You know, I really should know better by now: always check the dye lot. Especially on white yarn.

I’ve been busy recreating my Craftster avatar. I got this far before I ran out of white.

When I started up with a new ball, I noticed that it was a vastly different colour of white. Crap.

So I sent an e-mail off to mom asking if she could nip out to Michaels (of which there are THREE near her house) and grab some for me (because there are NONE in Toronto), being careful about the dye lots.

She was able to get 5 balls of white that shared a dye lot, and I desperately hoped that it would be “close” to what I had… though, I wasn’t holding my breath. I figured I could just pull the pieces apart, frog all of the white around the faces, and re-do it all with the same dye lot this time.

Easy enough.

While I was still in Hamilton I re-made that blank space above the faces. When I got home, I compared it to what I had previously done, just to see how close the colours were.

(Click it to see a bigger picture that maybe shows the difference in colour a bit better.)

That new piece is *exactly* the same pattern as the top part of the old one. Same number of stitches, same type of stitch, same brand and type of yarn, same hook. The only difference: dye lot.

Lesson learned.

What am I going to do now? I think that’s obvious: I’m going to change the plan completely, keep the piece exactly as it is now, fit ALL of the words into that top part, and slap a lovely border around it. And then use the new white to make a snowflake afghan. Hrmph.

(P.S. Do you think the faces need noses?)

This is the part of my stash that was being stored at my parents’ house that could fit in my Dad’s car:

Maybe re-read that first sentence a few times. Clearly, your yarnaholic of choice needs more yarn (yes, Charles, this does include you! ^_-).

You might be saying to yourself, “Man, that mio really needs some help!” and I agree. There is still more yarn to be moved!

Let’s see, we’ve got several water hexes for the Catan blanket, to the left of those is some over-exposed light-coloured yarns that make up the border colour for the Catan blanket and that yellow broomstick lace blanket. At the back is a blue and yellow round ripple blanket that would be absolutely stunning if I hadn’t run out of blue with less than 2 rounds left to go. In front of it is a blanket kit that I bought two Christmases ago; it has butterflies on it, or would, if I ever get around to making it. In front of that is an almost-finished blue and green blanket that, when finished, will hopefully have enough blue left over to finish the stunning blanket mentioned above.

Somewhere in there is some light blue yarn waiting for a pattern, and some purple yarn destined to be striped. (The bag of rainbow ripple yarn is on the floor, and thus not pictured.)

^_^

Speaking of looking for a pattern, here’s a fun link: Crochet Poet’s Pattern Collection.

I took about a dozen pictures of this and not a single one caught the beautiful colours of this blanket. I suppose you’re all just going to have to come visit me at the show (and then buy this).

This blanket is also an excellent example of how wonderful that “no turning chain dc” technique is. Here is a close-up of the edge:

Isn’t that amazing? If I look really, really closely, I still have a hard time telling which stitches are real double crochets, and which are the no-turning-chain stitches.

I’ve found it to make working in the round a bit easier, too. In the past, I had always had problems figuring out which chain in the beginning chain was the one I needed to make a join in. Using this no-turning-chain method, it’s pretty obvious where the join goes.

If you haven’t tried out this technique already, I urge you to do it. You won’t regret it!

I just realized the other day that I never posted pictures of the motifs I received from craftADDchick here on the blog. I’ve put them under the cut (Dad, if you’re reading this, don’t read any further on this post, please!)

Please forgive the pictures; I took these on my scribe at work in a different way than usual…

This last picture has three motifs for my Dad’s Christmas present:

The piano represents his tuning mine while I was growing up, the Starfleet badge is for his love of Star Trek, and the maple leaf is for his passion for all things “Made In Canada” (the irony here being that craftADDchick, who made these, lives in the States. We won’t tell Dad. ^_-)

I love these motifs and I hope we do another swap like this again soon! It was fun to participate in it, and I don’t have nearly enough motifs to make a blanket out of them yet. In the mean time, I’ve signed up for the third round of the Granny’s Daughters swap.

Lollipops:

Pattern: dc shells
Yarn: Bernat Baby Co-ordinates Sweet Stripes “Candy” and Bernat Baby Co-ordinates “Sweet Pink”
Hook: K/10.5 – 6.50mm

Rainbows:

Pattern: Round Ripple
Yarn: Bernat Baby Co-ordinates Sweet Stripes in leftover colours (so far, one strand each of “Sunny” and “Sprite”)
Hook: K/10.5 – 6.50mm

In other news, today was my 2-year anniversary working at the Internet Archive Canada. I celebrated by scanning books, and shooting a couple of foldouts. ^_-

We awoke ridiculously bright and early Friday morning and headed out for the airport.

There weren’t many people at Pearson at that time of day, so the line at security was non-existent. The carry-on bags go on the counter. Then our coats. Charles‘ shoes. The laptops (each in a separate tray). My knee brace (and its annoying, yet effective, metal boning).

I warned one of the guards that I had scissors in my bag, and after the brief look of panic on her face, I amended that statement to say that they were rounded scissors for kids. No problem.

I walked through the metal detector and all was fine, so I headed to the end of the counter to get our things. Charles was behind me (his shoes take a while to take off). Everything seemed fine, so I started getting our things together.

Oh, wait. Something is holding us up! Oh no! They’re not going to let my crochet hook through! I knew I should have told them it was in there! I just panicked! I’d forgotten to bring a book! Eeek!

They were searching through Charles’ coat. Wait a minute, that doesn’t make any sense…

My stuff was fine. They didn’t like the pen Charles had in his coat pocket. Oy!