale:
I know my yarn isn't anywhere close to what they used, but still... If this was 100 % wool, it would probably block to one and a half times this size, but as it is, I don't think I can strech it much. So I'm going to start over with two more pattern repeats on both sides (the pattern starts from the outside edge with 6 pattern repeats on both sides) and go up a size in needles.

I'm not quite sure what I'll do with this tiny little one, but I've been wearing it on my shoulders today as a shrug, and I'm actually starting to like it a lot...

And since it is a nice sunny day today here in South Dakota, perfect for drying stuff outside, we did some dyeing. I've been eyeing other peoples entrelac socks and mittens and other items, and been wanting to try some, but I needed a nice yarn to do it with. I still had some of the Inspirations yarn Decaf left, so I decided to try that.

Two different shades of a very berryish color, still wet in the picture. I always think the hardest part about dyeing yarn is waiting for it to dry before you can use it! I'm again using the "hand-dyeing" method, pouring the diluted dye solution onto the yarn in my hand. You have so much more control that way than immersing! You see right away what it'll look like, you can stop when the saturation is what you want, and you can control exactly where the color goes. After I'm done pouring the color, I put it in the microwave for 3 x 1 min.

Another thing I tried (and wasn't quite as succesful) was to dye some yarn brown. Now the dyes I have are primary colors, and I'm mixing all the colors I'm using from them. And anybody who has ever done any painting and mixed their own colors, knows how difficult browns are! It is so hard to hit the color you were looking for, usually it just looks ugly and dirty. So I'm still working on that, and it may very well be that you'll never see any pictures of my experiment...