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.