(Click to see a bigger version!)

I’ve decided to forget about “Let’s play”, mostly because it took most of the day just to chart out the rest… and most of the rest of the day to figure out where the middle is. If it looks off-centre, that’s only because the middle turns out to be right near the right edge of the E in “THE”.

I think I’m going to go back to making circle-in-a-square motifs… chaining letters is fiddly and annoying, and not condusive to following Rome.

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?)