An experiment in over-dyeing using Rit liquid dye and the stovetop method. The yarn is leftover from my So In Love. The color I was aiming for was a warm orangey-pink coral, which I thought would suit my complexion a little more closely than the cooler pink of base yarn.

The Yarn

It took two tries to get something I’m happy with, and along the way I learned an immensely valuable lesson: when tying off the hank in preparation for dyeing, more ties are definitely better than fewer ties. After the first dyeing, I had huge gnarled mess that took me the better part of a Saturday to undo. I was not a happy camper. For the second dyeing, I doubled the number of ties, and it still took a bit of work to wind the yarn into a ball when all was said and done.

The Pattern

The knitting itself was pleasant and largely uneventful. I didn’t enlarge the body of the shawl, but I did follow the instructions to lengthen the lace edging. I did have to tink back a few rows to do it, as the “special instructions” for increasing the shawl size are at the back of the pattern after the row counts and blocking instructions (rather than included in the relevant knitting sections) and I nearly forgot about them.

In fact, for others thinking of purchasing the pattern, here are a few things to consider:

• The pattern could have been formatted in a more economical fashion—12 pages for a crescent shawl with a mostly stockinette body and lace border seems a bit excessive. (Then again, those with eyesight challenges may appreciate the larger text, taller line heights, and wider margins.)
• The pattern uses color to make it easier to see which written instructions correspond to each area of the chart. Printing in black-and-white shouldn’t prevent you from following any of the instructions, however. (But if you’re running out of one or more ink colors, the instructions may end up confusingly printing the word “blue” in light pink.)
• Be sure to read through the entire document if you’re thinking of changing the finished garment size, and maybe put a sticky flag in there somewhere to remind yourself.

The Shawl

This is my first shallow crescent shawl, and while I love the lace, I have a really difficult time getting it to lay nicely and then stay put. Even though I blocked it quite aggressively, the edge has a tendency to curl too.

At the end of the day, I think I prefer triangular shawls for using up a single skein, and half-circles for bigger, snuggle-into-them-for-shawls. There might not be a place in my closet for crescents. But just this once, I think I can make an exception.