Lady Eleanor, pt. 2 - work in progress

This would be going a lot faster if I weren't working on three projects. Damn you, never-ending sheep puppet!

Those chairs need a facelift.

In my last post, you may have noticed the ugly ass cushions on our dining room chairs. We got our table and chairs about a year ago, and I intended to reupholster them immediately. I'm not sure where the past year went, but we have lived with this lovely fabric for too long.

Yeah, it looks like a Vera Bradley knockoff threw up on my chairs. So, since I'm on vacation this week, there is no more excuse for procrastination. I went to my new favorite discount fabric store, Fabric World, and got some upholstery fabric, and now we have new chairs! It's amazing what you can do with a yard and a half of fabric and a staple gun.

Lady Eleanor, pt. 1

Now that we're all moved into our new house - and yes, we did just move a year ago - I finally have time for knitting! After acquiring Scarf Style at Interweave's Hurt Book Sale, I have decided to make the Lady Eleanor shawl. Lady Eleanor requires a lot of yarn, and after looking high and low for economical choices in nice colorways and fibers, I gave up and decided to dye my own. I'm using a Henry's Attic 50/50 alpaca/wool blend. But, in order to get the color variations I wanted, I needed to make a long skein and dye three hanks together. This turned into a bit of a PITA.



First, the winding of the skeins. I connected three (big) skeins together, thinking that if I dyed them as one big skein this would make for more successful color transitions when I actually knit the shawl. However, I did not plan to spend 4 hours just winding the damn thing. But once you start, there's no turning back.



That was when I wished I had bought that automatic ball winder when Joann Fabrics had it for 50% off. I'm sure that winder would have just laughed at my skein though. And then it would have thrown itself out a top floor window. So, I was on my own. Many hours later, I had myself this completely ridiculous, non-portable ball of yarn.